Lena Dunham covers the latest issue of Domino Magazine, which is apparently some kind of hipster-twee version of Home & Garden, I think. Do they still do Elle Decor? It’s like that, only full of cheap tchotchkes and furniture from the 1980s. Maybe I’m unfairly judging this magazine by focusing only on Lena Dunham’s ghastly New York apartment, but in all fairness, I would bet actual money that Lena tried unsuccessfully to get her apartment into Vogue, Home & Garden or Elle Decor and they rejected her because of her terrible interior design skills. I mean, on one side, her home is better than mine. On the other side, she has money and access to people with taste and THIS is what she chose. You can see the whole Domino spread here. Some highlights from her twee AF “essay”:
Lena pretends that her childhood had lean years: “My mother would be mad if this made us sound like we had a lot of money to hurl around (as artists, sometimes we did and sometimes we didn’t, like the year that Christmas was a tiny newspaper tree and Indian takeout from 6th Street) or made her sound like a covetous jerk… She hunts on eBay for Danish wood candlestick holders and milky Murano glass, and the walls [in her current farmhouse] have art by everyone from Richard Prince to Matisse to me in third grade.
Her first apartment: “I thought I was content when I moved out at 26 (too old, I know, I know) and bought my first apartment: a prewar deal so good that other New Yorkers became angry when I told them (I got it off a dead guy who nobody liked! That’s the secret!).
Her second apartment, the one she bought with Jack Antonoff: “Life happened and I fell in love and whispered those terrifyingly vulnerable three words: “Let’s buy something.” And soon I was pounding the pavement looking for a place where we could build a future, consider children, and install that much fetishized Sottsass shelf. I wanted to live in another creaky decrepit-glam enclave, and I told the real-estate agent that my passion was moldings—all of them! Any of them! My man was afraid of dust. So we bid on an apartment that hadn’t even been built yet, and I spent the year making obsessive scrapbooks just like my mother before me. I planned for wallpaper (my friend Payton Cosell Turner’s Flat Vernacular does the best, and I’ve had the same pattern in three bedrooms in three apartments) and bought Josef Frank pillows and Nancy’s Blushes Farrow & Ball paint for the bedroom. I had art by Rob Pruitt and Ellen Berkenblit ready to go (queer and female painters are my thing).
Jack hated her style: “I even had all my mother’s Melmac dishes in queasy pastels. He was on tour, so she and I set the kitchen up, stuffed the closets, and placed the tchotchkes on the mantel for the great unveiling. And he hated it. He didn’t want to hate it. He tried not to hate it. But he didn’t like living among the insides of my mind. I thought I was giving him a gift, like the time I came home from summer camp and my mother had painted my walls four different chalky colors and installed a poster, a candle shaped like a slice of honeydew melon, and an inflatable chair. I wanted to give him the magic that she’d always given me by dreaming her maddening dreams. But he wanted a Restoration Hardware couch and a giant watch to hang on the wall. I felt sick every time I made a design concession or covered up pink with dove gray. Love can only survive so much. At night, I mapped out my dream space in my head: A massive bed with an ornate headboard. A pile of the vintage Harlequin novels that Jemima finds at flea markets. It doesn’t matter where the dog pees. The rooms don’t have to be big; I mostly curl into a ball.
Her current apartment, a rental: “The space isn’t big but it’s perfect for pacing, and every day I do laps through all the doors like I’m in a slapstick comedy from the 1930s, amusing myself. When the people on 8 tried to floor-shame me, I told them what I love about 2: If you’re an introvert and often homebound, by illness or sadness or both, it feels like the passersby on the street are right there with you. They are my built-in friends. Across from me is a luxurious brownstone, but I’m not sure how it’s decorated. I’ve stopped looking in other people’s windows.”
Lena Dunham has a “tell” in her writing, if you want to call it that. She thinks she’s telling a story about how cute she is and how avant-garde she is, when really she’s explaining in horrific detail why she annoys the f–k out of every single person around her. I mean… she decorated her first shared home, her first live-in boyfriend situation, in all-pink and ‘80s lucite and tchotchkes and f–ked up dead dog paintings and then when Jack hated that sh-t, she felt like she was DYING. It literally never occurred to her that she has bad taste and compromising would be a lovely thing to do for the man she loved. TL; DR version: Lena is tacky. In every aspect, especially interior design.
Photos courtesy of Domino.
Dear Lena, You and your privilege need to disappear. Please go away
right?! poor thing didn’t move out until she was 26 when she BOUGHT AN APARTMENT IN NYC.
let me get out my tiny violin.
PS – yeah it DOES matter where the dog pees! EW!
That made me laugh out loud, terrified as I am about my college age kids being able to even afford rental apartments in Chicago when they graduate. Her clueless humblebragging is off the charts. And way to throw her “man” under the bus about his (supposed) generic design aesthetic.
There wasn’t any part of these excerpts that didn’t make my stomach turn. Blech.
Esmom I can’t imagine how exhausting it must be to be around her.
The dog peeing part is so gross!
@whatwhat? Right?! And not just a apartment in nyc at 26-but a PREWAR apartment with dad’s money. And then talks about it like it’s no big thing or something embarrassing.
Scal, to be fair, that was probably with her HBO money from Girls. But still, the way she talked about it like that was kind of oblivious, as usual.
“I thought I was giving him a gift”. Like when someone gives you a framed picture of THEMSELVES for your birthday.
Perfectly put, @lisa.
The best gifts are the ones that show you’ve been LISTENING… that you know what the other person likes, where their interests fall, what’s going on in their life.
Lena’s ‘gift’ said she can hear her own voice, and not much else.
Note the giant painting dominating…you know there’s a problem when the main room features the owner’s likeness as a super model.
She’s another one that needs to go away forever. One trick pony. Thankfully she has clothes on
Domino is usually excellent and I’m less than thrilled that they included her.
I am, too. I mean, they are heavily up their own butts, but Lena Dunham? Blech.
And because it’s Lena Dunham it hurts me to say this: that’s a boss apartment. I don’t love peach, but it pulls it off.
The apartment in in the Hollywood Recency style and I think it is fabulous. I’m a MidMod, but I do appreciate this design aesthetic.
I appreciate it, too. I wouldn’t pick it for myself, but it’s cute.
I had to LOL at hipster Jack Antonoff wanting a basic HGTV house. I guess that’s not what I would have expected.
She bores me. Does she have something coming out, because she is all over lately.
Well, she was in Once Upon A Time in Hollywood for about 2 mins.
Looks like she has a bit of a new face. Nose tweaking? She’s still and ugly fuck (inside and out ) though with terrible taste.
Wow, that doesn’t look like her at all. WTF, photoshop? I like the second instagram slide, I can see where she was going with it, but overall the effect is too much and too cluttered.
Yup, came here to say the same, what’s been going on with her face? Just weight changes?
My thoughts exactly. New nose most likely. She’s still a beast.
Look at the photo of her in the blue dress. They’ve airbrushed her so much she doesn’t even have an armpit.
All the people in the building are just props to her, it seems. She comes across as incredibly self-obsessed and indulgent. It’s repellant.
I had the same thought. The people on 8 are “floor shaming” her? Is this like how Odell Beckham “snubbed” her at the Met Gala? Girl needs to get a serious grip. Personally, it provides me great comfort to know most people are too far up their own asses to think much about me at all. It’s so freeing!
Yeah, they’re probably annoyed at her about something else (or many things, I’m guessing), and she assumes it’s “floor shaming”. FFS.
Yes, yes and hell yes. I found myself thinking those (alleged) people on the sidewalk would probably not be pleased to know she considers them her friends.
Why do all rich people need to pretend life was hard? Do we really believe they were so poor they had a newspaper tree?
She forgot to mention that after Christmas they had to put the Christmas tree in the fireplace because they had no electricity and had no way to keep warm.
You win the internet today 🤣
Drake started it with “started from the bottom.” Seriously. People who actually started off poor (myself included) don’t think it’s a “good” thing. It was hard, darn it.
I’m glad I was poor as a kid. Teen parents, indian reservation, trailer, food stamps. The whole bit. It made me tough, compassionate, grateful, and very unimpressed with the born into money people I have to deal with every day. I’m working class to the bone, no matter how much material “success” I gain and I wouldn’t change that.
aang, Your compassion and toughness always shines through, I’m glad you’re here.
My mom and grandmother had a similar start. My mom told me how they would have to use old phone book pages as toilet paper because they couldn’t afford the real thing. It makes me ragey to think that Lena would probably find that a cool anecdote instead of the harrowing memory my mom considers it to be, considering how she seems to enjoy poverty as performance art.
That’s it, Esmom! EVERYTHING is performance art to her, up to, and including, diddling her sister (including it in her book), all for attention. I wish she’d just go away already. Or do a one woman act for an audience of one: herself!
My cats and dog would LOSE THEIR SH-T over that fuzzy chair haha. And I ALMOST like the bright yellow chairs, except I hate the white/offwhite circles on them.
Overall though, I’m not a fan of her, or the apartment.
Yeah, I don’t know what else I expected. I feel like Michael Bluth when he opened GOB’s bag, labeled “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat!”
The apartment is a reflection of her: arrogant in its tastelessness
AHAHA! Perfect reference.
Haha thanks, Erinn!! 😊🤣
Agreed. I hate that I can ID a few of the items in her apartment. I thought it was tacky when I first saw them and they’re even tackier inside her pretentious, twee apartment
Those yellow chairs are Suno for Anthropologie. I have the matching lampshade. They’re cute. But they’re the only cute thing.
Dear word, not all unpopular kids turn out to be annoying self obsessed adults. Most of them are actually pretty nice well liked adults.
I love how she is gleefully replicating what is known to be the tackiest decade ever. The next thing you know she’ll be showing up with a Flock of Seagulls haircut and writing an essay about how her soul was being cast aside along with each tendril the the scissors touched. What a pretentious moron.
She is the absolute worst. 100%.
However, I think the apartment is pretty cute. Also, the pic of her on her bed in the blue dress is the best I’ve ever seen her look. She should wear dresses like that all the time.
Agreed. She is deeply awful and overrated. But this apartment does have a designer’s touch and I like some of the balance in the spaces—unlike her other spaces which seemed dirty and very specific to whatever “I’m so special and unique” whim she was on…This looks like compromise between her latest desires and professional eyes who are saying “Sure, Lena, we can do that dangerous albeit glamorous soap star’s hideaway from that 1986 episode of Murder She, Wrote—but let’s also think what might seem relaxing in three weeks…” 🙂
Spot on!
OMG “Sure, Lena, we can do that dangerous albeit glamorous soap star’s hideaway from that 1986 episode of Murder She, Wrote”
Amazing 👏👏😂😂
I like the appartment -except for some pieces- as well, I adore that chandalier particulary.
I kind of like the apartment too, but I can’t fathom how she thought her boyfriend was going to like it – this is not most straight mens dream apartment exactly. It’s weird to me that she couldn’t think to compromise, he must have felt overwhelmed with pastel. A close Male friend of mine had the same situation and eventually broke up over the fact that his girlfriend needed to decide everything in the apartment and he had like one spot that was his lol.
Stop this.
LOL. Comment of the day!
LOL! ” I felt sick every time I made a design concession or covered up pink with dove gray. Love can only survive so much.” THAT was your biggest relationship struggle?? Wow.
The decor of her apartment is depressing. Like early 80’s nursing home.
With Her glossy, styled hair and curated outfits Lena elevates the room.
But most days she’s probly lounging unwashed in a T-shirt and or naked on that couch. It is the personification of mothball scented sadness.
The armchair just screams ‘bedbugs!! DO NOT sit here” to me. The paint shadeS are photo pretty but I would hate that dusky salmon paint after 15 minute IRL. Also depressing.
Your comment is dripping with the abysmal desolation that is being Lena Dunham, and yet I’m laughing my fkng ass off over here. Early 80s nursing home with Lena naked on that tainted couch is just about the worst visual ever. lmao
I HATE 80s decor. In my job I occasionally see some authentic 80s stuff, as in these people haven’t updated their home in 30+ years. Ugh.
I just saw a FB ad for some podcast featuring Lena, and all the comments were like “um no, no one likes her.”
Yeah, actual 80s stuff is so bad. I feel like sometimes that era is romanticized a bit in TV/film. The Americans, as much as it was an incredible show, did that aesthetically. No one was as attractive and restrained, style-wise, as Keri Russell’s character. No one.
Stranger Things does a really great job of capturing how terrible the 80s really were from a visual standpoint. The clothing and interiors might almost seem exaggerated in their ugliness but then I remember that nope, everything really was that ugly.
I spotted some items I actually owned on that show!
Its is 80’s spot on.
This may have been entertaining if it had been a person that at least one person liked. Every time I see her I feel like I just threw up in my mouth a little. She looks like a person who joined the Free Bleeding movement because it made her look edgy: She looks like she smells like a week-old meat tray that was left in a warm environment.
That last sentence was pure poetry.
Also, yes she does, plus unwashed pillowcase. & ew.
I did not read the whole article but the comment about not compromising with her live in bf. caught my eye. I was raised to believe that men were being controlling and domineering if they expected anything from you. Many of the women on one side of my family have spent the majority of their adult lives single. It’s interesting that she didn’t understand that it’s actually a sign of maturity and respect when you work things out with your partner.
Her aesthetic looked a little like a hotel to me at first but after looking thru all the photos I would describe it more as a barbie dreamhouse. I could easily see this type of decor/design for a dollhouse. It makes me think she’s sort of detached in some way, it doesn’t come across as homey.
I was picturing Bette midler’s character’s red white and black apartment from beaches based on that description. This isn’t much better
You left out the part where she let her dog pee wherever it wanted to inside their apartment.
She needs to stop talking about her ex. She especially needs to stop with the passive aggressive implication that he was a saint for putting up with her while at the same time inferring that he wasn’t up to the task of being with a woman like her. How does she keep getting these articles?? Who is asking for her?
Yeah, the dog peeing “anywhere” jumped out at me, too. She tries to make it seem like an endearing counterpoint to her ex’s generic interior design preferences but it’s…not.
Ew, that’s horrible. Buy some pee pads! Take the dog outside! Is this in the rental? She’s going to get SUED.
Domino is actually a great home decor magazine. The point of it was to be more realistic and affordable than your Elle Decors. Having said that I haven’t read it in awhile so who knows maybe it has devolved but I wouldn’t judge it by this little narcissist’s crap taste.
Honestly though Lena’s place is a perfect representation of her: try-hard, over the top, cluttered and full of self-importance
Hmm it’s not to my taste but I think it’s kind of interesting? She has beautiful eyes.
Her eye color is unusual and very beautiful
They’re her best feature. A really nice shape, too.
brown is “unusual”?
Just like there are different shades of blue and green there are different shades of brown. Maybe that’s what @StacyDresden meant, the tone is unusual?
Lukwesa, could be, but even the tone is pretty standard to me.
I mean, they ARE pretty, and they’re very warm, but they look like all of the brown eyes in my family. and who can even tell when she’s been photoshopped to high heaven?…
*kanye shrug*
Hahaha that description of Lena Dunham’s writing ‘tell’ is the most accurate I have ever seen. I wonder what it is like to live with such a lack of self awareness. Although, I will say, I was expecting her home to be a lot worse than it was. I personally wouldn’t live there, but she has some interesting pieces. Altogether, it’s very cluttered and ott but not outright terrible!
I think that apartment is beautiful. That apricot color in the bedroom is to die for. I wouldn’t do it because I like to mix and match decades and it seems really painstaking to keep this aesthetic up, but I think it’s a beautiful home.
I’d like to stay in a hotel decorated like that for a few days. But live there? I’d go mad.
I just can’t see Dunham, or whatever she does but I like the apartment.
Most telling line of the article “I felt sick every time I made a design concession or covered up pink with dove gray. Love can only survive so much.” Obnoxious privileged ahole, and I say that as someone who really quite enjoyed Girls. Sigh
I’m of two minds about the Jack part of the story. If he was on tour and told her to decorate, then hated it, he’s a bit of an ass. If she decorated it as a surprise, well that’s just immature, or given the source, narcissistic. I definitely think partners should decorate their homes together. I love that my home is a reflection of both me and my partner.
yeah I mean it sounds like they had polar opposite design styles but that could have been a fun challenge figuring out how to meld them. It definitely sounded like she surprise-designed and then felt personally attacked when he didn’t like it, despite trying to like it because he loved her. I just – can’t. I really try to give people the benefit of the doubt, even Gwyneth Paltrow, but she is sooooo self-involved I can’t read anything she says b/c my eyes roll so hard.
With her means, she and Jack could’ve hired an interior professional to *mesh* their respective styles. That’s what interior professionals are skilled at doing.
I had to shake my head about her comment about “moving out” when she was 26 and how it was “too old, I know.” Many millennials struggle to move out during their 20s due to crushing student loan debt, high living costs and jobs that don’t pay enough. Then again, I’m sure Lena “self-professed voice of a generation” Dunham isn’t even aware that’s reality for most people her age.
God her writing style is annoying. It’s so annoying my face scrunched.
Aaaahaha yes me too! I get physical recoiling reactions to her writing.
The least self aware person, yet so self obsessed. It’s so uncomfortable!
The line about how she thought she was “gifting” poor jack with an outward manifestation of her own mind… or something along those lines I can’t even bear to read it again… is just the most narcissistic thing I have ever heard in my life. Don’t share those thoughts, Lena!
Or… only share them with a qualified therapist who can help you with your narcissistic personality disorder. But stop hoisting these thoughts on the public, it’s making us cringe so bad!
She is beautifully styled, and the apartment looks amazing for the most part.
It looks like she ate a giant bag of Skittles and threw up.
She is annoying. But the pictures on Instagram of her apartment are not nearly as bad as what I was expecting from description here. It’s too girly for my personal style but it’s nice.
She looks weird.I think it’s mostly contouring makeup and some Photoshop.
I love the Stossass mirror and I like mostly everything I saw. Is she insufferable? Yes. Does she write awfully? Hell yes. But I would gladly spend some time in the flat and look at the pretty, whacky, beautiful stuff she has in there. Also, Jemima Kirke collecting Harlequin books… I imagine them reading the stories together and crack up. Say what you will about Dunham but she knows how to have fun, and she knows how to look for the crazy and the unexpected. Too bad she is a privileged little c**t 😉 I still believe that a healthy dose of self-awareness and some time with nice, balanced people (not her parents) would do her a world of good.
Under the Tuscan Sun it is not. She’s so tiresome.
the flat is ok. domino styled her well in the red coat. suits her in every way and maybe she should ask them to take her shopping. I find the decor super unique but is this her forever style or will she be sick of it in 1-2 years? also is she insinuatingthat she lost 2 apartments she had bought because of Jack?
my partner does not share my style but it doesnt bother me as our love is enough to make me happy with compromising- it wasn’t like that with my ex. I think it depends on the love you have and if you respect your man, if she couldn’t compromise for jack maybe hes just not the right man. at least she’s honest about her feelings (priviledge of living in her brain etc)
Her commentary, as usual, is a contrived facade of humblebragging wrapped in thick coating of lack of self awareness topped with a failure to hide the insecurity that is made all the more obvious as a result. It evokes a cringe factor that can only be rivaled by the time I tried to read Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love”.
That said, the apartment is kind of cute.
Haha. I’m with you on Lena and Eat, Pray, Love. So much ick.
And I agree with you that the apartment is cute. It’s not normal, middle class 80s as much as it’s what wealthy people in the 80s with access to expensive antiques and high end designers might have done but updated for now.
Poor Jack Antonoff. As if it wasnt bad enough living with her, based on her own description, but now she is hitting Swift-levels of being unable to keep his name out of her mouth. He dumped you when you thought everything was rainbows and babies. It hurts, but let it go! But no. Because everything that happens to Lena is unique and special and has never happened to another human.
You know how you sometimes dont realize how deeply someone infuriates you until you start writing out a comment about something they say? 🤦♀️
I am a longtime lurker but I just need to say this might have been the most absurd thing I’ve read all year. OMG
I love her place. She has the same blue birds on her coffee table that I inherited from my grandmother. ha ha She has collected a lot of cool things, and she did hire an interior designer to pull it together. Whether we like it or not, we are in an 80s renaissance right now: glam furnishings, peach/pink walls, curvy sofas, shoulder pads, mom jeans…
Nobody commented on “it doesn’t matter where the dog pees.” 🤢
There are multiple comments upthread re the dog peeing. I’ll add mine here: yuck!
Kaiser, I humbly apologise but I forgot my pretentiousness boots today so I can’t wade through that excerpt of Lena’s ridiculousness. I’ll just stick with your writing.
Oof, I don’t think I could manage long living in her apartment but I do appreciate that the decor and style really makes sense for her.
Yeah, me too @A. I absolutely hate 80s style but I kind of like Lena’s apt and how she furnished it. She does bug me though but not because reasons mentioned In this post.
80s interior design needs to never, ever come back. Yikes.
Leave Jack alone, he’s obviously suffered enough.
His music obviously kept him sane during their relationship. Who could live with her?
P.S. has anyone seen her father’s paintings? Ew.
I had a subscription to this magazine back when it was monthly and reasonably priced. Now it’s super expensive. Lena’s decor is hideous. People with money and bad taste irk me to no end.
She’s so self obsessed she paints pictures of herself based on her own selfies and post the paintings on instagram.
I had a dusty pink silk couch with dusty blue pillows in the 80’s and I LOVED it. So I really can’t judge anyone’s tacky style.
It looks like Janice Rossi’s apartment from Goodfellas. I love it I wish I could live there instead of her.
Amazing!
This seems like a lot of photoshop
I’d go batshit crazy living in that godawful place. It looks like she went dumpster-diving at Value Village.
I can’t believe you guys aren’t familiar with DOMINO. That magazine was around for a long time, shuttered while back, and recently made a comeback. It had a loyal following—Lena is lucky to be covered by Domino at all.
Her writing is the most contrived, performative pile of garbage I’ve encountered in a long time.
Also. My husband and I just bought a house. It’s got great “bones” and the property is beautiful. We’re lucky that our aesthetic preferences tend to be close enough for compromises, and that where they’re quirky they can be accommodated.
I can’t even imagine picking flooring, paint, decor etc. without consulting each other. Like… Who does that to their partner and then grandiosely thinks of it as a rejected gift?
And the dog pee…. Oh my god, what the actual f$_;!
Ahhhh I forgot to mention that the house hasn’t had a single update since 1988. It’s…. I mean I guess we could leave it as-is and claim to be on trend with the 80s revival?
Y’all. It has a rec room with a wet bar complete with track lighting and black and gold swirled cultured marble. And all the upstairs walls are painted dusty rose. And the master bedroom has floor to ceiling mirrors on the walls. My husband and I (children of the 80s) feel like we’re walking back in time to middle School. Which is sort of comically awful.
Everything I thought while reading this has already been covered except:
1) Please stop it with the fucking parentheses, Lena. Jesus.
2) She ALWAYS has to mention how sad Jack was when they broke up, how he did it with tears in his eyes. So unbelievable. He dumped you! Stop trying to play like you broke his heart or it was a mutual decision and he was sobbing.
What the design spread didn’t show was the hole in the door the shape of Jack Antonoff.