Left: in Forquet’s sitting room in Rome, a 17th-century bas-relief by Alessandro Algardi hangs above an early- 19th-century mantel “Forquet’s clothes and interiors both have the same distinction of line, and a kind of elegant drama,” Hamish Bowles says So why did Forquet suddenly ditch fashion in the early 1970s? It was a time when major designers were going global – branching into licensing and hiring big teams to build their prêt-à-porter operations. “I was no longer enchanted,” Forquet says. “It was all about ready-towear, and I was not born for that.” On a whim he began designing fabrics for Gustav Zumsteg of the famed Swiss silk house Abraham, which led to his first interior-design projects. Forquet’s most striking interiors combine formal traditionalism with Neapolitan verve. Custom hand-painted fabrics cover walls, chairs and sofas; Baroque consoles are topped with Roman sculpture fragments, ancient micromosaics and neoclassical candlesticks. Forquet has a way of bringing various bygone worlds together and making them all come alive, as at Palazzo Torlonia in Rome, where the 17th-century Dutch tapestries, red-velvet Régence chairs and Indian brocade tablecloths somehow look like they were made for one another. Dotted around Forquet’s projects are many of his own stunning one-offs – side tables, shelving, objets d’art. And when you least expect it, you might spot some wicker. Marella Agnelli – the patrician wife of Fiat mogul Gianni Agnelli and a lifelong friend of Forquet’s – was famous for using rattan furniture to add a subtle dash of humility to the grandest of salons. It turns out it was Forquet who first introduced Agnelli to Italy’s revered wicker maker, Bonacina. Seeing Forquet’s groovy 1960s culottes sharing space in the book with his timeless interiors might raise a question: did the clothes and the rooms spring from the same brain? In fact, they’re both part of a consistent vision, one that’s rooted in classical refinement, A toga-inspired evening ensemble by Forquet originally worn by Frances de Villers Brokaw Corrias 70 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
Clockwise from top left: the garden of Ginevra Elkann, a friend of Forquet’s; Forquet in his home in Naples; the green salon inside Rome’s Palazzo Torlonia that was restored by the designer PHOTOS GUIDO TARONI Mediterranean exuberance and a reverence for superb craftsmanship. “The clothes and the interiors both have the same distinction of line, and a kind of elegant drama,” Bowles says. “Federico himself is full of surprises and charm, and I think his interiors are too. For all their grandeur, they’re very convivial places.” The same could be said of Forquet’s garden designs. Heavily influenced by the English style (Russell Page was a close friend), they show how a formal structure can serve as a solid foundation for a disciplined kind of wildness. It’s as if the plants can be set free because they know exactly how to behave. Forquet’s landscaping talents reached their ultimate expression at his Tuscan property, in the village of Cetona: a series of terraced “garden rooms” leads downhill from the house, with a cypress-dotted landscape in the background, evoking the great Florentine paintings. When Forquet bought the place in 1969 with his longtime partner, press agent Matteo Spinola (who died in 2006), it consisted of two squat stone buildings, with no electricity or running water and a few empty fields. Forquet still spends most of his time in Cetona. “For me now this place is like Arcadia,” he says. “You know the shepherds of Greece, tending their sheep on Mount Olympus? I feel like that here, like I’m in the company of all the classical gods.” When I ask Forquet what he learned about himself while working with Bowles on the book – the two spent weeks sifting through more than seven decades of photos of Forquet’s clothes, interiors, antiques collections and gardens – he lets out a big laugh. “Can I tell you something terrible? I still like everything I did, right from the beginning. I would change very little, not even the details. It’s been almost 75 years, but I still like all the same things.” • CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM 71
