Magpie Haven

Dior’s Rachele Regini has adorned her Chelsea home with colourful artworks and feminist literature that inspire her diverse wardrobe.

- Lucy Halfhead

Rachele Regini opens the door to her first-floor Chelsea apartment, situated on a quiet, leafy square between the stylish boutiques of King’s Road and the upmarket furniture shops of Brompton Cross. The bright space is filled with tributes to her close-knit family, including a series of beautiful black-and-white portraits of Regini with her mother, Dior’s Artistic Director Maria Grazia Chiuri, that hangs in the hallway. “We’re spending even more time together,” Regini says, referring to her new role working alongside Chiuri as an advisor to the Dior creative studio. “My job is to make sure that all our ideas about gender, cultural appropriation and the academic side of what my mother decides to incorporate into the collections are well researched.”

Regini grew up in Rome, where her mother worked as a designer at Fendi, as part of the team that developed the famous Baguette handbag. “There are pictures of me aged three in the showroom, organising bags with my brother,” Regini says. “When I was a child, fashion was a part of everything that we did, but it was never glamourised—it was just my mum’s job.” As a teenager, she used to take days off school to go to the shows. At the time, Chiuri was producing spectacular catwalk looks at Valentino with her long-time creative partner Pierpaolo Piccioli, modernising the brand’s couture and pushing it to the forefront of the industry. “I attended a Catholic institution in the local neighbourhood and, like other people my age, I remember just wanting to blend in with my friends,” she says. “But I always felt like I was the weird one who didn’t fit in.”