(Interior Design) He explains how his fascination with detail was initially inspired by his time spent at Villa Necchi Campiglio, a 1930s design marvel in Milan, made famous internationally by Luca Guadagnino’s film “I Am Love.” A bit like the celebrated Italian movie director, Casiraghi’s work is bold, poetic and often infused with tasteful sensuality. For instance, his beach club project for the French hospitality group Bagatelle in Mykonos provides visitors with an instant essence of escapism into a more vintage time reminiscent of the French Riviera. The space’s dark, lacquered wood accents and bright pops of color across furnishings take inspiration from a classic Riva boat, albeit one photographed skipping past a beach laden with tastefully tinted parasols, pleasantly shading sun-seekers.

Casiraghi typically works across Europe, with each project designed unique to its circumstance, whether it’s a sensitive overhaul of a historic restaurant in Paris or a conversion of an ordinary Victorian London townhouse into a hotel transporting guests into another world (more on this later). Yet despite his refined touch when it comes to organizing a space and his comprehensive appreciation for the vintage pieces he often sources for projects, he always keeps sight of his mission: to answer the brief as beautifully as possible. “We are not artists; we work for clients and must create what is right for them.”

MAISON Ë You’re originally from Milan, but you were drawn to Paris to work as an interior designer. Can you tell us more?

Fabrizio Casiraghi While studying at Milan’s Polytechnic University, I visited Paris several times. I come from a very Francophile family. We all love French culture, the music, the arts, and everything about France, so it was logical for me to come to Paris after my studies; it’s the city where I launched my studio. However, my love for interiors began in Milan—through volunteering with the Italian association that looks after Villa Necchi.

M.Ë Villa Necchi is an architectural treasure, and many visitors to Milan try to visit its beautiful gardens and tour the interiors. But how did working in the building and seeing it close up every day inspire you?

F.C. While helping with fundraising and events, I spent hours, days, and months in this Villa, admiring every detail—the curtains, the furniture, the fabrics. I realized this was pure beauty and wanted to create spaces like this. Yet, what I learned from spending so much time there is that this place’s beauty is not perfect—there are layers. The owners had changed certain things over time. For example, there was a bedroom where the Princess of Italy used to stay, and these two sisters who had owned the Villa changed the original designer Piero Portaluppi’s concept because it was too cold and rigid. They made it more ‘Italian’ and cozy, completely changing the room’s character. When you start to look closely at the house, there are so many of these layers, and that is its beauty—it makes it better somehow than the original ‘perfect’ linear design of the creator behind it. I try to incorporate this idea of layering and imperfection into my work. I aim to effortlessly reflect on how people want to live in a space and think about how it will change over time.

M.ë Often, the most beautiful homes are the ones that feel truly lived in and reflect their owners’ personalities, even if a different person has designed the original space. In this way, the owners take over this design. But how do you create such a feeling from scratch when it’s a new space that no one has yet occupied?

F.C. I became an interior designer to create residences like those you describe. There are two ways to approach this. One way is to leave space for little imperfections in the creation process—if the paint is not exactly the perfect ‘Riva boat’ lacquered finish, that is fine. If there is vintage furniture with a little patina, you don’t need to repair it if it’s still functional. When manually working on a design, like a mosaic, human imperfections will creep in, which is good.

The second part sounds obvious, but it’s sometimes missed by people in my profession: to ‘listen’ to your clients. An interior designer’s vision can overpower a client’s needs, stopping the design from working. If a client tells me they need a table in a particular place because they enjoy family meals in this spot every morning, I will always plan to accommodate this. I will do this even if it’s different from the ‘ideal’ plan for the space. I want to discover the way a client lives during a project. The most beautiful feeling is visiting a home I’ve designed a few years after it’s finished and to see how the clients love living in it the exact way we planned it together.

M.Ë I also understand that for some of your projects, you enjoy crafting imaginary stories about the place to give it a sense of character.

F.C. In these projects—usually hospitality projects—I love to invent stories. When you do a residence, you don’t need to create a story because there are already residents with their own stories. However, for hospitality, you can think more creatively about the lives of the anonymous people who may pass through the building over time. I make up ideas about clients and owners: for example, in the Grand Hotel Bellevue in London, my story was that the building was a townhouse owned by an English couple. The gentleman is the typical elegant, understated aristocrat—discreet and classic in his taste—and you can see this in the timber paneling and other conventionally tasteful aspects. But the wife is more of the ‘strange English cousin type.’ She is a bit arty; she’s traveled across the world and returned with an unusual tapestry that now hangs in the bar, embroidered with depictions of elephants; she chose the tiles for the bathrooms with intense, bold, somewhat strange colors. The resulting interiors give a feeling of two different personalities, making the design union fresh—a clash between traditional and eccentric.

Clients appreciate this approach, especially when working with a space without a story. Of course, if I were to re-do the Ritz in Paris, there would already be a story and a heritage. But if it’s a building like the Grand Hotel Bellevue, which didn’t have a rich back story, I have to invent something that has happened between the walls. It helps the client project themselves into the business and become more enthusiastic about the project.

M.Ë You often work in a luxury context, in restaurants or hotels where there is a sense of occasion for those visiting, yet these places you design feel down to earth—how do you achieve this?

F.C. When a customer is paying a high price for an experience, they need to feel like they are paying for quality, but you have to be somewhat democratic when designing a space in terms of understanding what quality means for different people. For one person coming to a restaurant like the 1880 Restaurant Drouant that we re-designed in Paris, it might be for them to feel transported into a different time and place and feel the heritage. Other customers might be interested in high-quality food and wine, so we must consider how this is presented. Luxury can be democratic in this way, but it’s really about personifying the best in everything—the experience, the food, the music, and the design.