In the winding, ivy-draped streets of Trastevere, Rome, Zazie Gnecchi Ruscone is hand-painting sharp geometric patterns on a long wrap skirt, layering strokes of earthy green. She’s in the studio she shares with her mother and sister, a light-drenched Bauhaus-style glass warehouse you might recognize from Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci.
“Normally I don’t do sketches before painting because I’m really impulsive,” explains Gnecchi Ruscone, who is a textile artisan. Instead, she acts by intuition, drawing inspiration from “everything,” she says, but especially the city in which she lives. “I moved to Rome because Paris was too stimulating—too many things to see,” the artist adds. “I was blocked in my own creativity. Rome is slower; it’s like a village. You don’t follow a path. You do your own thing.”
Zazie Gnecchi Ruscone in her studio.
Courtesy of Zazie Gnecchi Ruscone
Gnecchi Ruscone, best known for her colorfully painted pillows and recently, printed garments, is not alone in finding creative refuge in the ancient city most often sought out for its past. She’s among a quiet but growing community of young designers, curators, and artists drawing influence from Rome’s particular brand of charming, insular chaos—zeroing in on the capital’s frenetic energy and a culture of thriving artisanship that has long faded from Italy’s other metropolises. In Rome, “everyone knows each other,” says Gnecchi Ruscone. “And we help each other. If you want to do something, you know who to call.”
Her peers include Antonine Peduzzi and Luisa Orsini, founders of knitwear and bag line TL-180; Dorothea Orsini, whose fantastical line of sleepwear Dorso elevates the nighttime ritual; vintage purveyor Olivia La Roche of O. La Roche; Brazilian-Italian artist Ala d’Amico, whose studio Orme serves as a hub for experimental printmaking in the city; and artists Valeria Giampietro and Alessandro Cicoria, the founders of curatorial project Studioli.
La Roche, for one, came to Rome after living in New York and Los Angeles. “It was the first time in my adult life that I had the kind of environment and community to explore those ideas that often go to the back burner when you’re on the treadmill of life in a big American city,” says the Northern California native. “Rome is slow—or better said, it goes at your pace. There is a richness to life and very little hustle culture. I think more and more creatives crave this, and I see the community growing.”
For La Roche, this sense of interior exploration comes to life as she sources Marithé + François Girbaud, Romeo Gigli, and “Gaultier of course,” for her vintage shop. She founded her store five years ago, but the digital treasure shop has taken on new possibilities in her Italian home. “I keep falling more and more in love with its flexibility. I build collections based on what inspires me at the time and what I want to be wearing,” she says. Currently, the focus is on materials, “beautiful jewel-tone leather, boxy knits, shearling, and long wool dresses.”
Nearby, Peduzzi and the Orsini sisters share an atelier that is filled with fine gauzy knit dresses, relaxed yet constructed soft leather bags, and silk pajama sets. Luisa Orsini and Antonine Peduzzi founded their line after discovering that a failed collaborative painting on canvas, folded in half, made an ideal base for a clutch. TL-180 has since grown to include a range of elegant, just-sheer-enough pieces—and recently, a rather magical collaboration with Maison Flâneur. Roman artisanship is key to their work. “For instance, we’ve brought knitting machines into our atelier as part of that creative push,” Orsini says. Each piece is made to order, something all the interlinked creatives hold in common.
Looks from TL-180’s collection.
Courtesy of TL-180
Luisa’s sister Dorothea works in the same space. She founded Dorso three years ago after a lifetime of cherishing bedtime rituals. “I wanted to create something reminiscent of those well-loved socks you just can’t part with—items that ground you in your daily life,” the younger Orsini muses. Lush, cinematic pieces—like the Bandana, a Spaghetti Western-inspired set, and the Dom (“a new style that merges workwear elements with a relaxed fit”)—come to life in exquisite Italian silk and surplus fabrics. “We look for deadstock textiles such as 1970s silk jacquards from Japan, cotton-silk blends, and cashmere and wool—specific fabrics intended for limited or one-of-a-kind pajama sets and robes—giving new life to resources that might otherwise go overlooked,” she explains.
D’Amico launched Orme when she moved back to Rome after spending years in other European cities. “[It] was established out of necessity,” she says. “After spending fifteen years away, I returned to Rome in search of a print shop where I could both work and print. Despite having many friends involved in printmaking, Rome lacked a collaborative space where we could come together.”
Orme was born after the pandemic. “The goal is to create a vibrant environment dedicated to exchange and experimentation in printmaking,” she explains. It’s also the home to her own practice, which is heavily inspired by the tension between nature and culture, and explores concepts like “precariousness, the anxiety of anticipated loss, silent witnesses, and ghosts,” she explains.
Ala d’Amico in her Orme art studo.
Courtesy of Ala d’Amico
Rome provides ample connection to a romantic and imagined past. “[My] fascination may be rooted in the privilege of growing up in a city like Rome—an open-air archaeological site, inextricably linked to its past, which is both grand and imposing, while its present is marked by inertia and decay,” says d’Amico.
Giampietro and Cicoria’s Studioli also makes use of the city’s history-entrenched hideaways. The duo launched the project in 2015. Like d’Amico, they saw a need for collaborative, non-institutional spaces.
“There were very few places for the exchange and sharing of ideas,” Giampieto explains.
The discovery of a hidden courtyard in the north of Rome gave the pair a jumpstart. “Our first exhibition, titled “Peonie,” was inspired by a series of dusty rooms covered with colorful carpets and furniture by Italian designers from the 1960s (such as Vico Magistretti and Cini Boeri). A place that was associated with hidden love affairs in those years,” continues Giampieto. “It was the perfect spot to collect a series of works inspired by eroticism.”
Artists books, academic collaborations, and more exhibitions—including an upcoming collection of images investigating the New York art scene in the 2000s called “IRAQ”—followed.
Together, the group is invigorating a sometimes overlooked but very much alive creative scene. “It’s a city of intriguing oppositions, where time seems suspended, yet pulses with serendipity,” says Luisa Orsini.
“Rome is already extremely rich in suggestions, so it does not need additions,” Giampieto says. There’s plenty of beauty to draw from, history to disappear into, and an artisan for every craft. “But it is still important to question the system and direction of where this city is going,” he adds.
