Derek C. Blasberg
Laurent Santo Domingo in the living room of her Francois Catroux-designed Parisian home.
ashley hix
Martina Mondadori in her Renzo Mongiardino-designed Milan apartment.
Welcome to The Dispatch, a new column by Derek C. Blasberg that combines interviews and reporting from the forefront of the worlds of culture, art, and fashion.
Mongiardino. Catroux. When I was thinking about the topic for our November issue of home ideas, these two names just came to mind.
The former, of course, is interior design legend Renzo Mongiardino. Born in Genoa, Italy, and based in Milan, he has created opulent mansions that combine homage to history, theater, and technical tricks. He loved luxurious fabrics, antique furniture, and bold colors. His clients included everyone from Gianni Agnelli to Aristotle Onassis. When he died in 1998 at the age of 81, the first line of his New York Times obituary said that many thought he was “the world’s greatest living interior decorator.” It was written down. So what if Mongiardino hated the d-word and preferred to be called a “creator of atmosphere”?
Mongiardino was a master of modern baroque. CATROUX was the KING OF COOL.
The latter: François Catroux, symbol of French modernism. Born in Algeria, he established his career in Paris, where he lived with his equally subversively chic wife, Betty, Yves Saint Laurent’s muse. His interiors were a haven of sophistication, with contemporary elements seamlessly integrated with antique pieces. He passed away in 2020 at the age of 83, but I will never forget the opening sentence of the Times article. What was once known as the jet set is dead. ”
Mongiardino and Catroux had very different styles. Mongiardino was a master of modern baroque and loved the layers of trompe l’oeil. Catroux was the king of cool, clean lines and austere modernism. But they are still two of my favorite designers.
I happen to know two women who live in an exquisite world that they have created. Martina Mondadori, co-founder and editor-in-chief of lifestyle magazine-turned-lifestyle brand Cabana, grew up in the Milan apartment that Mongiardino designed for her mother in the late 1970s. (He previously built a luxurious mansion on the outskirts of Venice for Martina’s maternal grandparents and became a family friend.) Co-founder and chief brand officer of online fashion emporium Moda Operandi Lauren Santo Domingo, artistic director of Tiffany’s Tiffany Home Collection, commissioned Catroux to decorate her Paris apartment after her 2008 wedding. Both women are beloved members of the fashion scene and a community that benefits from their hospitality.
Derek C. Blasberg
Mondadori and Margherita Maccapani Missoni (center) and Coco Brandolini d’Adda (right).
Every Milan Fashion Week, Martina hosts an intimate luncheon at her home. That luncheon begins with wine in the Persian-style living room and ends with fresh pasta in the dining room, which is lined with red, white and blue plates. (Last season, she took one of her sons out of school to meet Emma Watson, who was in town for the Prada show.)
In Paris, Lauren has hosted all kinds of festivities, from Democratic Party fundraisers (for Hillary Rodham Clinton) to book parties (for me!) to late-night mobs, but… Many of them ended in arm wrestling matches between pop stars and princesses. (No, really. I have the photos to prove it.)
“I think the house needs to be a little trashed,” Lauren says. “Non-sharrance is the name of the game.”
“I think the house has to be a little run down,” Lauren says of one of the early lessons she learned from Catroux, an accomplished hedonist. He faithfully restored Saint-Germain and coated it with silver fairy dust. “Of course it wasn’t intentional, but complacency is the name of the game.” On cue, my 11-year-old daughter hops around the living room on her single-wheeled scooter. “Don’t worry, we’ll keep the 16th century papier mache urn until she graduates from high school.”
Derek C. Blasberg
Santo Domingo’s living room, which Catroux designed as a salon-type space perfect for hosting spontaneous gatherings.
As for the best design advice Martina got from Mongiardino? “Don’t overdo it,” she says, using the German word gemütlich, which means warmth, friendliness, and cheerfulness. “It takes three to five years to complete a house,” Martina explains. “Once you move in, you think you’re done, but the best thing is to make it feel like home, but that takes time.”
Both designers were given permission to use these properties freely. “He was so close to my mother that he felt like he had a blank slate and really went for it,” Martina says. “It was like a workshop for him.”
In the 1980s, Mongiardino asked Martina’s mother if she could come late at night to show off the place to friends when she finished dancing at La Scala. That friend was Rudolf Nureyev (swoon!), whom I met through another client, Lee Radziwill.
“Mongiardino felt like it had Carte and Blanche,” says Martina. “It was like a workshop for him.”
My favorite room in Martina’s house is the long hallway lined with books. Her father was a publisher, so Mongiardino rearranged the layout to showcase her books. He loved illusions, so his elaborate woodwork and marble were actually precise stencils, which became one of his hallmarks. (Every time I have tea at the Carlyle Gallery, I think of Martina’s foyer, which Mongiardino renovated in 1989 using some of the same fixtures.)
ashley hix
The entrance that Mongiardino built in Mondadori’s Milan apartment to display his father’s books.
When Lauren first started working with Catroux, she was newly married and had no children. “I said, ‘I just want it to look good at night.’ We’ll never be here during the day,” she remembers as her first design note. “I was young and intimidated and learned that the process of working with decorators takes time. It gets easier and better and more natural, and who is the best person to learn from? ?The apartment is very shiny now. Her living room is the perfect blend of salon and disco style. We’ve seen Karl Lagerfeld draped in silver curtains and Janet Jackson seated on a plush velvet sofa. (I have that photo too.)
“Not everything is new, and not everything is old,” says Lauren. “You always need that mix to make everything interesting.”
Martina and Lauren both testify that good design can change your life. This year, Martina opened a Cabana store in Milan, and this month she is launching the book Cabana Anthology (Vendôme), which celebrates Cabana’s first ten years. (Dida Blair wrote the foreword.) “It started as therapy,” she says of the business. “I was living in London with my two young sons and was intimidated by all the British people. I started to feel a little homesick, which is not like me, and I was inspired by Italian interior design. Cabana started as a magazine and expanded into videos in response to requests from readers to buy things they found at flea markets. now also includes a marketplace.
Derek C. Blasberg
Entrance hall of Santo Domingo.
Lauren co-founded Moda Operandi in 2010 and launched homeware Moda Domus in 2018. Tiffany’s work began last year as she mined the archives to revamp her home collection. “I realized that setting a table can also be a therapeutic act,” she says. At first, it was similar to the joy I found in shopping and styling clothes, but the fulfillment came from the excitement of bringing people together. “I unburdened myself with this thought.
We enjoyed etiquette and rigor, as well as fun and spontaneous gatherings. ”
Her biggest tip is to mix different styles so the effect never goes out of style. “18th century plates go with 19th century linens, 20th century cutlery goes with 21st century plates. Not everything is new, and not everything is old,” says Lauren, who pairs new clothes with vintage. I liken it to her passion for combining things. “Expensive, cheap, old, new, vintage, antique, contemporary. It’s always a combination of time and price that makes everything interesting.”
Guido Taroni
Mondadori restaurant.
According to both women, the designer’s most admired trait was his professional bliss. They worked hard, played hard, and followed their passions. According to Martina, Mongiardino was so passionate about design that he didn’t care about copyrighting his work. Rattan, for example, is one of his favorite materials, and much of it was commissioned by Italian furniture company Bonacina, which still produces pieces under its own brand rather than his own.
“When he died, he didn’t even own his own apartment. He rented it!” Martina says. As someone who loves decorating more than cooking, I was thrilled to learn that he didn’t even have a kitchen. “That’s why he designed Giacomo,” she said, pointing to one of Milan’s best seafood restaurants. “He needed free food.”
