Marella Agnelli, one of Richard Avedon's famous "swans", is a legendary style leader whose taste has influenced fashion and interior designers alike for decades. Monday night Creel and Gow held a party for Agnelli's niece Marella Carraciolo Chia to celebrate the publication of Marella Agnelli, The Last Swan, Chia's tribute to her aunt.
"My aunt is a great inspiration to me," said Chia. "She has had such an amazing life. She has exceptional style to this day. She has been immortalized by some of the best photographers of the 20th century, including Robert Doisneau who photographed her wedding [to Italian industrialist Gianni Agnelli], Horst, Ugo Mulas, and Cecil Beaton. Vogue and some of the other international magazines used to send these great photographers to record her and the Agnelli lifestyle, her houses and her gardens. These photographs have allowed my aunt to tell me her life story by putting all this amazing material together, a lot of it which had not previously been published. Writing this book has been a great way of telling her story."
Chia was asked what makes Agnelli's style stand out from other icons.
"Her style is very rooted in every decade," said Chia. "She's very in tune with the mood of the zeitgeist and the mood of the place. She had houses in Italy, in Switzerland, in New York, and now in Morocco, so she's always very open to the language and culture of each place. At the same time she never lost sight of the fact that these houses have to be lived in and enjoyed by the people she loves, by her friends and family. Her homes are the best combination of practical and cultural. They are an expression of her very deep emotions and her aesthetic and her ethical outlook."
Designer Carlos Mota was on hand to congratulate Chia and pay homage to Agnelli.
"No one mixes wicker the way she did, no one understands wicker," said Mota when asked what set Agnelli's style apart from other iconic women of her generation. "In a world where there was so much money around, and everything had to be gilded and shiny, it was so refreshing. She was one of the very few people that would mix 18th Century furniture, or a Picasso, with a simple wicker table. It was supremely chic. It was unpretentious. When you're so refined, you have so much money and so much taste, you don't care what people think. It probably started out as an experiment, then became something super iconic."
The always chic fashion writer Amy Fine Collins was also impressed with Agnelli's use of wicker.
"Marella Agnelli’s style is based on an ideal balance between grandeur and simplicity," said Fine Collins. "In decorating this is manifested in her taste for wicker, in clothing in her early adoption of basic slim trousers, and in gardening in her predilection for informal effects. There is a great deal of discipline and knowledge that goes into creating this kind of restrained beauty."
Hosts Jamie Creel and Christopher Gow were delighted to host Chia and Agnelli's friends in their eclectic store, filled with beautiful objects that Agnelli would have appreciated.
"If Marella were here, she would have most likely picked out the rare collection of 19th century French Alguier (exquisite pressed seaweed specimens), and the hand painted Ardmore ceramics depicting birds and animals," said Creel.
