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Welcome toRoom Envy, a series where we ask interesting people about a favorite room in their house. From minimalist living rooms to vibrant kitchens, we’re zeroing in on the best features of the most enviable rooms.
In the world of Eva Seta, life imitates art. As the director of communications at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), she is constantly immersed in a vessel of creative energy. (If her name sounds familiar, that’s probably because your mind was blown away during Demi Lovato’s home tour, which featured an impressive collection of contemporary art curated by noneother than Eva.) She is also the cofounder of the skin care line Bejbiskin, so her tasteful eye for beauty stems from the inside out. This attention to detail is even more evident at the millennial’s modern home in Hollywood Hills. Located in the Whitley Heights neighborhood, the apartment was originally built during the golden age of Hollywood in the 1940s and channels a “vintage villa vibe,” as Eva describes it.
Eva was born and raised in Buenos Aires (until her family relocated to Miami) where she grew up in a creative household as the daughter of an architect and a welder. Although Eva wasn’t fully aware of how she was being influenced at the time, there was no denying that art, design, and architecture were guiding forces in her life. “I always said, ‘I’m not an artist, but how do I still work within the art world?’” While studying undergrad at the University of Central Florida, Eva realized that she could combine her passion for communication and art to further support artists within institutional spaces. She adds, “It still feels like a living dream, like a manifestation…. It’s wild.”
Location: Whitley Heights in Los Angeles, CA
Square footage: The one-bedroom apartment is around 750 square feet; the living room is 280 square feet
How would you describe your interior aesthetic?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot! I don’t relate my style to minimalism, although when I look at my living room space…I do see moments of minimalism. And while I don’t think I’m a maximalist, there’s definitely abundance in here. What I realized is that I don’t categorize things as good or bad, high-end or low-end—I just think there’s everything and you pull from the places that you love. My style includes postmodern, Art Deco, midcentury.… There’s definitely a touch of camp and kawaii in here, it’s very playful.
I think that that has a lot to do with Argentina and growing up in a city that has so much European influence from so many different countries—there’s French, Italian, and Spanish. I grew up in a very eclectic home, which is nice to reflect on thinking back. My parents are the same way [as me], where they pull from different places and the space becomes really multicultural. I just stay really open and see what influences me, and take what I like and mix it up.
Eva’s living room is curated to perfection with original pieces by Faye Toogood, Gaetano Pesce, Jasmin Shokrian, and more.
Photo: Cailley Brin
What are some of your favorite pieces in this room?
I love signature and designer pieces—how I differentiate is that my signature and designer pieces are used and vintage, I think that adds a really nice touch, that pieces come to me with a story and have already been lived in. I still see that even at my parents place in Miami, with all our furniture from Argentina. So these pieces really do become forever, iconic pieces that live on and really stay in your space forever.
This whole room first started because of the main sofa, which is a vintage three-seater Togo by Michel Ducaroy for Ligne Roset. It’s a French piece from the ’70s reupholstered in emerald green velvet, it has the original tags and original bottom fabric that’s striped. This piece is very modular, it’s lightweight and you can move it around. The biggest challenge of this piece is that it’s 12 inches off the ground so it’s very close to the floor, which I love. I feel like a kid, I look at it and I’m like “I can't believe I get to live with you!” It’s my favorite piece and it’s so playful.
It was really important for me to find a coffee table that complemented and highlighted the fact that [the Togo sofa] is so low to the ground, so that’s where this coffee table came in, which is the Alanda coffee table by Paolo Piva for B&B Italia. This coffee table is also such an iconic piece that I love so much. I got this piece from Belgium and had to wait months for it to arrive. I love it so much and first saw it in American Psycho—it’s Patrick Bateman’s coffee table. That apartment is sterile, cold, and there’s nothing about it that feels human, so it’s funny to me seeing it styled in his apartment and then seeing how I live with it and how I’ve been able to really make it my own. To me it’s become such a feminine piece, so different from American Psycho, which is nothing but minimal. It’s actually maybe one of the most maximalist places in my home because it’s dripping in books and trinkets and things like that.
Roly Poly Armchair in Ochre by Faye Toogood for Driade
Alongside that I have a Roly Poly chair by Faye Toogood in the color concrete. That’s definitely more of a contemporary piece, it’s from 2014—the Togo is from the ’70s, this coffee table is very ’80s, and then this chair is very contemporary. I added a cushion to the chair, which for Roly Poly makes all the difference. It becomes very, very, very comfortable by adding that cushion. It’s also a lightweight piece that feels very modular so at any time of the week it could move around just like the Togo.
Decorative Floor Lamp Lotus Flower Italian Design Gold Metal Crystal, 1970s
This floor lamp is from Sunbeam Vintage in Highland Park, a really cool vintage store in East LA. I very purposefully placed it in front of the mirror so you really get twice the lamp, it’s a very gaudy, gold, over-the-top moment. People really love this piece when they come into my space, especially at night—you can turn on two flowers or all four, and with the reflection of the mirror it really makes a super warm and indulgent moment.
Eva in the corner striking a pose with some of her most beloved objects.
Photo: Cailley Brin
Eva’s abundant collection of tiny treasures, trinkets, and tchotchkes.
Photo: Cailley Brin
What’s going on with all the objects on your shelves?
A carpenter in Los Angeles built this midcentury-style bookshelf for me and we worked on it to really make it custom because I needed the shelving to be so tall for all of my art books. I love this bookshelf so much because not only does it hold my books, I also build these little altars on the shelves, and I create these little tiny spaces and I definitely do offerings with things like that. There’s precious stones and crystals, dried up flowers, candles, McDonald’s Happy Meal toys, fake money. Different little places of ritual or pensive moments that I could give—there’s photographs of my family and my friends—it’s filled with trinkets. I have a vintage Scottie Pippen figurine, I love him so much, and a bootleg Louis Vuitton dog figure.
It’s really a place of abundance, there is so much going on…a lot of owls on my bookshelf represent knowledge and elephants for abundance. Working at a contemporary art museum and having access to a discount at our incredible MOCA store has really helped me develop this incredible and special collection of contemporary art books, they really fill the shelf and spill onto the floor and my coffee table. I have books by Mike Kelly, Kerry James Marshall, Rick Owens, Noah Davis—I really love the collection I’ve been able to build.
“I have a credenza that is right below my TV, it’s a Peter Maly [piece] called Lines and also manufactured by Ligne Roset,” says Eva. “I would say that’s definitely my minimalist moment in this space. The piece is white lacquered MDF, it has these chrome-plated flat legs, and you will never find one object on top of it ever. For me, it’s the one place that has this rule and it works. It’s so nice side by side with the coffee table that’s really filled in every inch… It really pleases me and my eyes.”
Photo: Cailley Brin
How often do you change up what’s on the coffee table? Do you have a process for how you style it?
I feel like the table is really my working 3D mood board and it changes daily. If it’s on my table, it’s definitely something I’m thinking about and that I love, and by being displayed here it gets read and touched like it can rub off on me a bit. I love displaying books split open, it almost becomes a curation of not just having the book but also having the page open.
I have this Sandy Kim book, Psychocandy. [Sandy’s] a photographer in Los Angeles and a friend. It’s split open to a spread that she did of photographs of another friend who lives in New York. I love this moment of friendship, of friends doing cool things with other friends, definitely an empowering woman moment. I just got Willie Smith’s book Street Couture, published by Cooper Hewitt. I love Willie Smith so much, not just for fashion inspo but really his Tribeca apartment from the ’80s, I still reference those photographs on how to place things in my apartment. It’s one of my biggest inspirations, that apartment he had in New York.
I have an amazing sticker sheet by Argyle Design, my best friend’s interior design company. She made this cool sticker sheet of all iconic furniture pieces so everyone loves to see that. I have two Hayao Miyazaki books right now, one of them is the storyboard of Princess Mononoke and I also have the catalog from Miyazaki’s exhibition at the Academy Museum. I’ve been thinking a lot about the Miyazaki and rewatching a lot of the films lately so that’s out right now.
I also have like a little witchy tray of things: half-burned sage, seashells, Polaroids of friends, matchboxes, five incense boxes, candles, and a sweet little Murano glass trinket that a best friend got for me. It looks like a wrapped candy, it’s the cutest little tiny object. I love it.
Eva burning a stick of incense on the surface of the coffee table.
Photo: Cailley Brin
What would you say is the best part of this room?
There are a lot of moments within moments. When I have other friends come over they love to look through and often discover something new every time because there is this abundance of little worlds within worlds. Right now I’m looking at this statue I have in the space that’s about three feet tall. It’s the Venus statue, the Greek goddess of love; she’s having such a moment right now, I love her so much. I draped her in the dried-flower lei and at her feet there are two stick candles that I burn and let overflow as sort of an offering of abundance. I’ve been meditating on her a lot about love and things like that so I feel like that’s a beautiful moment.
I also have really sweet reminders that are like anchors through the art pieces that I have in this space. For example, I have a print by an artist and dear friend named Jasmin Shokrian, and it reads, in French, “I’m going to live in Los Angeles.” For me that piece is so personal, not only because a friend made it, but also because I remember that moment in Miami being like, “Okay, we’re gonna make a life of ourselves in Los Angeles. Let’s do this.” That is such an anchor piece of gratitude and a reminder that the statement “I’m leaving to go live in Los Angeles” is now so true. I live in Los Angeles and I’ve made this for myself, it’s a really cool moment.
I also have a framed wheatpaste poster from a campaign I worked on for Lauren Halsey’s first museum exhibition, which was showcased at MOCA. She is one of my favorite Los Angeles–based artists and people I've gotten to meet through the museum. Although it’s not an original, it feels really special to me because I did the marketing for the museum so it’s something I worked on very closely and personally. It’s a really nice full circle moment to have this piece here.
This shelf features Dior by Avedon, Survey by Zoe Leonard, and other contemporary art books.
Photo: Cailley Brin
Are there any pieces that you currently have your eye on?
I am looking for more book space solutions, it’s something that I’ve been thinking about. I’m not necessarily sold on it, but there is a book stand at Design Within Reach that stacks. I’ve been really thinking, “How do I feel about book stacking in that way as opposed to sitting up right on my bookshelf or spread wide open on my coffee table? Is that for me? Would that please me to see the books like that horizontally?” So that’s the next thing I’m thinking about more, where to put all the books I know I’m going to buy in the near future.
