The Mad Marchesa

For the first three decades of the twentieth century, the fabled Marchesa Luisa Casati triumphed as the brightest star in European society. The early deaths of her parents made Luisa and her elder sister, Francesca, the wealthiest heiresses in Italy at the time. Under the care of a guardian uncle, Luisa became engaged to and married the Marchese Camillo Casati, a young Milanese nobleman, in 1900.

She was tall and thin. A thick blaze of flame-coloured hair crowned her pale, almost cadaverously white face with its sensually vermilioned lips. Above all, however, the Marchesa’s large green eyes cast the strongest spell of her unique beauty. She exaggerated these further still with immense false lashes and surrounding rings of black kohl.

A celebrity and femme fatale, the marchesa's famous eccentricities dominated and delighted European society for nearly three decades. She captivated artists and literati figures such as Robert de Montesquiou, Erté, Jean Cocteau, Cecil Beaton, and Augustus John. She had a long term affair with the author Gabriele D'Annunzio.

John Galliano based the 1998 Spring/Summer Christian Dior collection on her. She is the namesake of the Marchesa fashion house. And Karl Lagerfeld debuted his 2010 Cruise-wear collection fittingly on the Lido in Venice, for which Casati was once again a major muse. As the concept of dandy was expanded in the 20th century to include women, the Marchesa Casati fitted the utmost female example by saying: "I want to be a living work of art".