Marina Cassini

As the full moon rose over Santa Fe, New Mexico on the night of July 29th, Marina Cassini passed into the next world. Marina was born in New York City on October 13th, 1948, to Darrah Waters, and Igor Cassini (also known as the society columnist Cholly Knickerbocker). To her teenage embarrassment, he put his daughter in headlines around the country when then-President John F. Kennedy danced with her at her 13th birthday party. After a childhood shuttled between New York, Paris and Athens, where she became fluent in several languages, Marina finished her studies at the École Florin in Florence, Italy and soon met her first husband, Mario Ferrari. With him, she gave birth to her daughter, Darrah Cassini Ferrari, and began a successful fashion line, Marina Ferrari, based in Milan, Italy. A second marriage produced two more sons - Alessandro Minoli, and Michele Minoli, and a life that took her to Switzerland, the East Coast of the United States, and finally to the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in Santa Fe, where she spent her last years finishing a sprawling historical fiction novel based on her grandmother Marguerite Cassini’s life in the Imperial court of Tsar Nicholas II that she titled The Ambassador’s Daughter. In Santa Fe, she was surrounded by loved ones, including her daughter-in-law Erin Gibson, brother Alexander Cassini and his wife Heather, and grandson Giovanni Ferrari Wolfram.

Everywhere she went, Marina created beautiful homes and spaces, and nothing brought her more joy than gathering as many members of her vast, sprawling, and international family together under one roof as possible, where she could make sure that everyone was fed, happy, and hopefully by the end of the night, dancing in some kind of costume. Her family goes on without her, shaped by her, and grateful for the beauty she helped us all see.

Marina is survived by the aforementioned family, as well as grandchildren Isabella and Lukas, brothers Pavlo, Nicholas, and Dimitri, sister Alexandra, and nieces Stephanie, Anya, and Isabella.

Donations in Marina’s name can be made to Scott’s House.