As founder and creative director of a luxury fashion house, the owner of this house is a frequent world traveler – and this often means staying in hotels that are not necessarily to his taste. ‘Bland interior design makes me feel anxious,’ confides Johnson Hartig, founder of Libertine. He adds, ‘Within the first few hours of my stay I’ll often approach the front desk to talk to the manager about redecorating their hotel; I really should design one myself someday.
’ Cabinetry, Ikea . If the colorful, exuberant interiors of the LA home he shares with his rescue dogs, Flower and Radish, are anything to go by, visitors to a Johnson Hartig hotel would be treated to a dizzying, fantastical tour of different continents. Think Persian suzanis, Moroccan pottery, Indian chintzes, Chinese reverse glass paintings and ship dioramas from England and North America.
‘I have been collecting since as long as I can remember,’ Johnson recounts. ‘Nowadays I tend to buy a lot of vintage furniture and artworks at online auctions, and I often forget what I have bought, so packages come and it’s all a surprise to open them and then I have to find spots for everything. I do a lot of arranging.
’ Fireplace tiles and ceramics (on coffee table), sourced from Morocco. Five years ago, Johnson was on his way to purchase a house in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles when a friend alerted him to the fact that a property in the historic Windsor Square district was about to come on the market.