A Former Fashion Designer's Beautiful Home in Milan

HOUSE TOUR | ROOMS & GARDENS | WORLD OF CABANA

Former fashion designer and founder of textile company Malaga4, Monica Dolfini, invites Cabana to explore her beautiful Milanese home - a spacious New York loft-style apartment bathed in natural light and full of vintage furniture, antiques and flamboyant recycled fabrics.

BY SARA PIERDONÀ | ROOMS & GARDENS | 18 JANUARY 2025

A creative partnership: friends Monica Dolfini (left) and Selvaggia Alazraki photographed at Monica's home in Milan.

The former fashion designer and founder of Malaga4 - a collection of objects and bags made from flamboyant recycled fabrics - remembers her move to Milan as a time when instinct trumped practicality. "I had a small child and was pregnant with my second," Monica recalls. "We moved into this house, which was a building site, exactly ten days before the birth. But the experience of [my] first child had not persuaded me to choose a ‘baby-proof’ house, because those were the years when I, idealistically, let aesthetics take over."

The property has proved inspirational in more ways than one, with Monica even naming her new business after its location (the house sits on Milan's Via Malaga). The apartment has also been the site of more ideas, a place where Monica's imagination has free rein. After the success of Malaga4's vibrant, patterned bags - which are made by women incarcerated in Italian prisons as part of a social reintegration project - comes a new line of recycled fabric poufs.

Perhaps Monica recognized her new home's potential, and the positive impact the move would have on her business and creativity. "I was not frightened by this house in a neighborhood that [some] considered sketchy," Monica notes. "Some of the features I found irresistible probably came from a desire for revenge against my New York home. I had loved New York, but the flat was small, and certain rooms were dark. Entering the kitchen first thing in the morning and having to turn on the light made me very sad. So I looked for a house in Milan with two imperatives: light and space".

Nevertheless, in New York Monica learnt about the culture and appeal of loft living, which by the end of the 1990s had reached Milan too, imposing itself in the only Italian city where ‘industrial style’ would not be a disgrace. However, her search for a Milanese loft began with disappointment. "It seemed that Milanese lofts were the result of a manoeuvre of surveyors and building speculators, rather than the intuition of artists and architects, as in New York. So, all the lofts for sale that we visited had been finished in a brutal way."

Monica and her then-husband had almost given up hope when they discovered an old abandoned tannery on Via Malaga. There was a lot of space: work areas, storage rooms, and additional square footage when they dismantled the old hoist. The windows were huge, with beautiful metal frames that let in all the light of a less densely populated downtown area, and the kitchen was already there (it was the one used for the workers' canteen). "We redid the floor, the staircase and added a few doors, buying them from an antique dealer, but the structure remained basically the same," Monica explains.

Almost all the furniture was acquired from interesting places: some of the lamps were iconic design pieces, such as Castiglioni's, while others were scavenged at flea markets. Old Irish union benches were placed around the dining table, reupholstered in elegant white leather, while smaller items are travel souvenirs or collected over the years. Recently, her new poufs have been added too.

"Interior design is a foray into new lands," says Monica, who has always dedicated her prolific career, and great taste, to fashion. "[I doubt] the line of poufs would have ever seen the light of day had it not been thanks to my friend, Selvaggia, a yoga teacher." Selvaggia wanted to launch a line of yoga cushions because the ones used in classes were never "nice enough" to stay in the living room after the exercises were over. 

With Monica's knowledge of fabrics, and by using the recycled materials used for her bags - the hallmark of Malaga4 - she was able to contribute ideas and expertise. Last spring, the pair began work on their prototype and the collaboration has since proved so successful that they are now working on a taller version of the pouf, which could serve as a coffee table. Both women agree that beautiful, well-made objects can prove therapeutic.