Laura Biagiotti’s courtesy and kindness are evident from her look, and from her natural capacity to put people at their ease, unsuspected qualities in a woman who has created a multinational business in an extraordinarily competitive world such as that of fashion.
“To tell the truth, fashion has become a world of money. I started in the 60’s and there was a lot of passion along with good profits. Over time, our world has been transformed purely into business, money, and power, and I am not easy in this. Faced with the risk of losing the real values of life along the way, I have come to count very much on the family, even missing professional opportunities, but gaining enormously in interior calm.” In this way, signora Biagiotti has managed to regulate her character traits of pragmatism and enterprise that are typical of her star sign, Leo, fearlessly showing sensitivity and delicacy.
“Like all who work in an artistic field, I do not let myself be completely overwhelmed by rationality: I leave a lot to instinct, to the unexpected, to surprise and to discovery. Then I always tend toward perfectionism, but show approachability with others: I try to be polite in a world that is, unfortunately, quite impolite.”
An act of courage, like that in the early 70’s, when, torn between the passion for Christian archeology and fashion, she chose the latter, considering it “the daughter of a ‘lesser god’, but, anyway, a small expression of art, tied to a strong qualitative concept”, always keeping up, however, her love of antiquity and bygone cultures. “Doing a job such as mine, a craft dictated by passion, energy, curiosity, I am always looking to the next moves; therefore, my time rushes by, I burn it up. Maybe this is why many years ago I also decided to go and live in Castello Marco Simone, an ancient spot inhabited for over one thousand years, and which I consider to be a ‘counterbalance’ to the fleeting time of fashion, and which allows me to get back to the right balance. I patiently restored it, and I look upon it as the magic box in which twenty-five years ago I brought together all the things in life that were most important to me. They were my daughter Lavinia who was three, for whom I was a somewhat absent mom, always on the move, my parents (I am an only child) with whom I have a very special rapport, and my work, my passion. All contained in a single place, surrounded by the magnificent Roman campagna, 7 km and 300 meters from the Capitol.
It all started when I lived in the Parioli district of Rome, my office was at the old Casal dei Pazzi farmhouse, at the foot of the Grazioli Castle, and the factory was at Monterotondo. I used to drive along the Palombarese provincial road and I noticed in the distance a building from the fourteen hundreds, with a fascinating tower... Then there was a small ad in the newspaper; some details and the address gave me to understand that it might be that particular castle. After that came the gradual falling in love that made me forget the effort, the costs, and the commitment to the reconstruction and the restoration. For me, Marco Simone was a turning point: I started to rationalize my life and I, a Roman born and bred, left the chaos of a city that is marvelous but enervating. Now, I enthusiastically follow the progress in my olive grove, and I have given myself a kitchen garden. The closer rapport with nature and with the ever-changing seasons is priceless.”
Here we see the emergence of art, the only true luxury that Laura Biagiotti allows herself.
“For me, art is a great consolation, a small luxury. An example is the Biagiotti-Cigna Foundation, born after the loss of my husband, Gianni Cigna, and dedicated to the great maestro Giacomo Balla. What links me to him is his farsightedness, his ‘love affair’ with the future, and then, the utopia of the futurist reconstruction of the universe. It fascinates me and I hugely enjoy studying his pictures because I rediscover a joyfulness and playfulness that are a source of intellectual and esthetic succor in an age so burdened and problematic as ours.”
Notwithstanding that, Laura Biagiotti has an easy relationship with luxury, as most commonly understood. “Luxury is a great engine: the French understood that well before we did, and they have exploited its potentialities to their full extent, determinedly and without pangs of conscience. In Italy, probably due to a leftist tradition and a strong catholic doctrinal influence, luxury is not easily lived with. From my point of view, as a businessperson, I see it as a great work opportunity and an affirmation of Made in Italy. I do not make of it a moral question, even if I myself know the limits that should be observed, and I am against excesses and waste”.
“For me, white is more than a color: it is a current of thought to interpret the contemporary, and live it. It is a color rich in positive energy. There are always white flowers around me, such as gardenias and jasmine; I collect white objects like fans and opalines and I work in a studio-chapel that gives me the possibility of having all the other colors float in a neutral sea par excellence. I have designed entire white collections and have used many kilometers of white linen; thousands of kilos of white cashmere have been unrolled outside Marco Simone Castle to gift a small dream to the four corners of the world.”
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