The maximalist world of Lisa Corti

When Ida Corti was a little girl, her mother — the founder of the eponymous Milanese home textiles and fashion emporium Lisa Corti — would clothe her in her own clean-lined, kaleidoscopic-print kaftans. These hand-block printed Indian cotton creations were worlds away from the frilled and embroidered confections of her bambina contemporaries. “I remember being at a birthday party aged six and everyone else wearing these huge floral dresses,” says Ida, now 59. “I knew I stood out, but I soon came to realise this was an advantage.”

Today, the two friendly but formidable women are seated side by side in the serene Porta Venezia apartment that Lisa, 82, has called home since 2018. Everywhere there are notes of the boldly graphic textiles that she and her team have continued to conjure for close to 60 years, with Ida as chief executive for the past 14 years.

Dividing the business evenly between interiors and fashion from the beginning, Lisa was influential in pioneering the concept of the lifestyle brand that has become the norm. Today, the offering spans table linens, cushions, fabrics and summery clothes for women and men. “There’s no separation between the home and the wardrobe,” says Ida. “The same pattern is applied to a kaftan, a chair, a curtain.”

In tune with the growing crossover between fashion and interiors, in the past five years Corti linens have aligned with the tablescaping trend that sees dinner tables turned into canvases. Her bestselling 180 x 270cm floral tablecloths are priced from €190, and adorn the tables of everyone from Inès de la Fressange to Anna Wintour, who named Lisa Corti’s Via Lecco store her favourite Milanese shopping spot.

As well as having the power to uplift, Lisa’s designs have a wonderfully liberal, anything-goes ethos. Textiles double as bedspreads, tablecloths, wall hangings or stylish cover-ups for unsightly chairs and sofas, making them decorative foil for renters and renovators alike. Perhaps her greatest strength has been in consistently staying true to her aesthetic, even throughout what Ida dubs “the beige and grey years” of the 1990s.

“She has created her own visual language that communicates in any context — from an ancient villa to a modernist interior,” Ida says. “She’s never tried to please everyone.” For Lisa, colour has always been instinctive, emotive — and the key to a happy house.

Lisa’s personal history is as rich as the tabletop textiles that have become such a stealth fashion staple. Born in Eritrea, east Africa, to working-class Italian parents, Corti enjoyed a blissfully free-range childhood. Everything changed, however, when she was sent, aged nine, to a strict, seven-days-a-week convent school where pupils were allowed only 30 minutes a day to chat, and just one outing a month.

It didn’t stop 16-year-old Lisa from meeting Neno Corti di Santo Stefano Belbo, the youngest son of an aristocratic Italian family, whose passion for collecting ceramics and antiquities saw him travel on cargo ships to China, India and, en route home, to Eritrea. The pair married and moved to Milan, where Lisa, now 18, closeted at the convent for almost a decade, found herself alienated and an outsider. “It was a complete shock to her,” says her daughter.

But she had her great beauty. “She was the original influencer,” explains Ida. “All the ateliers wanted her to be seen in their clothes.” The Italian photographer Ugo Mulas shot her in Valentino reclining on a Henry Moore sculpture in the gardens of Villar Perosa, west of Turin, for Vogue, her long hair cascading as she trained her feline gaze on the camera. Legendary modelling agent Eileen Ford tried, but failed, to sign her.

Tapping into the creativity of her childhood became a means to carve out her own identity in this conservative Milanese society. Lisa’s earliest memory is seeing the huge, bright rolls of cotton voile fabrics piled up at the local Eritrean market. These iridescent Indian fabrics, known as “mezzero” (linen), went on to form the foundation for her very first piece — a vibrant, tapestry-style bedspread with a concentric design set in a solid frame. Soon afterwards, Lisa spotted some imported Indian hand-blocked fabrics in a Milanese department store and made them into kaftans. The response was instant. The Italian fashion press picked up on her first collection, and the Milanese mondana clamoured to wear her creations.

“People were curious about this beautiful outsider who didn’t play bridge or go to parties like the other ladies,” says Ida. Instead, Lisa devoted her days to sitting with the local seamstress to bring her unconventional designs to life. Though she was in her own secluded world, she was in step with the new wave of 1960s fashion. When Elio Fiorucci opened his first store in 1967, he commissioned Corti to create a rainbow collection of kaftans that adorned the shop windows, becoming her first stockist; the film director Michelangelo Antonioni was similarly enamoured, organising a party where everyone was dressed in Corti’s clothes.

Growing up, Ida was proud of her young mother, but she was a rebellious adolescent. At 20, she swapped Milan for a college in Wales before moving to New York, and later to Rome, to immerse herself in the film industry, working on titles with the likes of Jane Campion. After starting a family, she dabbled in the world of commercials, but as her mother grew older, the time felt right for her to join the business officially, becoming CEO in 2008. Today, her cinematic past life, and her study of 15th-century Italian art at La Sapienza university in Rome, informs the collections, bringing depth and breadth to the founding vision.

“My mother is still the creative soul,” says Ida, who is also a painter. “She’s the inspirational source that we all feed from.” Corti senior continues to sketch out designs and ideas from her home studio every day, while being happily liberated from the pressures of deadlines and production schedules with Ida at the helm.

Taking visual cues from anything from film to tapestry to friends’ homes, Lisa still draws her designs by hand, cutting and pasting, layering up patterns and playing around with the shapes and scales on the photocopier to form a collage. The finished form is often reminiscent of a mandala. “She couldn’t not create,” says her daughter. Even today, Lisa cuts a slim figure, carefully dressed, with coral-coloured nails.

As the brand nears its 60th birthday next year, there are collaborations — and more menswear — to look forward to. It is also an emotive moment: Lisa will step down as art director, allowing her daughter to take her place.

Ida inherits a company in robust health. After slow and steady progress since the brand was established in 1963, over the past five years the company has seen an explosion in sales. Since 2017, turnover has more than doubled. In 2018, the company opened up to two investors, Elena Accornero and Lisa Guittard, who are operationally involved as CFO and CMO. Together they have expanded the wholesale offering by 30 per cent to 110 stockists, including Matches Fashion and Liberty.

“People have suddenly rediscovered the importance of having colour and pattern in their homes,” Ida says of the growth. When the world shut down in the spring of 2020, the Cortis were ready, having focused their efforts on streamlining their digital offering in the preceding years. Though the company works with influencers on a casual basis, most relationships begin organically with the so-called friends of the brand starting out as customers.

Whether embellished with painterly blooms, leopard print, graphic stripes or, as is often the case, a combination of all three, these textiles have a harmony that continues to capture the contemporary mood. This highly distinctive, eternally positive aesthetic seems to say: Whatever is happening outside, when you’re at home with Lisa Corti, the future is bright.

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