DESIGNER

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Born in 1922, Italian artist and designer Gabriella Crespi would

have turned 100 this year. Throughout her extraordinary ca-

reer in the design world, she moved effortlessly among both

European royalty and the Hollywood jet set. Her indisputable

glamour and sophisticated sense of style made her a muse to

the fashion designer Valentino, and brought the likes of Au-

drey Hepburn, Gianni Versace, and Hubert de Givenchy into

her social circle. As a designer, it was her gift for streamlined

forms and lavish material finishes that won her a dedicated

following and saw her become a coveted partner to presti-

gious fashion houses ranging from Dior to Stella McCartney.

Crespi’s aesthetic was characterized by dualities, pairing

modernist functionality with an eye for the baroque, and shift-

ing between clean lines and sensuous curves. When she died

aged 95 in 2017, she left behind a repertoire of more than two

thousand pieces, spanning furniture, jewelry, and sculpture

– all imbued with an eclectic style that embraced both the

organically whimsical and the formally geometric.

Crespi’s daughter Elisabetta Crespi now heads up Archivio

Gabriella Crespi. “My mother was utterly Milanese,” she says.

“She had extraordinary taste, stemming from her inner pas-

sions and bohemian lifestyle. She was naturally elegant and

didn’t follow mainstream fashion; instead, she favored a cul-

tivated simplicity in her aesthetic. She was modern, daring

- almost radical in her propositions. From her innate allur-

ing qualities to the inviting furniture she designed, everything

was sophisticated yet unconventional, with a warm, human,

and sensuous feel to it.”