Vena Cava for nine years, she made a prodigal-daughter return to her native West Coast, where she’s carved out the kind of free-floating creative career New Yorkers dream about. In addition to doing interior-design work for fashion insiders, Buhai designs bold, modernist jewelry, and launched an eponymous website selling her own designs as well as a wide variety of her findings, from an Elsa Peretti terracotta vase to a marble sculpture by Hanna Eshel. She talked to the Cut about thrift-store finds, outfitting the art world, and the sweet life in Los Angeles.

And you’ve done some interiors for people who are in fashion, like Maryam Nassir Zadeh. How did you get involved in interior design?
Pretty organically. I really didn’t set out to do it. I moved to L.A. and I bought a house here. In between Vena Cava and starting this, I just had a lot of time. People would come over and be like, “Oh, will you come do my house?” Maryam’s was the first project I did, and after that I started getting requests from people.

How has it been different from doing ready-to-wear?
It seems, at least like with what I’m making, that it’s less fast in terms of trend turnover. They’re almost like mini-objects; you’re making sculptures.

Some L.A. designers have told me that it’s nice not being at the center of a big fashion scene because you feel like you’re a little bit apart and not in lockstep with the rest of the industry. Is that the case for you?
It does feel more removed from the fashion world. You can live a much more anonymous life here, and that’s what I love about it. I feel like there are all of these people in their houses up in the hills making work in their basement that you don’t even know about. People have time here, and everyone has a side project. It’s a joke, in a way. What’s great about it is that there is time to explore the experimental. Not everything you do feels like it has to be work-related. I have met some great people to collaborate with like [filmmaker] Gillian Garcia. I work closely with Kate Schmidt, who is an artist friend of mine out here.