HALEY HUDSON’S “Aspiring Woman” journey began five years ago when she was featured as the cover model for ELYSIAN’s Winter issue. Since then, she has become an interior designer known for blending timeless elegance with livable comfort. A Parsons School of Design graduate, she brings thoughtful innovation to residential spaces through her studio, Haley Hudson Design. Inspired by mentorship and community, Haley champions collaboration over competition, crediting ELYSIAN for helping her embrace a generous, growthfocused mindset. She believes authenticity and vulnerability lead to meaningful connections and career success. Through setbacks and perfectionist tendencies, Haley remains resilient—viewing failure as a lesson—and encourages others to stay open, pivot when needed, and build a life rooted in creative purpose.
Haley Hudson is a residential interior designer, focusing on honing her craft as a small business owner. Her vision blends contemporary style with timeless design. Working to create interiors that feel both as refined as they do attainable, she cements her personal style within the framework of effortless comfort. Haley’s work solidifies the notion that you do not have to sacrifice the feel of a cozy, livable environment at the expense of elevated materials, colorways, and decor. Haley Hudson Design studio is based in South Carolina, working with clients that are after functional yet quietly elegant furnishings, ornamented with decadent details that whisper luxury. The transformative power of thoughtful interiors in her practice was cemented by her education at Parsons School of Design, known for its excellence across disciplines. Therefore, her time at college firstly inspired this approach to design, embodying a fresh perspective. Haley is proud to take residential practicalities and turn them into something extraordinary. Her youthful perspectives bring fresh flair and innovative problem solving to the intricate and complex world of interior design.
Like many of us, Haley has directly benefitted from relationships she’s built with older, inspirational women. These connections have assisted in carving a pathway to understanding her own skill set, able to employ these lessons to benefit her career and life aspirations. Joining ELYSIAN in 2020, she feels this empowered her to move forward with her own business and, therefore, expand her personal network of creative, professional women. Haley says, “Starting my career at ELYSIAN allowed me to see that when women come together, especially with their differences, we can actually rise so much higher,” she continues, “We’re not meant to compete with each other, we’re meant to come together and collaborate.” Speaking further about the ways she acts on this sentiment, “I will enter any environment with the mindset of ‘how can I help?,’ ‘how can I give?’ and I think that always comes back in return.” The more open you are to sharing connections, opportunities, jobs, and otherwise with others—the more those very things come ricocheting back in your direction. We’ve been fed the false notion that everyone is best off when they’re only looking out for themselves. It seems the aspiring women of ELYSIAN are among many who are actively choosing to shift the narrative.
When we go into spaces with a degree of earnestness, there is a risk of being underestimated or not taken seriously. This is the symptom of a hardened job market that previously established cutthroat mentalities and isolating perspectives over community morals. The aspiring women of ELYSIAN believe that, actually, the more authentically you arrive, the more comfortable others feel in doing the same. Haley touches on the fact that powerful women who are established in their careers are usually generous and willing to help. She stated, “When I step into a room where there is a woman who has a lot of success or is in a role of power of some kind, I find they’re the most generous . . . women who ‘sit with you’ on your level, speak and give you honest insight into their struggles . . . you find so much common ground with them.” Often false depictions of success platformed by social media, trick us into forgetting that when someone is outwardly successful online, they usually have an entire team of people behind them who helped support their journey. When women show up earnestly, Haley continues, “You’re able to truly see how they’ve gotten to that place and it’s through collaboration.” Those who often appear to live the most abundant lives, with successful careers online, are usually working with other people to curate their existences. The internet only shows us one side of this very complex coin. This is where rhetoric about building community in person and getting offline (in social media’s colloquial terms, “go touch grass”) comes from. Thus, highlighting the importance of reconnecting with a reality that isn’t born of blue light and doomscrolling. Getting offline is necessary to build confidence and snap out of what many young women experience as imposter syndrome.
This phenomenon is especially felt in today’s digital age as every single part of these many influencer personas, that women look up to online, are curated. Near achingly perfect. Additionally, until recent years, it’s uncommon to get vulnerable online—and rightly so. Inordinate amounts of criticism come from all sides, making it even scarier to be earnest in those virtual spaces. If you are to take a breath, and step into realtime in-person connection—it’s not all so scary after all. Haley says, “Women that I look up to are willing to give so much of themselves, specifically their time . . . It’s impacted me so much and I want to pass that on.” The catch here is when people take your kindness for granted, or worse—when they take advantage of it. What Haley and many others have realized is that moments of this will come, but you’ve got to rely on the positive experiences you’ve had to guide your perception. Most people are looking for avenues to understand authentic connection and organic career growth, as opposed to looking for the next person they can betray. It’s a fine line and takes some finessing in order to learn how to both “protect your peace” and look out for yourself while simultaneously remaining open. There’s always a risk that people will take our kindness for granted at some point, but it is imperative that we do not let past wrongs jade us. Leading with fear and assumption inadvertently stunts your own growth and capacity for life-changing connections.
In some cases, a change of environment is what we need to grow—Haley grew up in Spartanburg which is a small town in South Carolina. Then she decided she needed a shake up, “I ended up moving to New York City . . . it’s two opposite environments… but it really did teach me to embrace relationships that maybe before would have made me uncomfortable.” When it comes to different career paths or life trajectories, it can sometimes feel as if the people we find ourselves surrounded by do not notch into our understanding of the world. More times than not, this could not be farther from the truth. On the sheer basis of being human alone, there will always be a connecting point. Haley says, “You would be surprised who you can find commonalities with,” she continued, “Where you stretch yourself, you stretch your perspective.” Personally inflicted confirmation of what you lack can sometimes become a limiting variable as we meet new people. Haley says, “You have to learn how to show up in environments where people are very different from you, just being comfortable and seeking those environments where people are more successful than you.” With the transference of knowledge and connection that can often be a positive result of social media, many are realizing that age is not the defining line of inherent wisdom or success. As it turns out, there is much to gain from either side of this relationship between many aspiring and inspiring women.
“IF WE ARE TO LOOK AT OUR ASPIRATIONS AS A CONSTANTLY MOVING GOAL POST AS OPPOSED TO A FINAL WAVING CHECKERED FLAG, IT MAKES THE PROCESS OF GETTING TO EACH NEW CHECKPOINT MUCH MORE SUSTAINABLE.”
When talking about her inspirations, she mentions the publication’s founder, “It’s an easy answer, she’s just such a generous woman, she’s always looking to connect women.” Karen was candid with Haley about her personal journey with the magazine, giving her valuable insights about the journey to success, and how it often isn’t linear. It’s validating in one’s personal journey to hear that even the most successful people have hurdles to surpass. When she started ELYSIAN, Karen had been very open about her personal story in learning about the publishing world and its many interweaving parts. Haley continues, “She’s talked about how she didn’t have much knowledge of how to start a magazine… She approached it with an honest vision that you could really tell was from her heart.” It is paramount for young aspiring women to have the opportunity to learn about individual struggles and setbacks that those they seek inspiration from have experienced. A more common phenomenon—in the last few decades or so—has positioned women to become more radically vulnerable with strangers in spaces that may have previously cost them appearances or opportunities. Now, what we’re seeing is a cultural shift among young women, one that more commonly praises notions of openness as the way forward. Speaking further on this, Haley noted, “That’s how women can connect, just being honest with one another and being honest with our authentic selves.” In a world of many false notions of superiority, actually, the only currency that translates across industries, experiences, and aspirations is authenticity.
When it comes to chasing your aspirations and allowing them to turn into tactile dreams that you can build a life around, you’ll need to accept failure and rejection as part of the natural process. In Haley’s journey of curating a brand and attempting to build a reputation for herself in the interior design industry, this is a common experience she’s had to accept. She remarks, “You just learn the hard way, you have to learn that ‘yes’ means 50 to 100 ‘no’s’ . . . you’ve got to get those nos to get the yes.” In moments of uncertainty, we see most people give up. The “in-between” if you will, is the most uncomfortable part of self-discovery and career progression. Having the initial idea, and the subsequent attainment of that goal are the most satisfactory parts. While the middle, when you don’t know how it’s going to happen or when, is the unavoidable—unsettling bit. Very commonly, without proper mentorship or guidance in place, it can become too much to take. This is where we see aspirational women defect to lesser desired opportunities that are presently ready to accept—instead of pushing toward their harder-to-reach, most authentic dreams. If we are to look at our aspirations as a constantly moving goal post as opposed to a final waving checkered flag, it makes the process of getting to each new checkpoint much more sustainable. This way of guiding personal development is a tangible way of avoiding the woes of burnout and self-rejection. As an aspiring interior designer, Haley feels her perfectionism can often get in the way—which is a common experience for young women with big goals. She says, “I can tend to be a perfectionist and want everything to be perfect. I was approaching friends and family, quickly trying to figure out ‘where do I find my place in the market?’ so I pivoted more into the digital space, targeting renters in that market.” Haley thinks that a way of evading the negative feelings of failure’s grasp comes down to figuring out ways to change the connotation. She thinks you must “learn to love it, and learn to see it as just a lesson.” The difficulty presents when we put all of our eggs into one basket.
If we channel every ounce of our creative energy into one project or one idea, there is a lot more room to become absolutely inconsolable if it isn’t accepted or doesn’t pan out the way we hope. If instead, we action a series of projects around the same idea or concept, the rejections which inevitably come will be much less likely to cut us off at the knees. For example, if you have an idea for a brand partnership and were to email a singular company only to get rejected, it will be easy to conclude that the idea has no merit and, therefore, you should give up. Instead, if you were to take that pitch and submit it to hundreds of brands, surely one will come back with a positive reaction. If it doesn’t, then it’s time to try again and submit to hundreds more. Or maybe it comes down to a revision, or getting another perspective from someone you trust, and then trying something else. Ultimately, each of these failures and rejections are much easier to navigate when you realize that these parts of creative and career development are a normal, necessary part of the process. Haley continued, “Doubt is always going to come . . . facing that and realizing we don’t have to accept those thoughts—we can choose to be positive about the situation.” Discovering what doesn’t work, leads you faster to what does, and the same for learning about what you don’t like, as you’re quicker to determine what you do. If we spend our lives staring at the doors that close in our faces, we won’t have noticed all the ones opening down the hallway All you have to do is turn around and pivot.