The Fendi sisters—one of Italy’s most famous fashion families—share a special love for Rome. Though different in character and taste, each has, in her way, a distinctly “Roman” house—luxurious, colorful,...
The Fendi sisters—one of Italy’s most famous fashion families—share a special love for Rome. Though different in character and taste, each has, in her way, a distinctly “Roman” house—luxurious, colorful, full of brio. Here, a look at the homes of three of the sisters, all women of high style.
Carla: Italian Deco
Carla Fendi was seventeen when she joined the family business, working with her mother, who founded the firm in 1925, and with her elder sisters, Paola, Anna, and Franca. In charge of public relations, Carla coordinates departments in the company that now spans leathers, clothing, fur. As she does most of her work on the telephone, she likes to spend her mornings working in her efficiently organized home office. Her living spaces reflect her love for discipline and order. Carla and her husband, Candido Speroni, live in a house designed by Marcello Piacentini, the renowned architect. Built in 1937 for a tycoon who made his fortune building roads for Mussolini, it is on the same piece of land as the eighteenth-century house belonging to Carla’s younger sister, Alda.
Carla’s decorator was Cesare Rovatti, a former design assistant to the late filmmaker Luchino Visconti. Rovatti has designed interiors for all the Fendi sisters; for Carla, he created a ’thirties atmosphere. She and her husband collect Roman paintings of the 1930s, which harmonize with their house.
Alda: The Lavishly Romantic
On first entering Alda Fendi’s house, visitors might think they have wandered onto the set of Visconti’s film The Leopard. The eighteenth-century Villa Cidonio, once a cardinal’s residence with a tiny chapel, is filled with ornately detailed furnishings in lush, superabundantly decorated rooms. Alda—along with her eldest sister, Paola—is the fur specialist of the family. Alda’s husband, Dr. Ignazio Caruso, an orthopedist, is the only Fendi spouse who is not involved in the family business.
After acquiring the villa in 1975, Alda challenged her decorator, Cesare Rovatti, to provide the place with an evocative sense of the past and an all-out romantic atmosphere. He preserved the noble proportions of the rooms, their marble-framed doors and antique frescoes, using them as points of departure for his rousingly baroque imagination. With Alda’s zealous encouragement, Rovatti stuffed the rooms with silk damask, brocades, richly embroidered tapestries, Aubusson carpets, and immense sofas of his own design. The result is an extravagant succession of rooms, each redolent with the sensation of vivid splendor.
Anna: The Classically Roman
Anna, the second sister, is considered by the family to be the most artistic and creative of the Fendis. Her specialties are ready-to-wear and leather accessories. When she and her late husband found their house years ago, they knew it would tie them down financially for years; but Anna loved the house so much that she would have been willing to sleep on a cot in order to have it. Friends asked how she would be able to afford to furnish it. She replied that she was buying “old” furniture—by which she meant antiques at affordable prices. Her house, Anna says, is full of mistakes; but that’s how she wanted it to be: comfortable and lived-in. Today, she lives surrounded by antiques, souvenirs acquired on many trips, and family photographs. Resistant to change, she will not consider removing a single object from any of her rooms.