Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi married Princess Beatrice in 2020, which was sort of a whirlwind courtship for a royal, as they had only been together since 2018. Edo left his fiancee/baby-mother Dara Huang for Beatrice, although Dara and Edo seemingly coparent their son together and they still work together to some extent. They work together at Banda, the “property development and interior design” firm which Edo started when he was 23 years old. We’ve actually heard precious little about what Edo actually does or how much money he makes. Until now! Edo has been working on a special project – the renovation and decoration of a £42 million home in Chelsea Barracks. I first learned about this gig through a very weird column in the Daily Mail, “At £42 million, a home for the wretched rich.”
These days it is very hard to tell from their fancy job-titles what people actually do for a living. Everything is buried under a mush of verbiage: ‘brand’, ‘vision’, ‘passion’, ‘artisan’, ‘ambassador’, ‘innovation’, ‘global’, ‘co-ordinator’, and so on.
Princess Beatrice’s husband, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, describes himself as the ‘Founder and Creative Director’ of a company called Banda, which is apparently ‘a multidisciplinary, design-led property practice’, whatever that may be.
Banda’s website is packed full of bespoke nonsense, eg: ‘Combining contemporaneity with timeless elegance, Banda interiors might seem like the finishing touch, when really they are just the beginning.’ What on earth does this mean?
Mr Mapelli Mozzi is currently showing clients around a six-floor, 10,000 sq ft house in Belgravia. Situated on a particularly grim-looking new square, it has an asking price of £42million. As far as I can make out, he has been in charge of furnishing and decorating it on behalf of a Qatari real estate business which, like all companies these days, has a ‘vision’. Its vision is not just to make as much money as possible, but to deliver ‘quality lifestyles and innovation in real estate development globally’.
This is what I find curious: “he has been in charge of furnishing and decorating it on behalf of a Qatari real estate business.” So this is not an investment property for Edo and he is not the owner – he was hired to decorate the home and now he’s acting as a frontman for a Qatari real estate business? That really seems to be the case, because Edo was also front-and-center in a Tatler exclusive about this crazy-expensive property:
Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, the husband of Princess Beatrice, whom he married in 2020, has revealed the secrets behind his latest property in London – telling Tatler.com about his ‘practical and beautiful’ approach to design. Mapelli Mozzi, known as Edo within the family, has been heading up the design firm Banda since he founded it at the age of 23.
Now, the father-of-two has unveiled one of the most important achievements of his design career, an incomparably luxurious and sensitively drawn together family home on Mulberry Square, in Chelsea Barracks. The five-bedroom house is a sophisticated and stunning property – and speaking exclusively to Tatler.com, Edo, CEO of Banda, described his process behind the design. He said, ‘We wanted to create a ‘collection of a lifetime’ whilst encouraging joy and surprise through the design.
‘It’s practical as well as beautiful. Each and every piece of furniture and the materials used have been chosen to be long lasting and usable. It has such a wonderful energy and buzz – one can only imagine the ultimate playdate for children in the swimming pool followed by everyone piling on to the oversized, bespoke linen sofa in the cinema room to watch a film.’
The home is clearly designed with family at its heart. The extraordinary cinema room includes lush, oversized sofas – of almost cartoonish dimensions – which would be the perfect place for a gaggle of children to lounge around together on a playdate.
Edo describes how he inspired by the location of Chelsea Barracks calling it, ‘abundant’. He said, ‘From the craftspeople involved in the wider planning to the attention to detail within the build and sense of light and access to nature, Banda’s townhouse is testament to the strength of the artisanal ecosystem and the power of bringing pieces together within a home. Our townhouse at Mulberry Square is home to a ‘collection of a lifetime’ in both a sophisticated and surprising way. It honours the ‘perfectly imperfect’ wabi sabi theory behind human rather than machine-made craft.
‘There’s a feeling of the unexpected – an energy around the blend of the traditional and the contemporary with an emphasis on the ‘hand-made’ which gives us a window into each, and every person involved in the journey of this design.’
“Banda’s townhouse is testament to the strength of the artisanal ecosystem” IJBOL. Blake Lively is probably weeping that she didn’t come up with “artisanal ecosystem.” So is Edo selling this place because he owns it, or is it really like the Mail columnist says – he was hired by a Qatari real estate firm to decorate and promote this luxury property? Oh, and you can see photos of the interiors at the Tatler link – I hate to say it, but I actually love that kind of English-modernist interior design. Does anyone have £42 million to spare?
Edo is giving me Jared Kushner vibes in this Tatler photo.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images, Instagram and Avalon Red.