Modern Heritage: Alessandra Branca’s Design Philosophy

In a 19th-century Chicago townhouse, Alessandra Branca had a color problem. Her client wanted purple, the designer’s least favorite color. Branca found a pinkish violet she loved, then paired Gustavian chairs with a sculptural coffee table and a square-tufted sofa. Above a French limestone fireplace she hung a Damien Hirst mandala. Finally, she dressed Gio Ponti chairs in a melodramatic Vivaldi fabric by Fortuny. This was [modern heritage] in a single room: an old house made contemporary through vintage furniture, modern art, and Baroque-inspired fabric. Describing this beautiful marriage of the past and present, Branca says: “When it all comes together, it’s like magic.” The room became a practical expression of the philosophy Branca shares with Fortuny: preserve the tradition, and let it evolve. The result was so persuasive that she uses the room in her talks.

Heritage Is No Longer Old-Fashioned

Branca grew up in Rome surrounded by living history. As the granddaughter of an art historian and critic for the Vatican, she spent her childhood wandering into churches, studying their ceilings and architectural details. Her mother, an artist, taught her color theory while mixing pure pigments in her studio. That education influences how she creates homes that are steeped in history, yet remain effortlessly modern. “I am Italian and I do interiors, and this is my expression of what my clients want,” she says.

After moving to America, Branca established her design firm in Chicago in 1981. Her Italian education accompanied her into American interiors, where she learned to combine antiques with contemporary pieces. In 2020, she launched Casa Branca, extending her work into fabrics, wallpapers, and furnishings. Today, alongside her interior design practice, Casa Branca has a Palm Beach boutique, a West Palm Beach atelier, and a Los Angeles showroom. Her website carries items from yesterday that are yearning to become part of someone else’s daily life, including a pair of 19th-century Venetian arm chairs and a porcelain cockatiel lamp.

Through those decades, Fortuny has remained part of her work. Branca traces her relationship with our House back 45 years, to buying fabric in New York, and installing it in some of her most famous projects. She says that Fortuny stands the test of time, and is immune to passing trends: “If something becomes a trend, I start running in the other direction. I’m a contrarian as a designer, but I also love juxtapositions, and I enjoy the contrast between the old and the new because of the energy that those two can create.” Adding Fortuny to a contemporary piece of furniture gives a historic pattern a modern twist, or, as she likes to tell clients: “This is not your grandmother’s Fortuny.”

The Difference Between Nostalgia and Heritage

If nostalgia asks the present to impersonate the past, then heritage allows old knowledge to keep working. Branca might cover an 18th-century chair in an updated Fortuny pattern or put an older design on a mid-century seat. “You can’t get stuck on its history because you have to take it for what it does for you,” she says. An old chair might already have outlived the fashion that produced it, but in a room assembled from items from many periods, it can enjoy a second life. In this era of fast fashion, this is a breath of fresh air.

Venice as a Living Archive

Mining the past for inspiration is not as easy as visiting flea markets and hoping for the best. Asked what a young designer should study in Venice or Rome, Branca dispenses with the notebook. “In Venice, you have this constant shimmer. Just open your eyes and let it go into you, and then go home and think of how it relates.” The luster of Fortuny against a flatter surface attracts her; sometimes she even uses a fabric’s reverse. That is Branca’s talent: finding something new in Fortuny by looking at what was already there, preserving the pattern’s character while giving it a different expression. “I love the back because it’s even more of a whisper,” she says.

Why Authenticity Wins in the AI Era

For Branca, the discussion of craft in an age of artificial intelligence comes back to watching people work. She once filmed Venetian glassmakers at work for her website; one glass took three people 30 minutes to finish. “And I had a newfound respect for this unbelievable art and work and the effort put in,” she says. She urges designers to visit studios and watch craftspeople at work. To see how pieces from yesterday came into being.

That attention governs her choice of Fortuny’s [modern upholstery fabrics]. “You have to touch it,” she insists. “It’s not just pretty.” She considers the hand of the cloth, its color, and the way cotton catches light. Fortuny’s artisans “put their heart and soul into what they’re doing, and it shows,” she says. For Branca, continuing the craft also means allowing it to develop. That, she says, is the ethos at the heart of Fortuny: “I think there’s a respect for the past, but a willingness to dip their toe into the future that I personally like.”

Why the Future Needs Roots

When clients ask for [timeless interior designs], Branca thinks about what a room will leave behind. “I never worry about my personal legacy; I do worry about the legacy that I put into a place.” She would include a room she designed 35 or 40 years ago in a new book because, to her eye, it still feels current. Its mix of periods gives it a life beyond the moment it was made. Explaining why her work has endured, she says: “Because it has elements of then and now, and it has contemporary things and it has modern things, it has antique things. It is the mix that I’ve grown up with.”

The Chicago room shows how that thinking works in practice. A client’s insistence on purple, an old textile pattern, vintage furniture, and a Hirst above the fireplace gave Branca something unpredictable. By combining the past with the future, she created something that will live on for many years.

You might start your own project with a piece of furniture with a previous life or a Fortuny textile that tells the story of another era. Visit our showrooms in Venice or New York to discover fabrics to touch, study in the light, and imagine somewhere unexpected.