Antonella Cardia
was born in Messina. She is the daughter of a literature teacher and a Sicilian noblewoman. She attended art schools and university. An innate elegance and a strong sense of creativity have helped her, from the age of 15, to create bags and suits made with silk velvet fabrics which at first she made  for herself and then, by request, for a small group of customers looking for original and unique creations.
She lived in Messina and then in Ravenna, Rome, Bologna, Milan, Turin, Paris, London, and the Pantelleria Island.
It was very important for her to meet Bruna Mateldi Moretti, called Brunetta, a big fashion critic and designer born at the beginning of the last century. She suggested and inspired Antonella Cardia on how to take up a career, transforming her pure and simple passion into a real profession. About Mateldi who lived next door at via Bagutta in Milan, Antonella mainly remembers that she used to say: "useless things are useful when you like them so much".
That is how Antonella Cardia started her experience in the world of fashion. She organizes fashion shows, is concerned with marketing, draws jewels, creates suits, bags, and accessories using valuable furnishing fabrics. Her style is a little baroque and Mediterranean and sometimes it reflects her polyhedrical personality that, however, maintains a constant taste of her homeland. Her silk velvet creations will become real niche products. She was given the nickname "the Princess without a castle" by a famous fan of her creations. Antonella Cardia founded and realized in Palermo her project "a journey in Sicily", that is a trip to visit the historical and private residences in Sicily. She mainly lives abroad and it is from the colours of the world she travels that she finds an inspiration source. It is when she comes back to Pantelleria, where there is that harmony that makes her feel at home, that she begins drawing her art suits to measure.