Julia Haney Montanez’s 400-square-foot Chelsea studio is the stuff of fantasies for many space-starved New Yorkers: She lives alone, with a certified and lots of natural light, and is within walking distance from her office. Still, she recently found herself restless and decided to take a break from her home. In 2018, she moved out, spending half the year on the Upper West Side and the other half living in Bushwick. It was a clarifying experience for her. “I wanted to create and emulate a hotel room,” she says. “That was the biggest inspiration.”
Julia Haney Montanez in her Chelsea apartment.
Julia, who curates the MADE section of the yearly AD Design Show, says leaving her apartment was a big turning point for her: She now takes a far more minimalist approach to decor, and she hasn’t moved her furniture around since she settled back in last October. “This time around, everything sort of found its home. I think that every room has its sweet spot, and I think I finally found it, where I sleep well at night and I feel productive, and the light hits my face and wakes me up in the morning,” says Julia. In part, she was able to achieve that sweet spot—and rid herself of about half of her possessions—thanks to the physical act of moving and, specifically, putting her things into storage. “The amount of stuff I got rid of was truly unbelievable, and I was like, ‘I’m never going back.’ That’s the Julia Kondo method: Put your shit in storage, and see how long it takes you to get it out.”
These small ceramic pieces by , , and are particularly special. “Every AD show, I always buy a piece off an exhibitor. I always make sure that it’s a purchase. These people paid us a lot of money to show, and I want to give back in the littlest way, and that’s taking a piece of their work with me. So I always keep my eye out for something that is very striking or something that speaks to me,” says Julia. “Those are favorite pieces that also make me smile.”
These days, Julia has transitioned from collecting furniture to collecting art, and every aspect of her home is intentional. Nearly everything she owns has a story or a sentimental value. She says doing interior design—her job before becoming the MADE curator—taught her a valuable lesson. “You’re moving furniture and objects in and out, and you start to realize after a while that objects make your life more beautiful, but at the end of the day, stuff is just stuff,” says Julia. “I’m lucky that a lot of my friends are artisans and craftspeople and designers, so that the pieces I do have remind me of a person or an experience, versus an act of needing to buy something.” She aims for a collected home, and has truly achieved one: Her pillows, for example, were made in France, Turkey, and Colombia.
Design-wise, the primary influences for the apartment, and for Julia in general, are Japanese and Scandinavian aesthetics. She likes her furniture low to the ground (case in point: her Floyd Platform bed), especially since it helps show off the high ceilings she loves. High contrast, along with natural textures and plenty of white space, are key: “Give the eye a place to rest.” Though a lover of maximalist design, Julia has found that in her own life, spacing things out is a way to calm her hectic mind: “I thought that I’d be happy surrounded by beautiful things, but in fact I was more happy surrounded by air and by lightness.”
