How Did Zoe Latta, Ella Emhoff, Ellen Van Dusen, and Katie Crutchfield All End Up With the Same Sofa?
Plus new Nu Swim and a restock of Bobby Doherty’s favorite suit.
This week, Simone solved a couch mystery that’s been nagging at her for years. We also have a tour of a kids’ store opening in Bed-Stuy, a new edition of an old book with illustrations by Joana Avillez, and a way to wear your USM. —Simone Kitchens, Winnie Yang, Lauren Ro, and Michael Zhao
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* Nu Swim just launched its new fine rib — the brand has been working on it for two years — in a camisole and long-sleeve, and it feels incredible. It’s 100 percent Egyptian cotton. Snug in the best way with somehow lots of movement and give.
* For Penguin’s 2026 reissue of Joseph Mitchell’s 1944 essay collection, The Bottom of the Harbor, Joana Avillez made a new series of black-ink illustrations to accompany Mitchell’s writings about old New York’s waterfront. Picture Room’s show of these illustrations opens tonight, with a reception and live oyster shucking from 6 to 8 p.m., and runs through June 24. (117 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn)
* At the opening of USM and Pinch Food Design’s “Food Form Function” (on view until June 19), the servers wore bolo ties made from USM ball connectors and braided cotton rope.
* Updates coordinator Najwa Jamal took some jazz sneakers for a spin and liked Zara’s derby shoes the best. Related: A friend was wearing a pair of non-Vans-looking Vans last weekend.
* The shawl-collar double-breasted suit Bobby Doherty can’t live without is back in stock, in light and dark summer-weight linen blends.
* Cosmo, a kids’ boutique and community space in Bed-Stuy (265 Malcolm X Blvd.) that carries secondhand and new clothing, opens on June 9. Co-founder Shanna Cooper told us the shop will focus on gender-neutral pieces and natural materials, and new brands include Koko Momo, Fruit & Feelings, and local maker FRii. The store’s tiles and lighting were made by Pomo Ceramics; art and the painted lantern by Quinn O’Brien; and custom clothing racks by Max Simon.
The first time Simone saw this two-tone Hay Mags couch was when our colleague Erin Schwartz shared a link to a Zeeland, Michigan–based furniture outlet back in 2022. It sold deeply discounted Herman Miller and other brands you’d find at Design Within Reach, including a three-seat teal-and-pale-green wool version of the famous blobby modular sectional for around $1,700.
I’d wanted the couch for years; this size starts at about $4,900 new. I mapped the four-hour drive to Michigan and seriously considered it, but decided to reverse-image search the couch and see what else came up. HD Buttercup, a suburban-presenting furniture warehouse based in L.A., had pages and pages of the Hay couch in every configuration and in five different colorways — goldenrod/orange microsuede and wool versions in that teal/pale green, charcoal/gray, khaki/navy, and dark green/blue — all for much cheaper. I chose the last color and bought two three-seat couches and a corner insert for less than a new three-seater; I planned to make a super-long L-shape and a love seat. I prayed I hadn’t bought a fake. Seven boxes showed up on a semi two weeks later, with free shipping.
The couch, which was listed as being made with Kvadrat fabric, felt like the real thing with its mix of foam and goose-down fill and signature zigzag stitching, but I still couldn’t figure out why the price was so cheap. I emailed Hay but never heard back, and I couldn’t find any evidence that the company had ever sold these colors. Then I started to see the couch in those unusual colorways. A Facebook Marketplace supplier in midtown had a whole warehouse of them. It popped up on eBay and ultimately in the background of people’s spaces. Ellen Van Dusen, who had the same color as me, kept one in her studio in Brooklyn. Next I saw it in Ella Emhoff’s apartment in New York, followed by Zoe Latta’s home in Los Angeles and Katie Crutchfield’s house in Kansas City. Those three have the orange.
Emhoff, who got hers about four years ago, says that she also bought it from HD Buttercup “on like, 60 percent discount (plus free shipping from L.A.). It lived in my apartment for the most part until my dog got it a bit too grimy and it was demoted to my studio. I think it works much better here.”
“We bought the couch shortly after we bought our house in Kansas City in 2022,” Crutchfield told me. “It’s a mid-century modern, atomic ranch-style house built by this guy Don Drummond in the ’50s (a real Kansas City IYKYK-type situation). When I was trying to furnish it, I did a lot of research, because it felt like the house wanted color and personality. I saw a picture of my friend Ellen Van Dusen’s living room — she’s the queen of color and personality — and she had the Hay Mags couch in a different but equally fun colorway. I did some searching and found ours, deeply discounted, for sale at HD Buttercup, which may in fact be closed now.”
Latta also found hers at HD Buttercup during the pandemic: “I do cover it with blankets, not to preserve it but because I find the suede finish to be unapologetically absorbent of my standard poodle, two sons, and muddy husband. Also I bought the kids’ Nugget to match, which felt like an extension of the sectional. I think the marigold is now out of stock, though. My friends have the green one.”
The couch is the kind of thing friends and family tend to buy once they see it. My mom bought one. Van Dusen’s friend Tasha Goldthwait also bought one after seeing hers.
But last week, when I texted Van Dusen, who bought hers off Craigslist in 2021, she provided a missing puzzle piece and the most confounding origin story imaginable: “Someone from Hay told me that they made these for WeWork just before they went bankrupt. So they had all this stock that then WeWork wouldn’t take, and they didn’t want to include them in their regular catalogue. So they off-loaded them really cheap to resellers.”
While some of the couches did appear to make it to WeWork, from Varick Street in New York to the Palo Alto location, this does explain, among other things, the co-working-space-style colorways, which are mildly head-scratching but at the same time mostly appealing.
“This couch was definitely something I had to build around as far as how I conceptualized the rest of the room,” says Crutchfield. “I tried to visualize it like a Matisse painting or something, colors that are bright and interesting and not the obvious choice.”
You can still find the WeWork couch here and there, on eBay, 1stDibs, and a site called Herbert, the online reincarnation of HD Buttercup. It has even made its way to Wayfair. Now some four to five years later, we’re still really happy with our Hay sofas. Van Dusen speaks for most of us when she says, “I love that it’s chunky, two-tone, comfy, huge — and was extremely cheap.”
Colby Minifie has the sofa too! https://www.domino.com/design-inspiration/colby-minifie-upstate-new-york-home-tour/
They recently turned the building where the HD Buttercup was into a small format IKEA. It’s in this former Helms bakery complex with a bunch of other furniture stores. https://www.timeout.com/los-angeles/news/a-new-type-of-ikea-is-opening-in-this-iconic-culver-city-buildingand-hosting-a-free-block-party-to-celebrate-042826