Julia Haart
My Unorthodox Life

Finding Love with Tawkify

Julia Haart has lived quite an eventful life. A mother of four, she left her insular ultra-Orthodox Jewish community at age 42, cut off from family and lifelong friends. She was brave enough to face public scrutiny in the Netflix reality show My Unorthodox Life that over two seasons documented her daily life, and authored a 2022 memoir, Brazen, about her journey “from long sleeves to lingerie.” Haart has started multiple successful businesses, both before and after that life-altering leave-taking. Her 2019 marriage to tycoon Silvio Scaglia that ended messily in 2022, with lawsuits and countersuits and the loss of her job as CEO of his company, was splashed across the tabloid press worldwide. Haart has recently partnered with Tawkify, an exclusive and personalized matchmaking service that has made over 100,000 pairings since 2012. Julia has committed to go on dates with twelve men over the next year in the hope of finding her perfect match. Julia will chronicle her dates on social media, so her fans can follow along on her journey to find love. tawkify.com

Freedom Fighter

Her reaction to these harrowing developments? Haart has recently relaunched her shapewear line, +Body by Julia Haart, that had been on hiatus while she dealt with her divorce, and she has become an activist, lending her voice and fundraising for a number of causes, including women’s issues both in the U.S. and around the world, fighting misinformation in the media, and supporting the people of war-torn Ukraine.

When we spoke to her, in the Fall, for this article, she had just returned from a trip to Rwanda, delivering female products and educating people about sexual wellness and AIDS, with The Body Agency Collective, an organization involved in ensuring women’s sexual health and wellness globally. During our conversation, Haart did not once mention her divorce, the loss of her job, or either of her ex-husbands. She has no regrets. The conversation was upbeat and future-oriented, and she was (somehow) full of energy just days after returning from that Rwanda trip.

Political Awakening: Roe Repeal

Haart had never been politically active in her life. “I didn’t understand it,” she said. “I didn’t trust politicians. I was like, this is not my problem. I’m going to change the world in my own tiny, little way by ensuring that women are financially independent and freeing them from the things that I think that can be better.” Then came the repeal of Roe v. Wade. “When they did that, I realized that I have no choice but to become politically active, because helping women in business is not going to do anything if we don’t have rights to choose our own destiny anyway.”

This past year she’s become very drawn in, joining the board of the ERA Committee, meeting with President Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and various senators, raising money, and holding events in her home. “I’ve really have gotten very, very involved in women’s issues from a political standpoint here in this country,” Haart said.

Ukrainians: Freedom Fighters of Our Time

“When I realized the severity of what was going on in Ukraine, I understood that they’re the freedom fighters of our time,” said Haart. This resonated deeply.

“I gave up a lot for freedom. I don’t take freedom for granted. I gave up my family, I gave up my friends. I gave up my entire world that I knew until I was 42 years old. In Ukraine, they’re giving their lives for freedom; they are dying for freedom. That’s a whole different bubble, and so I felt like I have to go and figure out ways to help, because there’s nothing I admire more than someone who’s fighting for their freedom.”

She’s been on the ground in Ukraine twice, helping to deliver donated ambulances and medical supplies, driving them from Slovakia to the frontlines in Bakhmut amidst falling bombs. She helped to open a women’s shelter there, a safe space for women that have been sex trafficked or have been victims of any kind of sexual violence. “Hopefully people will copy us and do it all over the country.”

She walked through a landmine zone to help bring awareness to that hazard of the war. “When Ukraine takes back a territory, it’s not over, because the Russians are planting landmines in very specific locations, children’s playgrounds, schoolyards, and farmland.”

Iranian Women’s Rights:

Haart was invited to speak at one of the Iranian women’s marches in Washington, DC. “It’s funny if you think about it, this little Jew girl from Monsey, New York speaking on behalf of women in Iran,” she said. “But it actually makes perfect sense because I had the same rules in my community that they had in theirs. I wasn’t allowed to live by myself, I wasn’t allowed to choose who I married, I didn’t travel without permission, I wasn’t allowed to read books or educate myself.”

She connected with Iranian women on that shared experience, but obviously their situation is so much worse, she acknowledges, because they’re being arrested and killed. “These women are freedom fighters. They are literally putting their lives on the line to ensure a better world for their daughters. What could be more extraordinary than that?”

Haart sums up her activism: “We’ve got to change the world. We can’t leave it the way it is right now. It’s kind of a mess.”

BRAZEN: From Long Sleeves to Lingerie

Haart’s road to being her own person may seem glamorous, with her reality TV show and Tribeca penthouse and fashion-industry businesses, but actually it was long and arduous.

Born in Russia, Haart’s family moved to Texas when she was a child; she was the only Jew in enrolled in her private school. Her parents became more religious, and when she was in fourth grade they moved to Monsey, New York, with its large Orthodox community. She attended a religious girls’ school there and for the first time in her life was surrounded only by observant Jews, which was a culture shock.

“I loved my Jewish identity,” Haart said. “I just didn’t know that that meant I had to cut myself off from the rest of the world.” After graduating high school, she spent a year in Israel, studying at a girls’ seminary, and at age 19 became a wife through an arranged marriage, as is the custom in her community. She and her new husband, Yosef Hendler, moved to Brooklyn, and later to Atlanta. The new location was thrilling for Haart, because the religious communities outside of the New York area tend to be more open-minded.

“Atlanta was the beginning of everything,” Haart said. There, she became a speaker and leader in the Orthodox community and began learning about the secular world. She read secular literature at Barnes & Noble and the family acquired a TV.

But she struggled to incorporate the outside world into her own life. “I just was tired of being told Julia, you’re too noticeable, your clothes are too tight and too colorful, stop attracting attention.’ I was so tired of being told to make myself invisible.” One rabbi told her that nowhere in the Torah does it say you need to be happy.

The process of leaving the religious community was gradual; it took over eight years to plan her departure from Orthodox life.

Once she had left, Haart founded an eponymous shoe company, and then was hired as the creative director for the luxury lingerie company La Perla, where she designed Kendall Jenner’s naked 2017 Met Gala dress. (Jenner was the face of the brand at the time.) In 2019, Haart became CEO of Elite World Group, a talent media conglomerate  (Silvio is still a non-executive member of the board. He still does not have any position in eWG In 2022, she published the memoir, “BRAZEN: My Unorthodox Journey from Long Sleeves to Lingerie”.

In spite of leaving her ultra-Orthodox community, Haart still believes in God and cherishes Jewish values like kindness. “You think I want people to stop keeping Shabbos? Of course not,” she said. “I do want them to stop telling women what to do.”

Shapewear Relaunch

After pushing pause to settle her contentious divorce, Haart has relaunched her shapewear line, +Body by Julia Haart. She used the hiatus to improve the product. “We kind of perfected things and made little tweaks to make the product even better, so the current product is just extraordinary,” she explained. With five styles currently available, the line is a gamechanger, a totally new concept in shapewear – its delicate, colorful look, lightweight fabric and technological innovations are like nothing on the market.

Shapewear Concept Inspired by Bridget Jones’s Diary

The idea for the shapewear line came when Haart watched the movie Bridget Jones’s Diary for the first time in 2017 – she had to catch up on popular culture after leaving her ultra-religious community. In one scene, Bridget ponders wearing bulky shapewear to look better at a party where her love interest, played by Hugh Grant, will be, but then she can’t bring him home because he’ll see it. She gets tipsy, forgets she’s wearing the shapewear, brings him home, and he’s shocked when he begins to remove her dress.

“Her face turned purple with embarrassment, and I remember thinking to myself, wait a minute, what do women do?” She asked around, and people told her that during foreplay they run to the bathroom, take it off, hide it in the drawer, go back to foreplay, and sneak it back on after sex. “All these machinations, rather than letting whoever your significant other is or whoever you’re currently enjoying life with to see their shapewear. That’s what gave me the idea, the movie Bridget Jones’s Diary.”

 Attractive Shapewear

The garments are so pretty that they can be worn as-is, as a dress or top, or under clothing as shapewear. The thin, lacy fabric holds you firm with its exclusive PowerBond™ 2.0 technology, and it comes in vibrant colors thanks to a special dying technique Haart’s team developed.

Haart has created an entirely new category: luxury shapewear that’s designed to be seen. The innovative garment construction eradicates the back-center seam, adds padded bra cups – in various sizes, for a perfect fit – and offers a deep-V underwire that supports and shapes the body while offering unrivaled comfort.

Thin, Comfortable Fabric, All-Sizes

+Body fused all the layers of typical compression garments into one single layer. “It’s as thin as a piece of paper. It’s incredibly powerfully compressing, but comfortable,” said Haart. “It actually learns your body and heats to it, and puts more pressure and power in the places where you need it most. So the more you wear it, the more comfortable it gets.”  It’s so thin, you could wear it under anything, but it’s not adding girth.

Most shapewear is sold by clothing size, but not by cup size. “We’ve created a hybrid that is sold not only by dress size, but by cup size, so you could buy an extra small DD or an extra small B. It’s literally created to enhance every curve of a woman’s body,” Haart said. +Body sizes range from extra-small to 3x-large – and choose your cup size.

Collaborations

Haart formed a partnership with the skincare brand AMEON, founded by Alina Mehrle, a cancer survivor whose skin improved dramatically after her oncologist recommended cryotherapy. “I’m really excited about it. It’s a lovely, incredible product,” Haart said. “Alina walked out of that stronger than ever and determined to turn that diagnosis into something positive.”

The partnership came about when Haart met Mehrle’s husband, a Ukrainian film director, in an elevator. He’d done a documentary about the situation in Ukraine, and asked Haart to help him get the word out. She held an event for that, and met his wife there, and that’s how the AMEON partnership came to be. “It actually came about through activism for Ukraine,” she said.

“But I love the product,” she added. “I really believe in it. I very rarely advertise for brands. I do it very, very infrequently, because I don’t want to advertise something I don’t believe in.”

Website: bodybyjuliahaart.com

Instagram: @juliahaart