The relationship between a client and the interior designers they pick is always personal, but in the case of this project in Miami’s North Beach, it’s particularly significant. Novelist, journalist, and columnist Asha Elias has known — and worked with — duo MONIOMI Design for over 13 years, more or less as long as the Floridian studio has been operating.
The pair’s designs have marked many of her family’s milestones — from creating her daughter’s nursery when she was born to transforming it as she grew into a teen. So it makes sense she entrusted them with this latest, symbolic task: the decor of her new modern home at a significant juncture in her life, following a divorce.
The idea was to create a space that felt representative of her individual identity — something that, by now, the designers have an instinctive understanding of, and that they feel aligns closely with their own style, marked by a maximalist sense of color, pattern and contrast.
“This whole time, we’ve learned who she is. We know what she likes,” says MONIOMI Design’s co-founder Monica Santayana, who runs the studio with her husband Ronald Alvarez. The two encouraged her to express her unmitigated preferences. “She said: I want it to be feminine, to be comfortable but also artistic, fun, and energetic,” continues the designer…