88 | HARPER’S BAZAAR | April 2020 http://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk
ST Y LE
‘Creative
people are
sponges –
they capture
everything’
Left: silk and cotton
bustier, £1,650; silk
shirt, £1,450;
silk and cotton
trousers, £1,050;
glass and brass
necklace, £830,
all Dior. Far right:
the hallwayher mother worked as a designer at Fendi,
as part of the team that developed the
famous Baguette handbag. ‘There are pic-
tures of me aged three in the showroom,
organising bags with my brother,’ Regini
says. ‘When I was a child, fashion was a
part of everything that we did, but it was
never glamorised – it was just my mum’s
job.’ As a teenager, she used to take days off
school to go to the shows.
At the time, Chiuri was pro-
ducing spectacular catwalk
looks at Valentino with her
long-time cre a tive partner
Pierpaolo Piccioli, modern-
ising the brand’s couture and
pushing it to the forefront of
the industry. ‘I attended a
Cath olic institution in the
local neigh bourhood and, like
other people my age, I rem-
ember just wanting to blend in with my
friends,’ she says. ‘But I always felt like I was
the weird one who didn’t fit in.’
By 16, Regini had relocated to London
in order to study at an international college.‘I had never lived alone
before, and was anxious,
but my mum told me
not to worry – if you fail,
you just come back to
Rome,’ she says. ‘She
gave me a safety net – this idea that failure
was OK.’ Regini’s move to the British
capital was also key to the evolution of
her own look: ‘I met so many people from
different backgrounds, and I realised no
one cared what I wore. That’s when I started
developing a type of style.’ She went on
to complete an art-history degree at Gold-
smiths University, before studying for a
masters in gender, media and culture. ‘I
had been reading so much about women in
art, and performance artists like Carolee
Schneemann, so it was the logical next
step,’ she says.
It was Regini who first introduced her
mother to the influential feminist essay
‘Why have there been no great women
artists? ’ by the art historian Linda Nochlin.
‘When something excites me, I talk to my
mother about it,’ she says. ‘Creative people