Style secrets of the Roman woman

La sciura: perhaps you’ve heard of her. Derived from an old Lombard word for “lady” or “ma’am”, a sciura is the embodiment of Milanese élan: tailored, understated, bourgeois-slim and usually of a certain age – “a woman whose elegant air and extensive designer closet propel her through daily life with unmistakable glamour”, as Harper’s Bazaar declared in an article titled “Here’s Why We’re in the Era of Sciura Style”.

Rome, a city that in its 2,778-year history has begotten a few notable eras, is not in its sciura one. That woman doesn’t have the purchase here that she does up in buttoned-up Lombardy. Milan is Milan; Rome is Eternal, and its history anchors the way people live, and look, in very different ways. “When you look at the Forum, you can only understand it as a site that has been built over again and again,” says James Finnegan, one half of the photography duo Hill & Aubrey, who shot the images here. “You’re looking at 1,000 years of history built atop one another.” Take the voluptuous 17th-century San Lorenzo in Miranda, which rises up from the ruins of a 7th-century basilica, which was itself built on top of the 2nd-century BC Temple of Antonino and Faustina. Such practical palimpsests are the quintessence of Rome. 

Though a putative Roman style is, it turns out, a hard thing to quantify, inevitably all those eras collectively inform the way Romans put themselves together. Silvia Venturini Fendi, a scion of one of the city’s great fashion houses, has been known to patronise De Ritis, the famed purveyor of sacred vestments, to have a cape or coat made. Her daughter, the 38-year-old jewellery designer Delfina Delettrez, often favours themes of memento mori and reliquaries, the gilded macabre of baroque Rome, when creating her collections. “I look for traditions I can twist” is how she puts it.

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Tradition with a twist is Roman style, says Rachele Regini. “It is about how we live in proximity to so much beauty and antiquity but make it modern and relevant.” Born and raised in the elegant Monteverde neighbourhood, 29-year-old Regini oversees programming at Rome’s historic Teatro della Cometa, which she and her mother Maria Grazia Chiuri, former Dior women’s artistic director – and new Fendi chief creative officer – recently restored. “What’s very Roman is having a dialogue with tradition, with feminine lineage and inheritance.” Mothers and grandmothers bequeath eras of style to the next generation, she notes: “That comes with the culture.” What differentiates the Roman inheritance is how much of it is artisanal – what Delettrez once described as “a number of small boutiques, selling things made by a small number of hands”.

For heirloom gold and gems think of Massimo Maria Melis, whose designs take their cues from antiquity; or Schostal – the eminently Roman haberdashery-turned-global breakout star thanks to social media – for the pyjamas Roma bene has been wearing since 1870. Cristina Bomba delivers a more austere take at her Atelier Bomba: fine knits, understated shapes, bespoke commissions, all rooted in the traditions of Roman tailoring. Fur remains very much a part of the style arsenal too (though today most of it is inherited or vintage); a stole and short silk sleeve – or a bare shoulder – is paired with insouciance by mothers and daughters alike.

At L’Archivio di Monserrato, Soledad Twombly sells womenswear of her own design along with vintage fashion and textiles, accessories and the odd watercolour by her former husband, the artist Alessandro Twombly (son of Cy). “Soledad Twombly is the best-dressed Roman ever,” says Marie-Louise Sciò, CEO and creative director of Pellicano Hotels, herself one of the best-dressed Romans. Born in Argentina, raised a bit everywhere, Twombly has lived and worked here for nearly 30 years. Her designs pay tribute to her adoptive home, with a palette that borrows both earth and ice-cream shades from Rome’s grand façades and concealing-revealing silks and velvets that speak to the sensuality of life here: light, colour, heat.

But is Roman style, by definition, sexy? “It’s a sexy city,” says Regini. “Definitely sexier than Milan.” Sexiness is a byproduct in part of practicality, she says; Rome is warmer and lusher, and beckons one outdoors more. “I’ll do a little slip dress that was my mom’s and a pair of really old sandals.”

“Sexy…? I’m not sure it’s the first word that comes to mind,” muses Sciò. “Overall, I would say there’s a laid-back chicness to it. And that when a Roman is elegant, she’s really elegant.”

For his part, James Finnegan rather poetically locates Roman style in memory. “In the archaeological museum in Naples there’s a portrait, dating from antiquity, of a very beautiful woman holding a pen to her mouth,” he says. “During casting for this shoot I couldn’t stop thinking of how much Conie [Vallese, the model on this shoot] looks like her. There is something very eternal about her beauty. She is kind of this eternal woman who inhabits this city.”

Model, Conie Vallese at Viva. Casting, Piergiorgio Del Moro and Helena Balladino at DM Casting. Hair, Alexander Soltermann at Home. Make-up, Samia Mohsein. Stylist’s assistants, Anne Elizabeth Voortmeijer and Aylin Bayhan. Retouching, Perfect Pixel. Production, Riccardo Magno at Magma