Since launching her residential design firm in 2005 and cutting her teeth on high-end homes in the Chicago area, Kara Mann has extended the scope of her work to New York, Los Angeles, and beyond. The established designer—known for dramatic yet approachable spaces with an eclectic mix of materials—has been tapped for high-profile retail, residential, and hospitality undertakings nationwide, yet when it comes to her idea of home, her native Windy City is something of a magnetic force. “I have lived in many different cities during the course of my life and there is something about the dynamism of Chicago that always draws me back,” says Mann.

Thanks to a serendipitous stroll through the Gold Coast neighborhood nearly ten years ago, Mann stumbled upon her striking 1920s apartment—originally designed by famed local architect, Andrew Rebori. “I tend to love more classic architecture for myself to live in, so I knew I wanted something that had character and age,” she recalls. Her vintage find checked all the right boxes. “It’s just so unique for Chicago. I felt like I had hit the jackpot,” she says.

Mann was eager to devote some love and attention to the unit, which had gone 40 years without updates, and she started on floor plan adjustments almost immediately. Mann added a powder room and utility room and merged a former maid’s quarters and galley kitchen to create an airy cooking and entertaining space overlooking the building’s romantic central courtyard. Original details like checkerboard marble tile floors, leaded glass windows, and rich, dark woodwork—beautiful nods to the past throughout the home—merely required some careful restoration.

“Every girl needs a proper dressing room,” declares Mann. She transformed the second bedroom into a chic white-on-white space to let her wardrobe stand out—though, admittedly, most of her clothes are black.

Mann’s habit of continuously collecting art and furniture pieces, then inadvertently sacrificing them for clients' projects (one that afflicts many designers) made the task of furnishing the home lengthier than intended—“It’s like how the shoemaker’s children never have shoes…” she jokes—but the finished product is marked by her curated and thoughtfully layered collection, which makes each room feel at once fresh and classic, edgy and elegant, seductive and sophisticated.

Opposing aesthetics somehow exist in perfect harmony in the apartment, which speaks to the designer’s view of Chicago itself. “This city has soul,” says Mann. “Yes, the winters are extreme, the summers are extreme, but here we are on this majestic body of water. A city and nature, side by side. There is an incredible duality here.”

As her successful career evolves, Mann continues to make her mark on the city. She lent her talents to the revitalization of the historic Talbott Hotel last year, and she’s even shifting the Chicago skyline through her work on architect Helmut Jahn’s 1000M, a new luxury tower on South Michigan Avenue that will boast her interior layouts and signature decor. A balance of old and new, classic and contemporary persists in her personal life as well as her professional endeavors. “I love when there is a tension between two opposing things—materiality, color, texture—that comes up in my work again and again,” says Mann.

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