Since 2021, Lisa Mayock — former co-founder of the beloved aughts fashion label Vena Cava — has been bringing her eye for shapes, proportion, pattern, and texture to interior design with Monogram. (You might remember Mayock’s own home from How to Live With Objects!) Mayock’s Altadena-based studio recently refreshed an 1890s Craftsman home in Pasadena for a family of five, and Mayock wanted the interior to reflect the “vibrant and high energy” way the family lives. While previous iterations of the space before its current residents moved in skewed more traditional — neutral palette, staid furniture arrangements — this transformation started with unexpected wall colors. Take the muted violet you encounter as you enter the home through the living room, which unfolds onto six other spaces. Mayock drew inspiration from Copenhagen’s Thorvaldsens Museum — opened in 1848 and dedicated to Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen — where colors shift from space to space, creating a sense of movement. Here, each room of the house gets its own shade and becomes a little world unto itself, while still speaking the same design language — an elegant yet lively and expressive dialect.

A fizzy mix of styles brings the place to life, with asymmetry and curves in the furnishings balancing out the angles and geometry of the house. The goal was to make the house “floppable” — meaning “you could flop down anywhere and feel comfortable and right at home,” as Mayock puts it. A wealth of textiles adds softness — including fabrics and wallpapers by Pierre Frey, Nobilis, Elitis, Schumacher, and Clarence House — that complement the home’s well-preserved millwork. (It’s a Craftsman, after all.) Custom pieces include Monogram’s steel Taureau chairs, which sit like delicate thrones on either side of the living room console, plus an amoebic glass coffee table, and a print for the living room drapery designed in collaboration with Brooklyn’s Moonshake Studio. One of our favorite moments? A red fireplace made from hand-combed plaster that was then painted. “Both fireplaces in the home were both originally brick,” Mayock notes. “We decided that materials with more interest and texture would be a better choice. The upstairs was plastered, and the downstairs fireplace was refinished in a Syzygy tile with a 3-D texture that looks like Op Art from the ’90s.” One of the clients is a sculptural artist and her handmade ceramics grace nearly every room, along with artworks from emerging talents acquired over the years. All of it makes for a singular, surprising, and welcoming home.

Photos by Jason Frank Rothenberg / styling by Joanna Williams of Kneeland Co.