On the buzzy Netflix reality series “My Unorthodox Life,” sexy, glamorous Julia Haart has quite a story to tell. It’s a fairy tale of how she fled her Orthodox Jewish community in Monsey, NY, to make her way in the fashion world: launching her own own shoe line, becoming creative director at the luxury fashion brand La Perla and, now, serving as the CEO of Elite World Group — a talent agency which includes Elite Model Management and represents the likes of Kendall Jenner, Iman and Helena Christensen.
But insiders say that she is painting an ugly, unfair picture of life in her former community — as uneducated and so restrictive it left her suicidal.
“Julia’s hanging on to this word ‘fundamentalism’ — and sensationalism sells,” said a former friend of Haart’s from Monsey. “She says she was held captive, but that’s not true.”
The show follows Haart, 50, her four kids and her second husband, Elite owner Silvio Scaglia, and includes lots of scenes of her railing against her past life in an “extreme” community” — a characterization that another old friend, Roselyn Feinsod, disputes.
(Haart did not wish to comment.)
Meanwhile, style insiders say Haart’s role in the fashion world is also distorted on the series.
“The show is so misleading. It is a house of mirrors,” said an Elite source. “When she came in, it was all about her self-promotion … She is really good at making it seem like she is an agent of change and she is good at pretending to be all about empowerment. But it’s all publicity for her.”
Julia Haart freely admits that she changed both her name and her persona — more than once.
Born Julia Leibov, she moved as a child from Russia to Texas and, eventually, to Monsey, NY — a center for Orthodox Jews. That’s where Feinsod first met her, at yeshiva.







