Franca Sozzani’s homes reflect the late Vogue Italia editor's lifelong passion for art and design.

In trim pencil skirts, chic cardigans, and kitten heels, her long, wavy, golden locks framing her glowing aquamarine eyes, Franca Sozzani, the longtime editor of Italian Vogue, was always the picture of perfection. The Milan-based editrix, who passed away just before Christmas, adopted a similarly uniform look for her homes, which she bought and flipped like a savvy Las Vegas card dealer. In each residence—her former New York townhouse, the Milan apartment, a family getaway in Portofino—Sozzani’s take on interiors was rigorously reductive. Stern black and white lines created a spotless and fuss-free gallery-like aesthetic in all her domestic surroundings (except for a riad in Marrakech, decorated some 30 years ago in a slightly more unbuttoned bohemian style and kept that way).
“If I weren’t in fashion, I would have gone into real estate or architecture,” she said in an interview last fall. “But not interior design. Because what I really like is the division of the house, not where to put the couch and flowers.”

“She was always a minimalist,” notes her son, the filmmaker and photographer Francesco Carrozzini. “The furniture was always clean-lined, modern Italian and modern Scandinavian. The visual interest didn’t come from curtains or wallpapers; it was the way she layered things. Her houses were truly an expression of her personal philosophy. When she wasn’t working, she was thinking about her places: what she was going to do next—planning, fixing, doing in the garden.”

Sozzani first spotted her Paris property, a magnificent 19th-century townhouse, while browsing an issue of AD France after an haute couture show six years ago. “I went immediately,” she recalled. “It was in bad shape, divided into three apartments, but it totally blew my mind. I said, ‘I want it!’ I knew there was great potential.”
To refurbish as well as furnish the four-story home, Sozzani called upon one of her closest friends, Massimiliano Locatelli, who combined the existing apartments and then slashed huge holes in the ground-floor walls to bring air and light into the entry and living and dining rooms. “What I like most about Massimiliano is that he’s an architect,” Sozzani said with a laugh. “I’m sick of all these decorators! They’re too decorative. I love talking to architects.”

The living room features an Alvar Aalto lounge chair, a mink-covered Sacco chair by Zanotta, and two vintage Marco Zanuso Sleep-O-Matic sofas placed back to back. An Andreas Gursky C-print hangs in the hallway. Styling by Ana Cardinale.
The living room features an Alvar Aalto lounge chair, a mink-covered Sacco chair by Zanotta, and two vintage Marco Zanuso Sleep-O-Matic sofas placed back to back. An Andreas Gursky C-print hangs in the hallway. Styling by Ana Cardinale.

“She could have been one,” Locatelli notes. “She even did the lighting and electricity plan for this house. She never wanted to come to the work site, because she hated dust, but she would make me send her photos documenting every single corner.”

In her Paris home, pure white walls contrast with wood floors dyed black. Original moldings were reproduced, while the doors and ceilings all retain their bronze patina. A magnificent skylight was added to the top floor, and the basement was converted into quarters for staff. On one visit, Locatelli sent Sozzani iPhone photos of this lower level, where the walls are clad in white subway tile. “In a picture of a maid’s room—just a small space, not the main living room or her own bedroom—she immediately spotted a tiny white wire next to the doorframe and focused on it,” he recalls. “ ‘That’s where the sconce will go,’ I told her. She said, ‘No, not there.’ When I got back to my office and looked at the plans, I saw she was right. She knew exactly where she wanted each light, outlet, and switch. No detail escaped her vision.”

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The Homes of Vogue Italia's Late Franca Sozzani | Architectural Digest