HEY HEY MY MY

Canadian designer Montana Labelle brings a love of handcrafted interiors and a rock 'n' roll sensibility to her renovation of a house in Toronto.

- LAUREN MECHLING

Canadian designer Montana Labelle brings a love of handcrafted interiors and a rock ‘n’ roll sensibility to her renovation of a house in Toronto. When a Toronto legal eagle who happens to be a hardcore design hound moved into a new home in the city’s Rosedale neighborhood, she knew exactly what she wanted: something moodier and edgier than her last place. She was done with the white wall living that defined her previous home. “I wanted a feel of age and patina,” she says. “The last thing I wanted was a new-build vibe.”

Montana Labelle, in a vintage T-shirt and Celine jeans, in the living room of a Toronto home she designed. The vintage Italian modular sofa was re-covered in a Dedar stripe.

Opposite: A custom bookcase holds the homeowner's collection of Montana Labelle Lifestyle and vintage ceramics. The chair is by Adrian Pearsall.

So she enlisted Montana Labelle, the rock star of the city’s design scene, to renovate her 1911 Dutch Colonial-style home.

The interior designer, who has long Hitchcock-blonde hair and intricate wrist tattoos (her Canadian parents named her Montana “just because they liked the sound of it”) is a graduate of the Parsons School of Design in New York, and she has a wait list among Toronto's young professional set. She also has a lifestyle brand featuring objects she creates largely out of her favorite material, marble—everything from richly veined salad spoons to toothbrush holders to toad-stool-shaped side tables.