Julia Haart is the star of My Unorthodox Life
(Picture: Getty Images for BlogHer)My Unorthodox Life on Netflix has captivated audiences and follows a woman who leaves the Orthodox Jewish community of Monsey for a fresh start in New York high society with her four children.
The show is a mix of Kardashian family antics, Manhattan society and an abundance of high drama.
But who is the star of the show, Julia Haart?
Julia Haart’s early life
Julia Haart was born in Moscow and moved to Austin, Texas, when she was three. She attended a private school and was the only Jewish student there.
The family later moved to Monsey, New York, a largely Haredi community, and Ms Haart attended Bais Yaakov Academy in Brooklyn, New York.
A passion for fashion and design led to the then 16-year-old teaching herself to sew and she was married three years later to her first husband, Yosef Hendler.
The couple lived as Haredi Jews throughout the 1990s and early 2000s and had four children together. Ms Haart developed mental health problems and her daughter refused to conform to the religion, so she decided to leave the community with her children.
“They were doing to her what they have done to me – trying to push her down and mould her into that flat person that they could disappear. I couldn’t let that happen,” she had said in an interview with the New York Times.
Early success
After leaving the Haredi community, Ms Haart founded a shoe company later collaborating with La Perla for their accessory collections. While working at La Perla, Ms Haart met her second husband entrepreneur and billionaire Silvio Scaglia.
In 2016 Ms Haart was named as creative director of La Perla by Silvio Scaglia. Innovative fashion designs quickly followed, included the first items in stretch Leavers lace. She then found fame for her 2017 Met Gala dress designed for Kendall Jenner, which included 85,000 crystals.
Ms Haart then took a step back from the fashion world, becoming chief executive and chief creative officer for the talent media conglomerate Elite World Group, in which Scaglia had bought a controlling stake.
Netflix star
The company received lots of media attention, catapulting Ms Haart into the entertainment world with the reality show of her life and family becoming a Netflix hit.
But all was not as it seemed and in February 2022, she was fired following embezzlement accusations by her now ex-husband.
In season two of the show Ms Haart navigates her new life with more drama and divorce, and a new beau. It launched on December 2.
