Archive Stories

Marie’s relation with the press was candid and prolific. Lately, Laguna~B archivist Marta Dell’Era has assembled a collection of dozens of magazines – Vogue, L’Officiel, Town & Country, Elle, and many more – featuring our founder and her Goto glasses from different angles and ages. The story of the Glass Countess, a French-born Rothschild heir who abruptly left her Wall Street job to follow the love of her life in Venice – and eventually start a small but eclectic glassware business – was naturally appealing to both editors and readers across the world.

Those articles – mostly interviews, and first-person essays – are carefully preserved in gray plastic boxes in our Archive, some still inside the original paper magazines that contained them, others simply as single torn-out pages. Today, they emerge as crucial source material for learning about Laguna~B’s inception through its founder’s own words and thoughts.

“Venice is a museum city,” Marie said in 1996 to Town & Country’s Ana Bernheim. The article is one of the most personal and intimate records of the highs and lows of starting a new life in Venice. In the piece, she described the city as “a difficult place to live,” and opened up about the initial fears that her decision to leave New York and follow her husband to the other side of the world would have put their relationship at risk. “A marriage that begins with one person making a huge sacrifice for the other does not necessarily lead to living happily ever after,” the author wrote. This would have been especially true had she not found a way to craft her own path. “I didn't want to move here,” she confessed to the journalist. She was 32 at the time. “But to be with Brandino, I had to." Marie was an independent, curious woman who couldn’t expect her happiness to be based merely on a good marriage. She knew few Venetians. Brandino was commuting every day to his estate, Vistorta, on the mainland, where he spent long days at the office. “Venice became a huge test of our stability," Marie continued. So what could have possibly changed her perception of Venice into a city in which she could actually live and be happy?

First, her children were born. Taking them to school every day by boat, walking them to the campo (the Venetian for “square”) to roller-skate in the afternoons, showed Marie the more familiar, daily aspects of the city – which she compared to that of a “small, provincial town,” – and helped her savor its routine. Gradually, she shaped herself into a full-time Venetian, doing what locals do: Grocery shopping in her neighborhood; moving by boat (which she learned and loved to drive); Taking fishing family trips on Sundays – “From May to July, we go fishing with the kids, have lunch at sea or explore the small islands of the lagoon, which are a bit like the Venetian countryside,” she wrote in an essay in Elle France. Living in Venice also taught her to walk fast. “We do an impressive number of kilometers during the day, which allows me to stay in shape without any other gymnastic effort. Over time, I adopted the Venetian approach. I put on flat shoes (breaking a heel would be a tragedy) and I maintain the fixed, distant gaze that discourages the countless lost tourists. You are less tired if you walk quickly. Calculated as accurately as possible, my itineraries allow me to be punctual for my appointments,” she continued in the piece.

During a boat excursion to Murano, Marie realized she could again live as a modern woman in a city “so entrenched in its fabled past.” She had always loved to “fabricate little things” by hand, and glass had always fascinated her. “I used to wander into stores looking for treasures amid the junk," she told Town & Country. When a friend brought her to a foundry in Murano to see the glassblowers at work, she decided, then and there, that would be her purpose.

Laguna~B became an emancipatory tool, allowing her to build an independent career of her own. “The idea was to make something [based] on the William Morris principle and which would be unique, unpretentious and useful and which, if it broke, it would not be a disaster,” she told House & Garden in 1998. The best time of her day – she went on – was early morning, when she traveled across the lagoon headed to Murano. In the piece, she reveals the inspiration behind the name of her business: “It was the thrilling intensity of colors on the water, which made me think of the company's name, Laguna B.” Honoring his mother’s fondness for waves and everything wavy (also recalled by her friend Michela Scibilia in our latest FQW) Marcantonio later added the “~” sign, which is now a non-negotiable part of Laguna~B’s name and logo.

House & Garden also reported that Marie’s Goto glasses were copied quickly after their release. But that didn’t bother our founder. “I took my inspiration - and desire to create something joyous that wouldn't be taken too seriously - from something that already existed. It’s just a new stage in its evolution”. She was referring to the goti de fornasa – chunky drinking vessels that glassmakers used to make for themselves with leftovers that weren’t supposed to leave the hot shop.

From the Archive, I’ve recovered a special feature in Vogue Paris, printed in December 1995/January 1996, and titled “Voyage à Venise.” It includes an illustrated record of Jean-Philippe Delhomme’s first time in Venice, with watercolor-painted vignettes, following one scene set on the Orient Express at cocktail hour and another at Harry’s Bar. A particular illustration stands out: It shows our founder, Marie, working in the furnace with a glass master assisting her. She’s wearing her signature oversized denim shirt – a sort of uniform of her days in the hot shop. She’s crafting her “Mirò conceptuels”, as the caption reads. Delhomme is a Paris-based fashion illustrator, painter, and writer. 

In one of the Archive boxes labeled “Press,” I discovered a special issue of L’Officiel from 2013, whose guest editor-in-chief was Marie’s friend Vincent Darré, the renowned interior designer and photographer. The issue was dedicated to our founder, who had passed away that year. It opened with an editor’s note:

Flipping through the magazine’s pages, I noticed a card signed “Maison Darré”  included as an additional tribute: “Dear All, this number of L’Officiel is dedicated to Marie. I hope you’ll like it. With all my affection, Vincent.” Darré had taken the photos for the famous Town & Country piece 17 years prior. Next month, I’ll visit him with the Laguna~B team in Paris and interview him for our Five Questions With column, in a quest to learn how his and Marie’s lives – two such extraordinary ones – intersected.

For how many interviews, portraits, and articles the international press produced on Marie, something about her inevitably defied descriptions and codes. Dressed in a princess outfit, with a light green-and-lilac satin gown and matching gloves, her long red hair loose over her shoulders, Marie offers the camera a melancholic look. She’s sitting on a golden, padded baroque bench. In that picture, shot by Darré, she really is a queen straight out of a fairytale, posing in her castle. Magazines loved to portray her that way. But she was also someone completely different. In another photo, she’s dancing in an Emilio Pucci stretch dress, her head bent back for the laughs. In a black & white portrait featured in Town & Country, she wears punk heavy makeup, which makes her look a little bit like Mina, the Italian diva singer. Then, she appears in a Snoopy hoodie or at work wearing loose denim outfits. She was a noblewoman, yes, but she couldn’t care less, and the contrast with her easy-going attitude was part of the mysterious charm the international press constantly tried to capture. Maybe a more accurate portrait of Marie might be drawn from looking at her Goto glasses: “Her bright yellow, red and blue glasses with Matisse-like squiggles and bursting shapes contrast sharply with Venice's traditional baroque chandeliers and ornate crystal goblets,” a journalist wrote. While Marie embodied the most romantic, cliché aspects of Venice, she also turned them upside down. When contrasting worlds collide, they always pave the way for something new.