House tour: the delightfully eclectic home of Dimore Studio’s founders
It may not be located in the most fashionable district of Milan, but the apartment of Emiliano Salci and Britt Moran, the duo behind Dimore Studio, is without doubt one of the most stylish. Occupying the second floor of a late-19th-century building on a broad, tree-lined thoroughfare to the north of the city, the grand dimore, or dwelling, had not been touched since the 1930s, and bears all the hallmarks of the baronial revival then in vogue. In the salon, the deep relief of the octagonal plasterwork ceiling, the oversize and ornately decorated timber mantelpiece, the towering casement windows inset with leadlight glazing all speak to a fantasy of noble origins, perhaps more middle class than Middle Ages but no less enchanting for that fact.
“We were looking for a place that had a sense of history, a patina of past lives,” says Moran. “It’s important to us that a space has its own character and personality that we can add to. Scratches and nicks and wrinkles are part of a story. Wooden floors, for instance, only become truly beautiful with age.” The expansive wooden flooring here is laid in a bold herringbone pattern, popular across Europe at the time. (The warp and weft reflect light beautifully.) The central hallway from which all rooms flow is composed of crushed marble fragments that have been poured directly in place, a typical Milanese trick to embellish high-traffic areas, creating beauty out of utility. Paring the interior back to these bare bones, the Dimores — celebrated for the adroit telescoping of eras in their work for luxury brands such as Fendi, Hermès and Cire Trudon — then began adding layer upon layer to create an interior of complexity and depth; a very personal distillation of their shared aesthetics.
First up, the duo had to agree on a touchstone colour for the entire interior. After intense debate, and inspired by the building’s moody-hued entry vestibule, they settled on green. “We’d experimented with shades of red in the last apartment, and blue in the one before that,” says Moran, admitting they can be a tad obsessive. (While not romantically involved, the duo has lived together for years, each home tracking their evolution as designers and the development of their brand.)
Varied in tone and hue in different rooms according to available light and desired mood — from a dusty sage to olive via khaki and taupe — the effect is of a series of grace notes, each room a delicate embellishment in the overall majesty of the composition. “I have a way of seeing things and Emiliano has a completely different way of seeing things,” says Moran. “We have a lot of heated discussions about colours, patterns, things like that, but I need his opinion as much as he needs mine about certain things. Finding the common ground is what makes everything work.”
Their tastes are anchored in the narrative flair of the Italian film industry, the Cinecittà directors of the 1950s and ’60s (Fellini, Antonioni, Visconti), the sensually modernist furniture of Gio Ponti, Osvaldo Borsani and Piero Portaluppi, the aristo-boho glamour of decorator Gabriella Crespi, who died in 2017, age 95. (“She was a genius,” says Salci.) Moran and Salci’s skills lie in their ability to take the past, shake it up and serve fresh interiors that feel timeless.
The serpentine bedhead in Moran’s room is covered in lush green velour, brass studs emphasising the sinuous line. In Salci’s room, the bedhead is by Luciano Frigerio, dressing chair by Carlo Mollino, mirror by Ponti, low table by Alvar Aalto. For all the blue chip, museum-quality design artefacts, the space feels lived-in; loved rather than revered.
They found the apartment in October, and moved in less than 10 months later. “We had no structural work to do since we were determined to retain as much of the history of the place as possible,” notes Moran. “We updated the electrical wiring but that was about it. We kept everything else, right down to the door handles and the servants’ bells.”
Working on their own home, Moran reckons, was different to designing hotels for Ian Schrager or Thierry Costes “because we don’t have to second-guess ourselves. We proceed by gut feeling”. As for living in one of the last Milanese neighbourhoods to be gentrified, this keeps Moran healthy (“I ride my bike everywhere!”) and makes the home something of a retreat, a place of respite where the pair comes together for quiet weekend suppers. “Luckily, our housekeeper is a very good cook.”
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