Anna Dello Russo Has Extra Apartment For Her Clothes (PHOTOS)

Vogue Nippon editor Anna Dello Russo took W Magazine inside her Milan apartments -- that's right apartments, plural. Dello Russo lives in one of them...and her clothes live in the other one. Reporter J.J. Martin writes, "Such a living arrangement might be considered unusual by anyone who didn't own 4,000 pairs of shoes and 250 black tuxedo jackets and wasn't 100 percent fueled by fashion."

Once the clothes make it out of their humble abode and into Anna's, there is a method to the madness. W reports:

New purchases get front-row treatment in the main walk-in closet, next to her leopard-print bedroom. A zoolike collection of exotic fur coats ("It's been a bloodbath--furs are my weakness," she admits) is maintained in labeled cloth bags, while a season's lesser models get relegated to nonslip hangers in the nosebleed back row. Once the season ends, everything is cleared out (except for the furs, which are exempt from expiration dates) to make way for new loot. Depending on the evicted item's star wattage, it may go next door, to apartment number two, from which it may or may not emerge. Or it may be exiled to a giant closeted basement: the fashion graveyard. For Dello Russo, if you're not new, you're about as good as dead. "I hate vintage clothes," she says, referring even to last year's Prada.

Dello Russo says it takes her "six months" to get dressed, and she's seemingly taken that long since she was young. She shared an anecdote from high school:

Once, she wore a pair of yellow shoes that her cat had used as a litter box the night before. They were instrumental to her preplanned all-yellow outfit, so she just rinsed them out. "But it got hot in the classroom, and there was this terrible stink of cat pee," she recalls. "I had to confess because I didn't want anyone thinking I had peed in my pants. They all screamed, 'Couldn't you have changed your shoes?'"

Check out Anna in her element.

All images by Juergen Teller for W Magazine.

Comments

[Lahonda]

01:55 AM on 10/25/2010

I bet she works the night shift a lot.

[Karama]

05:23 AM on 10/24/2010

A little weird!

[leftgranma]

10:00 PM on 10/23/2010

Some nice clothes might help.

[ECB]

07:35 PM on 10/22/2010

She's scary.

[heroine addict]

09:52 AM on 10/22/2010

Barf.

[Feanor]

07:17 PM on 10/21/2010

These photos should have come with a NSFA warning: Not Safe For Anywhere.

[Manuela Goren]

04:57 PM on 10/21/2010

I was working for Italian Vogue in New York as its main correspondent when Anna Dello Russo was the editor in chief at L'Uomo Vogue. On 9/ 11 we were in the middle of Fashion Week, at the end of the day Anna called me asking : " Do you think that they will cancel the shows tomorrow?" and she was pretty p- d off that they did and her week in NY was " a waste of time" I was flabbergasted, but knowing her not even too much...
Unfortunately some people in the fashion business forget that this is all it is " a business" and it does not really promote world peace or cure cancer... Anna dello Russo may be a fashion icon but she is a poor excuse for a human being.

[suemj]

10:01 PM on 10/23/2010

Wow, does seem self-absorbed! Sad woman. Rich, but not in any substance or depth.

[VOTER]

06:50 PM on 10/24/2010

How did she get her position at Italian Vogue? Family?

[jozzie]

11:47 AM on 10/21/2010

Notice how she's disguising her face.
A real dog. Woof!
No amount of clothes can change that.

[LaurieAnn]

05:58 PM on 10/21/2010

I would certainly agree with you that she is not the most attractive woman from the neck up.

[janedoe31]

08:57 AM on 10/21/2010

what a miserable group of commentors we have for this article ... The woman has an amazing body, she quite clearly looks after herself, she has an amazing life in Italy, she works in fashion -which I am sure accounts for 95% of clothing which are given to her by the various designers. Then I read the comments, ridiculing her, shredding her to bits...why? She donates large sums of money to her favourite charities. She is a hard worker who has struggled up the corporate ladder and has made something of herself. I am very curious what these commentors do for a living besides writing nasty things about people they don't know.

[Teju]

12:18 PM on 10/21/2010

Because she is famous, rich, fit, and flaunts it, we should admire and respect her? laughable.

Her behavior is quite a bit pathological. As someone pointed out, she doesn't represent anything different than the hoarders we gawk at on TV these days, but because she is wealthy and fashionable, it is no longer framed as something pathological, but as something eclectic, and somehow something to be admired.

Why do we associate respectability and value with wealth and riches? It's a problem.

[Laurel Elise Ava]

02:08 PM on 10/22/2010

The "blood bath" furs things did it for me. It shows someone far away from true reality. I bet she couldn't have killed a single one of the animals that she hangs off herself. I don't believe that killing animals is wrong, but I do think there needs to be an element of respect and understanding. That along with the obvious excess of her life style makes me think there are many other hard working wealthy people who I admire much, much more than her.

[andreja]

02:52 AM on 10/21/2010

let the woman be!!!
my god, why are all of your undies in a fuss??? hers is a life of fashion, and all that comes with it...she's not trying to be anything else...in this world where everything is so off-kilter and depressing, (read: i live in wisconsin and am dreading loosing my beloved russ...) i go to this section for fantasy and all things fabulous...she might be a train-wreck to all of you, but she is one FIERCE train wreck to me, and i say thank heavens for that!!!

[lulumer]

02:34 AM on 10/21/2010

Sad.

[huffpostreader10000]

01:41 AM on 10/21/2010

holy moly

[medusa1000]

01:13 AM on 10/21/2010

That's where Stephen Cojocaru's been. Lost in his closet.

[NoSillyName]

12:48 AM on 10/21/2010

Well, la de da. I'd like to have an extra apartment for my LIBRARY.

[Xylem44]

11:37 PM on 10/20/2010

Dude looks like a lady...with a cat pee scratch and sniff.... YouAreWelcomed...