Text: Karen Carroll
Southern Home (SH): Alessandra, how did growing up in Rome and being immersed in its history and culture inform your eye?
Alessandra Branca (AB): It gave me confidence. When you walk streets that have been around for 2000 years, you take tremendous comfort in something old and established, not unlike walking the streets of Charleston, New Orleans, and the older communities in this country. There’s also a deep-rooted respect for classicism, which is impossible to avoid. It’s in your blood. It’s not just an education—it’s who you are, how you live, and how you see. You’re constantly faced with proportions that are very specific, and they eventually become a part of your core. You don’t even realize it after a while. It’s like cobblestones. I walk very fast all the time, and in Rome, I’ve become at ease with cobblestones, which require a constant adjustment that feels very natural to me. The same is true with the proportions of a house or the colors of structures. They become part of your natural environment.
SH: Given you’ve lived and worked in the States for such a long time, how has that impacted your design aesthetic?
AB: In America, things are very different, with a freer way of thinking and an iconography that is ever evolving. In some ways, I find those differences fantastic, and I’m able to swing from one to the other, having lived in Chicago since finishing college and still maintaining a house in Rome. I’m very comfortable with classical interiors, yet I’m now happy embracing modernity and bringing it into interiors that might otherwise be traditional.
SH: Who was the first person to nurture your creativity?
AB: My grandfather, who was an art historian and critic for the Vatican. I was an extremely energetic child, and he had the patience to deal with me. He’d take me with him to work and let me run through the halls, which is kind of amazing now when I think about where we were. We’d go on walks around the city, and I’d step into any church and always take a different way home to explore and discover. I still do. He taught me to look at paintings differently, at color specifically, and he opened my eyes to the history. He was also an accomplished artist in his own right, and today when I’m in an artist’s studio and smell linseed oil, it takes me right back to my childhood. My mother was a botanical and natural history artist who worked on parchment. She’d mix her colors from raw pigments and paint gouache and watercolors. It was more about the translucence of color and how light reflects through it to create what you see. She was self-taught and let color guide her, and I learned that color was light through my mother. I’m getting a little emotional thinking about it, but we really are the sum of our parts.
SH: Those formative influences and experiences certainly point to why color has become such a signature in your own design work—red in particular. How did that become a calling card?
AB: There’s a certain amount of passion in red. Maybe it’s because I live in Chicago, where there’s a lot of gray. It becomes a pop of energy we need, like a spice or an exclamation point. But I also love green, yellow, blue, all colors. They’re there to animate and punctuate a room.
SH: Is there any color we’d have to twist your arm to use?
AB: It’s probably not fair to it, but I have never been fond of purple. However, I push myself—that’s part of how I grow. I’ve started thinking about plum, eggplant, and mauve. I hated them in the ’80s, and now I love them, especially next to teal. Who knew?
SH: Are there other ways your preferences have changed over time—things you once loved and now don’t, or perhaps the reverse?
AB: Any time you design something simply because it’s “in” or cool, it’s not the best way to go. I keep learning and doing new things every day. I love incorporating contemporary art in a classical interior. I’ve brought midcentury furniture into my work since day one. I love the mix: the high and low, the contrasts of materials, colors, textures, and periods. In contrast, there’s an energy that keeps a room visually alive. That discipline has never changed for me, although obviously the way I apply it has. While I’m true to my original self in principle, it’s still an evolution, because I’m always open to new objects, products, and artists.
SH: You continue to evolve your business, too. In addition to all the personal projects for clients around the world, you’ve now created Casa Branca, collections of fabrics, furnishings, and accessories you’ve designed and sell through your boutique on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, as well as online. Tell us more about the venture.
AB: Casa Branca is meant to do what I’ve always done with my clients—help people enjoy the process. It’s like playing with food. Play with your interiors. Go and learn and then choose objects that mean something to you, rather than just fill the shelves. Everything is authentic, original, but based in classical concepts. If it’s a tartan, it’s made in Scotland. If it’s a palampore, it’s based on 18th-century designs I’ve collected for my archives over the years. It all references my history and design aesthetic, but we’re also having fun with it. We’ve created wonderful papers that look like a stone wall in a running bond pattern, in colors. There are a lot of visual puns, like wicker and basket weave. We’ve taken furniture pieces I use all the time in my projects, like an ottoman with a pull-out table I designed over 40 years ago, and done them in different finishes.
In addition to the Worth Avenue boutique, in November we’re opening a 4,000-square-foot studio and atelier in West Palm, with vignettes and environments where people can shop and the Palm Beach design office there as well. And soon we’ll be stepping into the bedroom with a series of headboards and beds. Too often I’ve heard clients say, “Let’s do the living room and just wait on the bedroom.” I say take care of yourself first—it’s a little like the oxygen mask on a plane. You spend a lot of time in the bedroom, and if you’re happy there, you’re going to be happy anywhere.
SH: There’s always a lightness in your interiors. Although you’re often using serious antiques and fine art, we can also tell you don’t take it all too seriously—even the more formal rooms look comfortable.
AB: It’s not a set; it’s not a moment; it’s a life. How often people forget that. We’re not staging to sell or for an Instagram post. There’s a huge responsibility in being a designer to do things that matter and last, but we also must take into consideration how the client actually lives. I want to design a living room that brings you to it 20 times a week, with a game table that turns into dinner for two, or a place to Zoom, or a banquette in the corner where people can settle in and talk. A living room should be like a piazza.
SH: Finally, what intangible takes a room from good to great?
AB: A little bit of guts. We should study, do the homework, and then put the books down and come up with a great plan to make rooms our own—something that hasn’t been done or will surprise. Any time you take things a step further, that’s when you really hit the magic. We don’t have to create shocking rooms, just ones that sing.
10 MORE THINGS ABOUT ALESSANDRA BRANCA
