Houzz Tour: A Brooklyn Loft With a Silver-Screen Pedigree

Interior designer Ondine Karady’s clients include plenty of real-life stars, but in her previous life as a set designer, her patrons included fictional characters such as Mr. Big and Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City and Sara Goldfarb of Requiem for a Dream. After wrap parties, it wasn’t unusual for cast and crew to “shop the set,” buying props from the productions. Karady found herself in the unique position of furnishing her home with some of the items she used for clients who ceased to exist after the credit roll.

Houzz at a Glance
Who lives here: Ondine Karady and her husband, Jim Rutenberg, a political correspondent for the New York Times Magazine
Location: Brooklyn, New York
Size: 1,000 square feet (93 square meters); 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom

The entry hall is covered with recycled felt panels from a pop-up shop Karady designed for Nike. The artist who made them agreed to take the job only if the designer could promise the panels wouldn’t be thrown out when the shop closed. Karady kept her word and installed them in her own house.

The art deco desk at the end of the hall might look familiar to fans of Sex and the City. “It was in Mr. Big’s apartment,” says Karady. “The mirror was in Marion’s bathroom in Requiem for a Dream.”


The loft is in a former sweater factory, complete with floors that earned their scars during decades of hard work. Karady and her husband rent the home; it was a single open space when they signed the rental agreement, but they were allowed to remodel it to their taste.

Having an eye for a find is one of Karady’s talents. The metal hospital cabinets were being peddled on a SoHo street when she spied them and brought them home. When the couple added a wall to define the bedroom in the loft, they built in cabinets to display the designer’s many collections. Large glass windows at the top of the thick wall mean light is shared between the spaces.

Her eagle eye also spotted the vintage sofa in a suburban Goodwill store. It was in mint condition due to a plastic cover that had protected it from wear. She snapped it up for $25 and had it reupholstered in silk. The plastic has been replaced by a colorful Moroccan rug.

The curtains also appeared on Sex and the City. “They are one of those lovely mistakes,” Karady says. “They were too short for the apartment, so I made them longer by adding a panel of Pucci-printed fabric. It solved the problem and made them a lot more interesting.”





The dining room is adjacent to the living room and furnished with the Saarinen Tulip chairs and table from her childhood home. Karady made the light fixture for her husband by hot gluing Styrofoam cups together. “We’ve had it for 10 years now,” she says.

A corner of the living room is furnished with art and accessories meaningful to her. “The painting is of a karaoke singer. It’s by Fritz Chestnut,” Karady says. “He and his wife, actress Molly Shannon, are clients of mine.

The photographs are by her sister, Jennifer Karady. They are of the designer interacting with candy. “The candy is on different parts of my body,” she says. “There’s a gumdrop in my belly button and a jelly bean in my ear.”


The art in the bedroom once hung in a fictional gallery, but it has no artist directly attached to it. “It was made in the prop shop by scene artists,” says Karady. “In Sex and the City, it hung in one of the galleries Charlotte worked in.”

Mismatched tables, remnants of Karady’s art deco phase, flank the bed. Karady suggests looking in the suburbs for similar vintage finds. “I have good luck finding treasure when I drive out of town,” she says. “And I like to look in small antique stores and thrift stores for designs in the rough.”

By the way, remember Aleksandr Petrovsky, the Russian artist played by Mikhail Baryshnikov who woos Carrie Bradshaw? Check out the way Karady decorated his fictional apartment.

And that’s a wrap.

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