{"id":44850,"date":"2017-01-27T17:53:40","date_gmt":"2017-01-27T16:53:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/?p=44850"},"modified":"2017-01-27T17:53:40","modified_gmt":"2017-01-27T16:53:40","slug":"marchesa-casati","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/marchesa-casati\/","title":{"rendered":"Das au\u00dferordentlich prunkvolle Leben der Marchesa Casati"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nOf all the eccentrics from the early 20th\u00a0century, none have left\u00a0as memorable\u00a0of a\u00a0mark on fashion and art as Marchesa Luisa Casati. With her kohl-rimmed eyes, penchant for extravagantly wild parties and an extraordinary ability to surround herself with the most talented people of her time, Marchesa\u00a0is regarded as a \u201cwork of art\u201d \u2013 a\u00a0fate she craved \u2013 as well as a paragon of extraordinary ostentatiousness. Here, we look back on the eccentric woman’s crazy lifestyle, as well as the fashion designers who find inspiration from it even today.<\/em>
\n <\/p>\n

\"Marchesa Images courtesy of Alexander McQueen, Man Ray and Christian Dior<\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

Who’s that girl<\/h3>\n

Marchesa was born as Luisa Amman to a family of a Milanese textile magnates. Orphaned by both her parents by the age of 16, she grew into a\u00a0rich heiress and a well-received debutante. Even though her exceptional height, thinness and high cheekbones were by no means considered beautiful, very soon she married Camillo Casati, who shared her passion for occultism and lavish parties. Shortly after the birth of the couple\u2019s only daughter Christina, the marriage started to collapse. Christina was sent away to a convent school at the age of 9 while Casati, who seemed to be much more interested in hunting than in his family, gladly tolerated his wife\u2019s long-lasting affair with Gabriele d’Annunzio.
\nThe turbulent relationship with d’Annunzio, dandy, poet and womaniser, who later supported the fascist movement, provoked Casati\u2019s transformation into a decadently glamorous femme fatale. In order to achieve her signature dark stare,\u00a0she implemented a beauty regimen\u00a0that included ingesting poisonous belladonna,\u00a0bleaching her skin and lining the eyes with kohl. Establishing a house menagerie full of exotic animals, she acquired a habit of walking her cheetahs by night through the sleeping Venice, while wearing fur, jewels and little else. Rumours had it that the quirky Marchesa had a personal gondolier who would wait for her and the cheetahs every night to sail them on the Grand Canal.
\n <\/p>\n

\"Marchesa Marchesa Luisa Casti by Man Ray and Paolo Roversi<\/p>\n

 
\nHer parties, infamous for their excessive opulence (one was noted for including Nubian servants covered in\u00a0gold), were getting ever more macabre. A friend of Marchesa’s once famously recalled witnessing\u00a0a lifelike sculpture of herself placed next to the heiress, resulting in\u00a0profound confusion among her guests.
\nBy the 1930s, Marchesa\u2019s mogul-like riches had been spent on parties, jewels, gorgeous dresses and her (now) ex-husband’s expensive habits. Her villa in Venice \u2013 which would later be acquired by Peggy Guggenheim \u2013 and most of her properties had to be sold in order to settle 24 million dollars worth of debt.
\nLike another great hedonist Oscar Wilde, Luisa Casati died in crying poverty. Having left Italy, she moved into a one-room apartment in London where she was occasionally visited by Cecil Beaton and Man Ray. Ruined and abandoned by d\u2019Annunzio (who long stopped answering her desperate, hardly coherent letters), she was often seen wrapped in old newspapers, her black-rimmed eyes and pale skin looking more bizarre than ever.
\nMarchesa died of a stroke in 1957 at the age of 76. She was buried with a stuffed Pekinese dog and a pair of false eyelashes at the Brompton cemetery.
\n <\/p>\n

\"Marchesa Images courtesy of Christian Dior<\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

MAKING\u00a0HER MARK<\/h3>\n

With her hair dyed vibrant red or vermillion and her off-kilter sense for fashion, Marchesa was perfectly picturesque. Her portraits \u2013 many of which were taken by Man Ray, Kees Van Dongen and Augustus John \u2013 depict an elongated androgynous figure with a crown of puffed-up hair and enormous, charcoal-black eyes. She looked like a hybrid of a Ballet Russes character and a postmodern celebrity \u2013 with her heavy makeup setting an example for generations of it-women to come.
\nMuse to Poiret and Mariano Fortuny (whose daring \u201cpleat\u201d dress she made famous), she equally fascinates contemporary designers. There is a fashion brand named after her (Marchesa), and Karl Lagerfeld, Tom Ford and Dries Van Noten have all created collections dedicated to her.
\n <\/p>\n

\"Marchesa Images courtesy of Dries Van Noten and Christina Dior<\/p>\n

 
\nHowever, out of all the designers from today, it was probably John Galliano who best captured Marchesa\u2019s wildly bohemian spirit. His haute couture collection for SS98, held at Palais Garnier,\u00a0was inspired by Luisa Casati\u2019s wild parties and featured an array of bejewelled, highly ornate looks with pale models led by young men down the stairs of the Paris Opera. Beautifully sinister and exquisitely lavish, it certainly was another work of art, dedicated to the most legendary spendthrift in history. But what makes Casati so mesmerising is not her taste. Considered to be quite the opposite of elegant, it is actually her opulent decadence, extravagance on the verge of vulgarity and her mythically chic habits that keeps people infatuated even today.
\n 
\n 
\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The enduring legacy of fashion’s greatest muse<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44874,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[668,7663,4862,1015,7664,3130,5748,5655,7665,5675,7666],"class_list":["post-44850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fashion","tag-alexander-mcqueen","tag-cecil-beaton","tag-christian-dior","tag-dior","tag-dries-van-notes","tag-john-galliano","tag-man-ray","tag-marchesa-casati","tag-marchesa-lucia-casati","tag-oscar-wilde","tag-paolo-roversi"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"\nThe Extraordinarily Ostentatious Life of Marchesa Casati The Extraordinarily Ostentatious Life of Marchesa Casati<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The enduring legacy of fashion's greatest muse, Marchesa Luisa Casati\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/marchesa-casati\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Extraordinarily Ostentatious Life of Marchesa Casati The Extraordinarily Ostentatious Life of Marchesa Casati\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The enduring legacy of fashion's greatest muse, Marchesa Luisa Casati\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/marchesa-casati\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sleek Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sleekmag\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-01-27T16:53:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@sleekmag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@sleekmag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Verfasst von\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"sleek\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Gesch\u00e4tzte Lesezeit\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4\u00a0Minuten\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/\",\"name\":\"Sleek Magazine\",\"description\":\"Sleek is Germany\u2019s leading independent media house\/brand for creativity and innovation located in Berlin the creative capital of the world. 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