Never mix business with friendship — so the conventional wisdom goes. Chicago interior designer Donna Hall was all too aware of that advice when her boyfriend of a few months, Chicago finance exec Dominick Mondi, asked her to work on his Streeterville apartment.
“It’s tricky to have a personal relationship on two levels. I didn’t even know whether to charge or not,” she admits.
But the job was too good to pass up. “How often does a 4500-square-foot vintage co-op in an East Lake Shore Drive building come your way?” reasons Hall. “He was handing me this wonderful vanilla box to play in. It had incredible potential.”
It was also crying for attention. Though the apartment had been renovated before Mondi bought it, the newly streamlined neo-classical architectural details didn’t do the grand spaces justice. And while Mondi had already purchased some handsome foundational furniture from Manifesto and a few significant artworks, “nothing was cohesive,” explains Hall.
Fortunately, Hall accepted the design challenge. But the initial designer/client arrangement was short-lived. “We started talking about a future together a few months later, and I switched from designing for him to designing for us,” she says.
The new direction made a huge impact on Hall’s plans for the apartment. “I like to push boundaries and take risks. So when I realized this was going to be my home, I got much more adventurous,” she says.
Her first move in a string of daring design decisions was to add an epic geometric plaster motif of her own design to the living room’s expansive ceiling. The imaginative treatment gave the sedate room a decidedly glamorous attitude.
Next, the bland fireplace got a bold update with a center-of-attention mantel that paired sexy smoked glass tiles with a tailored limestone surround, and capped the combination off with stepped millwork. While it pays homage to the apartment’s classical roots, it also references Mondi’s Deco-inspired furniture, which includes muscular seating and an exotic lacquered wood cabinet.
But the artworks — specifically two huge portraits by Argentine artist Marcelo Grosman executed in amethyst and emerald — “were particularly challenging because of the vibrant hues. I had to come up with other pieces that wouldn’t compete with them,” concedes Hall.
A sleek bronze, glass and limestone coffee table and a sumptuous silk blend Stark carpet in a thoroughly of-the-moment scatter pattern did the trick and also unified the living room’s disparate elements. Hall threw in a few textural elements, such as Jean De Merry’s chunky, fissure-ridden oak stump side table with a brass inlay and a rustic vintage church bench, “to keep the room from looking too perfect,” she explains.
Mondi challenged Hall to make the foyer — at about 22 by 12 feet larger than most living rooms — more than a mere pass-through. She designed and fabricated a 12-foot-long bench that anchored the space, and then upholstered it in amethyst mohair to reference the Grosman portrait visible in the living room beyond. A wood and brass table that overlays it masks a break in the bench that was necessary so it could fit in the building’s too-trim freight elevator. Now the space sees heavy use during the couple’s frequent parties, reports Hall.
Equally daring were a series of imaginative, room-making wall treatments Hall deployed — all elements that challenged Mondi at the time, “but he loves today,” she laughs.
When she lacquered the oval dining room’s walls black, turning the traditional room spectacularly theatrical, she already had “carte blanche. “So I didn’t tell him what I was going to do and let him be surprised,” she admits. A gold and white Deco-inspired wallcovering from Maya Romanoff and Jean De Merry’s Lumiere, an edgy take on a mid-century sunburst chandelier, set off the ceiling and emphasize the room’s gracious curves.
There was no need for avoidance in the master suite, where Mondi already owned a dazzling Hollywood Regency bed worthy of a movie set. Hall paired it with equally dazzling dramatic elements that played to its burnished bronze silk upholstery, but layered in eclectic references to give it an updated edge. Eye-popping Phyllis Morris wallpaper channels the sixties, while a crystal-rock encrusted Bradley chandelier is au courant. A shimmering silk Atelier Lapchi rug in bronze, beige and taupe adds an earthy counterpoint.
But Hall’s most audacious and boundary-shattering brushstroke was a bit of an afterthought — and the last time she bypassed Mondi in the decision-making process. She fell for Brooklyn artist Hunt Slonem’s digitally printed bunny wallcovering by Lee Joffa, and thought it would be perfect in Mondi’s teenage daughter’s room. It was the last thing she added to the space.
“She loves animals, and it’s so fun and sophisticated that she could grow with it,” says Hall. “But I thought Dominick would think I’d lost my mind if I showed it to him. So I just did it and figured I’d take it down if he hated it.” Instead, Mondi had the opposite reaction, a testament to his newly expanded aesthetic and Hall’s design acumen.
