She taught herself to sew at 16 and would make the tznius - modest - version of what she saw in the fashion magazines she smuggled into the house. Though she was outwardly obedient, Haart couldn’t completely repress her creative, inquisitive nature. She spent her days cooking, serving her husband and downplaying her interest in the books that lined the shelves of their home. They eventually had four children, a relatively small number by the standards of the community. A year later, she was married off to a near-stranger. When she was 18, Haart changed her name from Julia to the more Hebrew-sounding Talia in order to attract a match. By the time I was married, I already had seven children,” says Haart. “I changed their diapers and wiped their snotty noses. The eldest of eight children, she is 10 years older than her next sibling and, as an adolescent, was thrust into the role of caretaker. (As if to immediately disprove this notion, she responds to an offhand question about the differences between her Yeshivish community and the Hasidic sects that live in the same area with a concise history of 19th century European Judaism.) I was told, ‘Women’s minds are light’ - ‘nashim da’atan kalos,” she says in Hebrew. Though her world was centered on the yeshiva, Haart, as a woman, was not encouraged to read religious literature, “because my mind wasn’t capable of grasping it, you see. But these are the basics: Haart was born in Moscow and moved around the world with her family as a child, eventually settling in Monsey at the age of 11.
I wanted what I had done to define me.”Įven now, there are many details she is reluctant to divulge, at least until her memoir, “Brazen” - which she has whittled down to 400 or so pages from 1,700 - is released next year.
“Until I felt that I had accomplished something, I didn’t want people to know about my past,” says Haart, who only started talking about her background once she’d been tapped as creative director of La Perla, the luxury lingerie line, in 2016, “because I didn’t want what was done to me to define me.
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