Lavinia BIAGIOTTI CIGNA
Vice President, Biagiotti Group
Lavinia Biagiotti Cigna, born on 12 October 1978 in Rome, is the third generation in the family firm founded by Delia Biagiotti in 1965. At just 18, having finished her studies and following the premature death of her father, Gianni Cigna, Lavinia joined the Group where she acquired experience in the product, communication and retail divisions. She later worked in the Group’s fragrances division, developed in association with Procter&Gamble, where she attained extensive marketing know-how.
She is currently Vice-President of the Biagiotti Group. She deals with the market expansion of the brand’s 35 collections, which include bags and accessories, footwear, eyewear, lingerie, home wares and the Laura Biagiotti Dolls range she launched in 2003. She also coordinates the brand’s global image. She has been a Board Member of the Italian National Chamber of Fashion since 2004 and is the youngest person ever elected to the Chamber. She became a Board Member of Pitti Immagine in 2011.
She shares her mother Laura’s passion for art and its cross-fertilisation with fashion through research, including allusions to art in the collections and, above all, through patronage. She oversees the Laura Biagiotti sponsorship for the Piccolo Teatro Studio in Milan, where the collections are exclusively shown. She is a member of the board of Fondazione Biagiotti Cigna and she promotes the exhibitions of the Fondazione’s collection of over 170 works by the Futurist painter Giacomo Balla. She coordinated two major restoration projects in Rome with the contribution of Roma by Laura Biagiotti Parfums: the Cordonata ramped staircase (leading to the Campidoglio) designed by Michelangelo, together with the two massive statues of Castor and Pollux atop the staircase, and the fountains in Piazza Farnese.
She was among the first to exploit the synergy between two of the fields for which Italy is best known, fashion and sport, when she put the top Italian champions on Biagiotti runways. As testimony to the success of this idea, she has won many prestigious awards and was invited to be the first person from the world of fashion to carry the Olympic Torch for the Games of Torino 2006. She is also a member of the board of the Marco Simone Golf Club, the 27-hole course which the Biagiotti family commissioned just outside Rome.
She was nominated Grande Dame 2009, which she won together with the Veuve Clicquot Business Women Award. She has received many prizes and accolades including: the Ago d’Oro, the KORE Fashion Oscar, the Young Entrepreneurs Award and the European Personality Prize. She is the author of the book Pronto e Indossato, published by Mondadori; the book was inspired by the program of the same name which she devised and presents on Radio 2.