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set out to be a stylist, but as he writes in the book, there were clues to his destiny. "As a kid in central Ohio, I spent hours collecting rocks on my family's farm — smashing them open hoping to find geodes, then lining up the fragments on my bedroom windowsill … they gave me an enduring interest in the mystical power of objects, and a love for the otherwise overlooked and forgotten. Everywhere I went I picked up scraps — a piece of broken piñata, a swatch of fabric. There was energy, I discovered, in the discarded." His parents gave him a camera at age nine, and he started taking pictures of his treasures, composing still lifes in his bedroom. When his career as a dancer in New York City didn't pan out, he traded dance for personal training, working under fitness expert Tracy Anderson. One day, he got a call to join his private client, Gwyneth Paltrow, in London. "I gladly tagged along, training her, Victoria Beckham, and Stella McCartney back-to-back most mornings," he writes. He transitioned to interiors after his work on artist Jack Ceglic's Manhattan apartment caught the eye of T magazine design editor Tom Delavan. Since then, King has become one of the most sought-after interiors stylists in the country and has launched his own interior design firm through Colin King Studio. With a penchant for elevating simple objects into sophisticated still lifes, King rummages through drawers and closets, looking for the right piece. "Any object can be a thing of beauty," he writes. Once, when composing a bedside vignette in a Manhattan apartment, he grabbed a pepper mill from the kitchen, flipped it on its head, and repurposed it as a vase for a stem of flowers. He often heads outside for inspiration. "A stone can become a monolithic sculpture. A branch can fill a vertical void like a line drawing in space," he says. King's styling credo comes from years of trusting his instincts and editing like a maniac: A single candlestick has more visual power than two, and not every corner or surface needs something — emptiness is often beautiful. Natural light and shadows act as objects in a still life and are what makes the arrangement sing. "Don't get stuck seeing objects just for their intended use," he says. "There is wisdom to be found from loosening the rules. Lean into uncertainty." "Everywhere I went I picked up scraps — a piece of broken piñata, a swatch of fabric. There was energy, I discovered, in the discarded." — Colin King ADRIAN GAUT STEPHEN KENT JOHNSON PIPPA DRUMMOND RICH STAPLETON Clockwise from above: Colin King's Tribeca apartment. Colin King in his apartment. Fort Greene staircase styled for West Elm. Tabletop vignette designed for Roman and Williams Guild. A Manhattan den with interiors by Studio Giancarlo Valle, styled for Architectural Digest. ADRIAN GAUT 45