Every year Maria Michela Mattei, a style manager walks her students through Florence’s Palazzo Pitti. She takes them to this museum's costume gallery so they can look with their own eyes on the fashion of Florence’s past.

“It's blending together the furniture, the interior design, the wallpapers, and the dresses in the middle. I started to think, ‘there isn't a boundary between fashion and other expressions of beauty,’” she said. 

Standing in this gallery and seeing the fashion surrounded by the historic interior walls of this building, Mattei began to see fashion and interior design as parts of the same story. A person's home is just as much as their clothes are and she is the bridge between that.

On Thursday July 9, people gathered inside the Palazzi Community Center's outdoor garden. Guests sat attentive waiting for the event to start. International students and local members of the community alike had gathered for this one speaker tonight - Maria Michela Mattei. 

Mattei, who recently entered the world of real estate with “Couture Properties,” introduced this new project at the community center. A project she created to mix the worlds of fashion and real estate.

Couture is a French word which translates to high fashion with properties. With this word and applying it to her project, Mattei found her inspiration to work in another part of a person's life - their home. 

Mattei began her professional career working in fashion, and as a style manager she works to boost people's confidence and security in themselves. Her goal isn’t to help someone dress in what's trending, it's to make them feel like their true selves. 

For Mattei, finding your true self is finding the beauty in a potential home for someone. It's the same as finding a client's color palette and the right outfit. On her mission of being precise and listening to her clients' needs she said, “if you enter into a house and you immediately feel it’s aligned with your personality, your style, your values. It's like you immediately feel at home.”

Alone in her apartment during the COVID-19 pandemic, Mattei kept catching her reflection and looking away. What she was on the surface was her and yet she barely recognized the version of herself staring back at her from the mirror.

This led her to delve into the world of color. 

She said, “I remember perfectly, I was, watching myself in a mirror and would say, this is not me. This is not me. And so, during the pandemic, I started to study color analysis.”

Mattei studied how to evaluate the colors that can enhance someone's natural beauty, thus moving on to connect it to interior design. She thinks of the makeup, hair and wardrobe as something that connects to helping clients find a home. Color analysis is just as important in the home. It's what can make someone shine when standing in the place they are most comfortable.  

Fashion, color and home all entangled into one when a client came to her seeking help. 

The client came in explaining they wore lots of blacks and whites and that they wanted to change it up. Mattei dived into her color analysis and found out this client was an autumn.

“A client said, okay, now I know that I am an autumn. Can you please help me with my wardrobe, with my house, with my furniture, with my wallpapers, with my curtains? And I started to think, oh my gosh, something is happening here, right? So, the project could enlarge,” Mattei said.

By the end of the night on Thursday people were still waiting to get their chance to hold Mattei’s color wheels up to their face. Everyone clamored to find their own palette. 

There is a key mentality that is her magnet and why people came to listen.  

"The idea is to keep the mindset of haute couture... attention to details, attention to the client, and try to recreate this approach in the super competitive world of real estate," she said.

Maria Michela Mattei shared her project with the people at the Palazzi Community Center to embrace learning and shared culture. She believes in a community and her job in finding people homes and the right fashion is enhancing yourself and your tastes.