HAUTE BOHEMIANS
Meet seven women whose lives emulate a wanderlust spirit. Interviews by Vanessa Lawrence. Photographs by Emma Summerton.
Meet seven women whose lives emulate a wanderlust spirit.
Tatiana Casiraghi
“It sounds stupid, but when people ask me: ‘Where are you from?’ I never really know how to answer,” says Tatiana Casiraghi, 32, who is half-Colombian, half-Brazilian, was born in New York, grew up in Geneva, and spent her summers in Bali and India. “From a very young age, it made me realise that not everyone lived the way that I did, and it made me curious to discover the world.” Casiraghi now resides firmly in London with her husband, Andrea, the son of Caroline, the Princess of Hanover, and channels her worldliness into Muzungu Sisters, an online shop she founded with her friend Dana Alikhani, where the offerings include one-of-a-kind clutches crafted from Pakistani textiles and embroidered blouses from Budapest, all of which are ethically sourced to support local artisans. “The notion of luxury is starting to change. People are looking for something that nobody else can have.”
Elettra Wiedemann
“New York City is full of impatient people,” says model and food blogger Elettra Wiedemann. “The world increasingly is catering to them.” And so is Wiedemann, with her two-year-old blog, Impatient Foodie, which brings elements of the slow-food movement, like farmers’ market shopping and an emphasis on home cooking, to fast-paced, urban dwellers like herself. Ironically, the 32-year-old New Yorker says she owes her kitchen prowess to her modelling career rather than to her upbringing (she is the daughter of Isabella Rossellini). “I had to be more careful about what I ate, so, by necessity, I learned how to cook.” One thing that she did get from a childhood spent shuttling between Texas (the home state of her father), Italy and Sweden is a sense of comfort in impermanence. In fact, on the idea of putting down roots, she says: “It just sounds so constricting and limiting. I always enjoyed being more of a nomad.”
Marpessa Hennink
Even among the big personalities that populated the fashion world in the 1980s, the Dutch model Marpessa Hennink stood out. “Gianni Versace would give me the most boring outfit for a runway show, and I would be like: ‘Ugh, why can’t I have something more spectacular?’” recalls the Amsterdam native who turns 52 this July and who has lived in Milan since 2012. “He was like: ‘Because I know that you’re going to sell this one!’” Versace was just one of Hennink’s many fans: illustrator Antonio Lopez championed her early in her career, Karl Lagerfeld and Azzedine Alaïa claimed her as a muse, and the photographer Ferdinando Scianna published a book of photos of her in 1993. That was around the time that Hennink quit modelling – “Fashion was becoming quite minimalist and grunge; I prefer elegance” – to pursue interior decorating, eventually moving to Ibiza. She has since been lured back into the fashion fold, as a consultant and global ambassador for Dolce & Gabbana’s couture line, Alta Moda. “Aiming for exquisite things of the highest quality is something I can stand for, especially now that fast fashion has become the rule. I like slow fashion. I like slow food. And I’d like life to be slower as well.”
Margherita Maccapani Missoni
Perhaps the most surprising thing about Margherita Maccapani Missoni – the daughter of Angela Missoni, designer of the fabled knitwear brand, and granddaughter of its founders, Rosita and Ottavio – is that despite her worldly appearance she’s a small-town girl at heart. “It’s the village life that keeps me balanced, and that kept me sane when I was a young girl partying and having fun,” says the 33-year-old, who grew up in Sumirago, in the countryside near Milan, and recently moved back there with her husband, race-car driver Eugenio Amos, to raise their two children. “I want my kids to have that too.” Maccapani Missoni, who has lived in Rome, Barcelona and New York, has tried her hand at acting, but is now returning to the proverbial nest, professionally speaking: last year she started a children’s line, Margherita, which, with its bright mix-and-match offerings, proudly embodies the Missoni DNA. “I was never told how to dress when I was a kid, and that’s what I really want to communicate,” she says. “Let kids be free to dress themselves. They might come out with a great idea of their own.”
Suki Waterhouse
“I usually fallf asleep in my clothes, because I hate accepting that I have to go to bed at night,” Suki Waterhouse, 24, says wistfully. Of course, depending on the evening, the British actress and model may find herself dozing off in, say, one of the flowing gowns by Reem Acra, Valentino or Roland Mouret that she has donned for red-carpet appearances – or a tracksuit. “I couldn’t be in put-together, great outfits all the time. It makes me anxious.” In her downtime, Waterhouse, who has fronted campaigns for Burberry and Redken and stars in the upcoming movie Billionaire Boys Club, with Ansel Elgort and Kevin Spacey, writes songs and takes photographs. Basically, her life is the polar opposite of the tidy, white-collar upbringing provided by her plastic surgeon father and nurse mother. “I live in a permanent mess, stuff is everywhere, and I’m quite a hoarder,” says Waterhouse, who has been on her own since she was 16, of her London flat. “I left the house pretty young; I was out early, exploring the world.”
Uberta Zambeletti
Wait and See is the name of Uberta Zambeletti’s eccentric fashion-and-lifestyle concept store in Milan, and it’s also Zambeletti’s credo. “Not everything goes the way you plan it, and even when things get tough, it’s always for the best,” says Zambeletti, 48, who will open a London outpost later this year. “Eventually, you understand why your life has panned out the way it has.” The self-described black sheep of a conservative Milanese family, Zambeletti, who was born in Madrid, provides an ebullient counterpoint to the generally uniform Milan fashion scene. “I use myself as a canvas,” she says of her colourful, impulsive sensibility. “Because I feel rooted, but totally free to explore and not to have to conform, I only do things I really believe in. If people don’t get it, they don’t get it. And if they get it, all the better.”
Edmée Nicolis di Robilant
“Ever since I was a child, people have been telling me I should model,” says Edmée Nicolis di Robilant, 19, who has walked the runway for Giorgio Armani, appeared in a Bulgari catalogue, and is a favourite at Salvatore Ferragamo. Indeed, her mother, Moira Anastagi, and both of her grandmothers were models, but the Roman beauty is not just fashion nobility: the daughter of Count Filippo Nicolis di Robilant, she comes from one of Europe’s oldest aristocratic families, counting among her ancestors a French king and a doge of Venice. Di Robilant, who has been known to top vintage clothes with, say, a jacket from a street vendor in India (“I don’t follow fashion rules; I never wear the latest things”), says that her father was her fashion inspiration. “He travelled a lot for his job as a diplomat and brought us beautiful fabrics and things to wear. I love the idea of buying exotic clothes that I can’t find in Italy.”