“Italians say my style seems foreign, and the French say my style looks Italian,” says Fabrizio Casiraghi, 31. He is an architecture graduate from Milan, a skilled interior designer, now living in Paris. He's young, but has a long professional story under his belt, and a style that is already classic. After an architecture apprenticeship at Dominique Perrault, he needed some time to channel his creativity. What better moment to absorb the culture of typically Italian beauty? That’s when he decided to become an intern with the Fondo Ambientale Italiano (FAI: organization protecting Italian beauties), where he set up the youth section. “The San Fruttuoso monastery in Portofino used to be connected to my family, so there has always been a strong connection to the FAI.” Of course the fund manages the mother of all inspirations: Villa Necchi Campiglio in Milan. “It’s the ideal home. When I worked there, I felt surrounded by the beauty of the materials and the atmosphere. I spent so much time at Villa della Porta Bozzolo, Villa Barresi and Villa Panza that I began to consider interiors as a career,” says Casiraghi. For a self-described "typical architect" it was not an obvious step, but then he warmed to the gratifying universe of detail. “I devoted myself to details: the balustrade of the stair, the carpet, the curtain, the radiator cover. All this is just marvellous.”

His style might seem traditional, a little foreign perhaps, but that’s not the point, he says. “It may look classic at first sight, but then you see it isn’t. I mix many things: an old or new Moroccan carpet, an Italian table, a Chinese screen, a Swedish lamp.” In Milan, we know such eclecticism from Dimore Studio, which also uses 1950s Italian design. Previous to venturing out on his own, Casiraghi formed his taste there. He describes it as a “wonderful school, but I have branched out now, because I’m less afraid compared to the past. I have no problem using very old influences. I say yes to combining an 18th-century chair with a contemporary lamp. I place no limits on age or origin. I like Asian elements very much.” Out of all his travel destinations, he prefers the Far East. All of his projects can be seen on his website. He has three favourites. “My pet project was a restaurant on the beach in Mykonos, the Ftelia Beach Club. I liked it because I made outdoor interiors.” The place is very refined, unique in its kind, and unique for Mykonos. “We found the chairs in a second-hand shop on a neighbouring island. My clients wanted something different from the rest of Mykonos, so there is nothing blue, the typical colour of Greece. Instead I used a lot of reds and oranges, an inspiring warm colour palette. These tones are used for roofs and many other elements of the island.” 

Besides Ftelia, Casiraghi’s website shows pictures of an apartment in Venice, made for a private client. It required long hours of painstaking research. “The Venice project lasted two years, a very lengthy amount of time. I chose every single object. There are contemporary artworks, exotic objects and Italian design by Luigi Dominioni, Gabriella Crespi and even a few items I designed myself.” His third favourite is a concept store for Kenzo in the Marais area of Paris. “It was nice because the result is very pop, young, colourful, jungle-like. I found myself drawing these concepts for what was once a historical Parisian hardware store of the industrial type.”