Marchese Piero Luigi Carlo Maria Malacrida de Saint-August (1889–22 April 1983) (also known as Pier or Peter Malacrida) was an Italian aristocrat, playboy and London-based interior designer. The Malacrida family were from Lombardy and a Palazzo Malacrida still exists in Morbegno, Lombardy. The property passed to another family in 1820 and is currently in the hands of the municipality. Malacrida and his first wife, the poet Nadja Malacrida, were prominent socialites in London in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Piero Malacrida is best known for his interiors at Eltham Palace. Following the death of Nadja in 1934, Malacrida withdrew from public life, although he later remarried. Personal life Malacrida was a former cavalry officer who had studied Engineering at the University of Leeds. On 6 December 1922, he married an Englishwoman, Louisa Nadia Green, at St Bartholomew-the-Great. She was a niece of Lord Cowdray, usually known by her pen name of Nadja. She was a prominent socialite and literary celebrity in 1920s London. Known not only for her looks, charm and intelligence; she was also a BBC radio broadcaster, an aviatrix, racing driver, poet and set designer. She is best known today as a World War I poet. The couple lived in a large and luxurious flat in Grosvenor Street and a country house at East Molesey, where they entertained many of the leading literary and artistic figures of the day. As a result of their numerous accomplishments and connections the couple acquired a certain glamour and were frequently mentioned in society gossip columns and the court pages of the London newspapers. In addition, Malacrida himself frequently wrote articles on design for international publications such as Vogue. All this brought him to the attention of wealthy clients and patrons. The marriage is reported to have been happy; when apart, they wrote each other daily. Each pursued their own hobbies independently while sharing many common interests and collaborating on some of their written works; however, both professed to not being natural authors. Ethos Writing in the late 1920s, Malacrida rejected the then current concepts of interior design; he specifically criticised what he described as the "cottagey-inglenook-pickled oak school" and also the "walnutty Queen-Annish style" then currently in vogue, describing them as "locked in the past." The former style was later to be described by the architectural historian, Osbert Lancaster, as Stockbroker Tudor. Malacrida, though, was not beyond drawing upon medieval