The Fashionable Life - House Of Style

Fashion editor and stylist Giovanna Battaglia Engelbert’s chic Swedish home is filled with quirky treasures, much like her wardrobe.

- Lucy Halfhead

“Every time I leave the house is a chance to dress up,” says the Italian stylist and fashion editor Giovanna Battaglia Engelbert, reclining on a white Charlotte Perriand daybed in her elegant Stockholm apartment. “Whether it’s for a business meeting or just going to the supermarket, I try to be the best version of myself.”

So it’s no surprise that for her three-day wedding in Capri in 2016 to Swedish real-estate developer Oscar Engelbert—held on a huge cargo ship in the middle of the Mediterranean to get around the island’s strict noise curfew—the bride wore a dazzling array of outfits, from an Alexander McQueen gown with a huge, ruffled organza train to a metallic Prada dress for the disco-themed after-party.

Battaglia Engelbert’s fantasy fashion life began on the cobbled streets of Milan, where she was born and brought up during the ’80s by parents who were both artists. “As a child, I remember being fascinated by the clothes in the shop windows and waiting excitedly outside the Società del Giardino to watch the celebrities arriving for the Versace show,” she says. “But my family wasn’t thrilled about it. Today, art and fashion are best friends, but back then, art in Milan was an elite world and fashion was not seen as very intellectual.”