Luisa Casati: A Living Work of Art

If Luisa Casati did not exist, designers and artists would have to invent her, but would probably still fall short of what she strived to create of herself as "a work of art," living her life as a rebellion against the mundane.

- RICKY TOLEDO & CHITO VIJANDRE

Whereas celebrities today garb themselves in leopard-skin prints, the Italian heiress and art patroness pranced around naked but for a fur cloak, with pet cheetahs on diamond leashes, live snakes round her neck and a torch-bearing blackamoor lighting her way.

To make an entrance at a party, she wore a couture dress of light bulbs that electrocuted her into a backward somersault. She was, no doubt, the most scandalous woman of her day, astounding the most jaded members of the international aristocracy.

Even Pablo Picasso, the disruptor himself, could not erase his memory of the Marchesa after attending a dinner party that she hosted in Rome in 1917. He could still recall the footmen in their 18th-century livery throwing copper filings into the fireplace to turn the flames a brilliant green, the massive boa constrictor that formed a coiled pattern on a polar bear skin rug and a flock of albino blackbirds dyed in different colors. There were also mechanical birds in gilded cages and white peacocks perched on every window.