| Above: The author and Santo Domingo in her François Catroux–designed home in Paris |
DEREK C. BLASBERG talks to LAUREN SANTO DOMINGO and MARTINA MONDADORI about living in spaces created by a pair of interior-design visionaries—RENZO MONGIARDINO and FRANÇOIS CATROUX—and the most important LESSONS they LEARNED from working with these LEGENDS of HOME
Mongiardino. Catroux. Precisely two names came to mind when I pondered topics for the Home issue.
Of course, the former is interiors legend Renzo Mongiardino, who was born in Genoa, Italy, based in Milan, and created ornate residences that were a mix of historical reverence, theatrical drama, and technical trickery. He loved rich 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 obit-uary in The New York Times noted that he was considered by many to be “the world’s greatest living interior decorator.” So what if he hated the d word and preferred to be called a “creator of ambiance”?
The latter: François Catroux, French modernist icon, who was born in Algeria and established his career in Paris, where he lived with his equally devastatingly chic wife, Betty, a muse to Yves Saint Laurent. His interiors were havens of sophistication, where contemporary elements were seam-lessly integrated with antique pieces. He passed away in 2020 at 83, and I’ll never forget the opening line of his Times obit either: “A glamorous designer for the Rothschilds, Russian oligarchs, Greek and Arab princesses, fashion designers, media moguls, and South American billionaires— what used be known as the jet set—died.”
Mongiardino and Catroux had vastly different styles. Mongiardino was a master of modern baroque and loved layers of trompe l’oeil; Catroux was the king of cool, all clean lines and austere modernism. But they remain two of my absolute favorite designers.
I also happen to know two women who live in the exquisite worlds they created. Martina Mondadori, the cofounder and editor in chief of Cabana, the lifestyle maga-zine turned lifestyle brand, grew up in a Milan apartment that Mongiardino designed for her mother in the late 1970s. (He had previously created a lavish estate for Martina’s maternal grandparents outside Venice and became a family friend.) Lauren Santo Domingo, the cofounder and chief brand officer of online fashion emporium Moda Operandi and artistic director of Tiffany & Co.’s Tiffany Home collection, commissioned Catroux to outfit her Paris apartment after her 2008 wedding. Both women are beloved members of the fashion scene, a community that has benefited from their hospitality.
Every Milan Fashion Week, Martina hosts an intimate luncheon at her home that begins with wine in the Persian-inspired living room and ends with fresh pasta in a dining room lined with red, white, and blue plates. (Last season, she let one of her sons skip school so he could meet Emma Watson, who was in town for the Prada show.)
In Paris, Lauren has hosted all manner of fetes, from Democratic fundraisers (for Hillary Rodham Clinton) to book parties (for me!) and late-night ragers, many of which have ended with arm-wrestling matches between pop stars and princesses. (No, really. I have the pics to prove it.)
“I think a house has to be a little trashed,” Lauren says, referring to one of the early lessons she learned from Catroux, an accomplished hedonist, as he set about remaking her apartment in an 18th-century hôtel particulier in the heart of Saint-Germain, which he faithfully restored and coated in silver fairy dust. “Not intentionally, of course. But nonchalance is the name of the game.” On cue, her 11-year-old daughter flies through her living room on a one-wheel scooter. “Don’t worry, I put the 16th-century papier-mâché urns in storage until she graduates from high school.”
As for the best piece of design advice Martina ever gleaned from Mongiardino? “Don’t decorate,” she says, using the German word gemütlich, which refers to warmth, friendliness, and good cheer. “It takes three to five years to finish a house,” Martina explains. “Once you move in, you’ll think it’s finished, but the best thing you can do is make it feel like home, which takes time.”
Both designers were given permission to go wild with these properties. “Because he was so close to my mom, he felt like he had carte blanche, and he really went for it,” Martina says. “It was like a workshop for him.”
In the 1980s, Mongiardino asked Martina’s mom if he could come by late one night to show off the place to a friend when he finished dancing at La Scala. The friend was Rudolf Nureyev (swoon!) , whom he had met through Lee Radziwill—another client.
My favorite room in Martina’s place is the long, book-lined entryway. Her father was a publisher, so Mongiardino reconfigured the layout to showcase his books. He loved illusion, so the elaborate woodwork and marble is actually precise stenciling, which would become one of his hallmarks. (I think of Martina’s foyer whenever I have tea in the Gallery at the Carlyle, which Mongiardino reno-vated in 1989 using some of the same devices.)
When Lauren first started working with Catroux, she was a newlywed with no kids. “I said, ‘I just need 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 was learning that the process of working with the decorator takes time. It gets easier and better and more natural, and who better to learn from?” Today, the apartment has a lot of sheen: Her living room is the perfect mix of style salon and discotheque. I have seen Karl Lagerfeld draped in her silver curtains and Janet Jackson sitting on the plush velvet sofas. (I have those pics too.)
Martina and Lauren both attest that good design can change your life. This year, Martina opened a Cabana store in Milan and is releasing a book this month, Cabana Anthology (Vendome), celebrating Cabana’s first decade. (Deeda Blair wrote the fore-word.) “It started as a therapy,” she says of the enterprise. “I was living in London with my two little boys, and I was intimidated by all these English people. I started feeling a bit homesick, which is not very me, and I started doing mood boards mixing Italian interiors and English interiors, and it would make me feel good.” Cabana began as a magazine, expanded into video, and, when readers asked to buy her flea-market finds, also came to include a marketplace.
Lauren cofounded Moda Operandi in 2010 and launched Moda Domus, a homeware line, in 2018. The Tiffany gig, which has her mining the archives to revamp its home collections, started last year. “I realized laying a table could be an act of therapy too,” she says. At first, it was similar to the joy she found in shopping or styling an outfit, but the fulfillment came from the excitement of bringing people together. “I unburdened myself with this idea of etiquette and rigidity and relished fun, spontaneous get-togethers.”
Her biggest tip is to mix different styles so the effect isn’t too period. “I’ll have 18th-century plates with 19th-century linen, 20th-century cutlery with 21st-century plates. It can’t all be new or it can’t all be old,” Lauren says, comparing it to her passion for mixing new clothes with vintage. “High, low, old, new, vintage, antique, contemporary— there has to be always that mix of time and price to make everything interesting.” According to both women, the trait they most admired in their designers was profes-sional bliss. They worked hard, played hard, and followed their passions. According to Martina, Mongiardino was so consumed with design that he never bothered to copyright the work. For example, rattan was one of his most beloved materials, and much of it was commissioned at the Italian furniture firm Bonacina, which still produces his work under its own brand, not his.
“When he died, he didn’t even own his apartment. He rented it!” Martina says. As someone who prefers decorating to cooking, I was also thrilled to discover he didn’t even have a kitchen. “That’s why he designed Giacomo,” she says, referring to one of the best seafood restaurants in Milan. “He needed the free food.”