Situated in New Orleans’ hip and historic Warehouse District is the seven-room Domio Baronne St. aparthotel. Within walking distance to the famed French Quarter, the renovation of a 5-story historical buiding includes studios and apartments with up to four bedrooms. All spaces are fully equipped with kitchens and cozy living spaces outfitted with exposed brick interior walls, oak wood, and brass fixtures, with many of the furnishings upholstered in plush jewel-toned velvet, leather, and suede. There is also a gym, a 38-foot-long rooftop pool, and state-of-the-art digital concierge dubbed Roxy. The Big Easy location is the latest from Domio, the vacation rental startup, which leases and manages other locations in New Orleans, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Nashville, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and San Diego.
Playing a vital role in the brand’s unique style is head of branding and design, Olivia Hnatyshin. Growing up in a small town outside of Ottawa, Canada with her interior designer mother and a father who “was all over the world traveling for work,” she says, it has been a winding design journey to get to where she is today. After completing her undergraduate at Ryerson University in Toronto, she held different internships until she moved to New York to earn her master’s degree in strategic design and management from Parsons School of Design.
Before Domio, she was a production designer on daytime talk show Steven and Chris, working on 133 episodes for eight months straight. “It was crazy,” she admits. During the show’s summer hiatus, she would take on side projects with HGTV shows like Property Brothers and Sarah Sees Potential. “We were doing renovations where we would make magazine-worthy kitchens in three days,” she notes. “It was definitely setting me up for the startup life.”
Those quick turnaround experiences helped Hnatyshin stand out to Domio cofounders Jay Roberts and Adrian Lam and solidify her role with the company, initially picking out furniture for the vacation rentals and even using FaceTime to finish the looks with the onsite installers early on. “Now we’re much more sophisticated,” she says of her five-person all-female design team. The brand has also expanded to offering merchandise in custom prints and wallpaper evocative of each Domio location’s heritage.
“This is the first time where I enjoy coming to work every day and seeing the different women on my team being super talented and coming up with all these ideas,” says Hnatyshin. “Creativity is best when there isn’t pressure on it and you let people do their thing.”
A living room at a Domio location at Navy Pier in Chicago employs pops of blue and wood accents
Copper chairs pair with a wooden table in the kitchen of a two-bedroom apartment at Baronne St.
Domio’s custom constellation wallpaper enhances a guestroom in Baronne St.
The Jazz Musician wallpaper complements an exposed brick wall in an eclectic living room at Domio Baronne St.
Photography by Carolina Mariana Rodriguez and courtesy of Domio
