Who is Tatiana Casiraghi, Princess Caroline’s daughter-in-law?
Born in New York, Tatiana Casiraghi has Colombian, American and Monegasque nationality - © Prince's Palace of Monaco
The billionaire heiress joined the Princely Family in 2013 and now has three children with her husband, Andrea Casiraghi.
Discreet by nature, Tatiana Casiraghi only appears in the media from time to time, as she attends major events in the life of the Monegasque Princely Family. That said, she remains a woman of conviction, whose family history still resonates today.
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The granddaughter of Colombian businessman Julio Mario Santo Domingo, founder of the Santo Domingo group, she was the 847th richest person in the world in 2015, according to Forbes magazine, with an estimated fortune of US$2.2 billion. Another superlative, she is officially Monaco’s wealthiest woman since October 2019.
And with good reason: together with her younger brother Julio Mario Santo Domingo III, Tatiana inherited part of her grandfather’s shares in SABMiller, now part of Anheuser-Busch. But that’s not all. She also co-founded Muzungu Sisters, an online retailer of handcrafted products from countries all over the world.
The two children grew up surrounded by books, “with a Colombian businessman father who was heir to one of the country’s greatest fortunes, but who was especially passionate about Proust, Verlaine and Rimbaud, whose manuscripts he collected,” quotes Elle magazine. Their mother, Vera Rechulski Santo Domingo, is Brazilian and loves travelling more than anything. The multicultural family moved to Arizona and Geneva, and then, for Tatiana, Paris and London. In the summer, the Santo Domingos would travel to more distant destinations, including Morocco, where Tatiana’s mother lived for several years, and Bali, where her godfather owns a house.
The famous meeting
We learned in the celebrity press, such as Gala magazine, that it was through his sister Charlotte that Andrea Casiraghi met his future wife and mother of his children. The two girls had attended the Fontainebleau lycée in Paris together a few years earlier and quickly became friends. Right from the outset, the couple managed to keep their relationship out of the public gaze, and even their wedding was a discreet affair.
On the invitation, guests were asked not to share any photos of the event, but a snapshot of Tatiana’s hen party was posted on Instagram and picked up by the tabloids. It shows the bride-to-be in a red dress alongside her friends, including heiresses Bianca Brandolini and Eugénie Niarchos, and her future sister-in-law Charlotte. They are pictured on a magnificent yacht, and the other women are dressed in white with big floral crowns on their heads. No wild parties on the horizon, on the contrary, the young woman was a mum whose baby was just a few months old, so the bridal team opted for a tea party.
That July, Princess Caroline, the mother of the groom-to-be, announced in a press release that Andrea Casiraghi and Tatiana Santo Domingo had become engaged. After seven years together, Tatiana was by no means an unknown, as she had already accompanied her soulmate to some of Monaco’s key events, including the Bal de la Rose, the enthronement of Prince Albert II, the Grand Prix and the wedding of the Sovereign and Princess Charlene.
Tatiana Casiraghi takes part in all the major events in Monegasque life, such as here at the Rose Ball in March 2016 and the National Day celebrations in November 2016 – © Communication Department & Prince’s Palace
The lovebirds, aged 29 at the time, said “I do” in two stages. First in Monaco for the civil ceremony on 31 August 2013, in front of 300 guests. A religious ceremony was then held in Gstaad, Switzerland, on 1 February 2014. In the Principality, as reported by Cnews, the groom made a grand entrance at the Prince’s Palace, the venue chosen for the ceremony, which did not, however, generate the same buzz as Prince Albert’s wedding.
He was accompanied by three other guests in a vintage military jeep late that morning. The other guests, gifts in hand, arrived in small groups on foot, by taxi, in chauffeur-driven sedans or in minibuses with tinted windows. The very private ceremony was followed by a lunch, again at the Prince’s residence, and then festivities in town.
After Monaco, a wedding in Switzerland
The next part of the wedding took place in Switzerland. A completely different setting and a completely different season. It was on a freezing February day that the couple were joined before God in a beautiful ceremony in the little Swiss village of Rougemont, not far from Gstaad. The whole family and a host of society figures were there. Prince Albert II and his wife Princess Charlene were present, as were the groom’s sister Charlotte Casiraghi and her partner at the time, comedian Gad Elmaleh, who had recently become parents.
In the few photos that were released, guests can be seen arriving under umbrellas to keep off the snowflakes.. It was an idyllic setting for the wedding, which continued with a party at the Palace de Gstaad with friends of the couple, who are still very much together today, since they celebrated their pewter wedding anniversary last summer for the civil ceremony, and next winter for the church wedding. At the time, they took advantage of their stay in Gstaad to baptise their son on 30 January, a couple of days before their religious ceremony.
To date, the couple have brought three children into the world, two boys and a girl: Alexandre Andrea Stefano, known as Sacha, born in March 2013 a few months before their wedding, India, born in April 2015, and Maximilian, born in April 2018. The three childen are never very far from their four cousins. There are Stefano and Francesco, the children of Andrea’s brother Pierre Casiraghi and Beatrice Borromeo. Charlotte Casiraghi, is the mother of two boys, Raphaël, 9, from her relationship with Gad Elmaleh, and Balthazar, 5, whose father is the producer Dimitri Rassam.
A fashionista at heart
After attending the International School of Geneva and the Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland, Tatiana continued her studies at a boarding school in Fontainebleau, France, where, as previously mentioned, she met her future husband’s sister. After completing her Fine Arts Master’s Degree at the American University of London, she worked as an intern at Alberta Ferretti and then at Giovanni Bianco in New York, before going on to work for the American magazine Vanity Fair.
It was in 2010, after meeting the young Iranian Dana Alikhani, who at the time was completing a master’s degree in human rights in New York and was thinking about a platform to promote the work and rights of the world’s craftspeople, that Tatiana embarked on the Muzungu Sisters adventure (which means “the wandering sisters,” “muzungu” being a Swahili word).
This ethical slow-fashion brand, which she co-founded, supports local artisans in Peru, India and Hungary by buying traditional, handmade clothes at a fair price and then marketing them. “Travelling leads, often by chance, to these miraculous little hands,” she told Elle in the exclusive interview mentioned above.
Muzungu Sisters, the brand co-founded by Tatiana Casiraghi, was supported by Eugenie Niarchos, Margherita Missoni and Gaia Repossi – © Muzungusisters
Tatiana seemed destined for a career in fashion. “My mother is a black belt in market shopping. When we were children, we were always dressed in ‘ethnic’ clothes, djellabas and harem pants,” Tatiana recalls. “It was my brother’s worst nightmare,” she told the magazine’s journalists. She would go into the souks with an ever-longer list on every trip : “My friends would ask me to bring things back, sarongs from Bali, little bags from Colombia. I started to think that maybe I should open a shop.”
A few pop-up stores have been created, for example at the Hôtel de Paris in May, but the main business is online, and on the brand’s site, you can find a whole range of articles for men, women, children and the home.
The pieces are considered by the founders to be “timeless heirlooms that are designed to be kept for generations.” In fact, it is not unusual to see her children wearing her colourful brand. At every appearance, her outfits still stand out today… Made up of vintage dresses, Moroccan jackets or Peruvian boleros, her looks are eye-catching because of their patterns, colours and shapes. At her wedding, she created a sensation with a lace dress by Missoni and flowers in her hair, a choice that was perfectly suited to the summer season in the Principality, and she turned to designer Valentino for her winter weeding, says Grazia.
In addition to her business, Tatiana supports several charitable organisations, such as the Fondation Paralysie Cérébrale , which funds research on cerebral palsy, AMADE, and the Fondation Virlanie. It’s a fast-paced life, but one that seems to fit her like a glove!