Goodbye to control...Ciao, Italia!
Hello (or buona sera) from Italy, where I’ve been on holiday for the last week—first for a best friend’s Tuscan wedding (two years delayed, grazie a Covid), and now exploring the Apulian region. In the past two days Boris Johnson has announced his resignation, and even more shockingly, Shinto Abe was assassinated. In a way, reading all this news while on vacation has been more dismaying than if I’d read it back home in New York. For me, it’s been an abrupt reminder that when we go on vacation, the world continues to turn—for better or for worse. The news cycle doesn’t stop, and life persists in whatever direction. For all the parameters, and guardrails, the preparations and plans that we set in place—both at home and in our jobs—before we head off, there’s everything else we cannot control. It’s a bit unnerving and freeing at once.
And so, I’m here in Italy, taking this is a personal cue to relish every minute of it that I can. Starting with the glass of wine I just savored.
Anywaaaaays, below we’ve got some brief thoughts on couture week, boat cruises, and the candy I can’t wait to sneak into the movie theater once I’m stateside again.
1.
Couture week just wrapped in Paris, and there was one underlying theme I continually found myself considering and musing over while looking at the collections: the body. Both its form, and its significance as a symbol of strength, beauty, defiance, even power. And how various designers consider it, and they choose to present it through adornment. What it means to be body-conscious today, when you consider designers like Pieter Mulier who protectively wrapped and enshrouded his models in body-hugging ribbed knits for Aläia. Is body-conscious the same as being body-obsessed? It feels like an especially relevant question right now, especially when you consider Schiaparelli, and the way designer Daniel Roseberry persistently uses the human form as a foundation and complementing feature for ornamentation: extravagant bauble earrings that dangle down to the navel in the form of tangled and lush grape vines, for example. And then you have Balenciaga, where designer Demna sought to erase the body fully with the first third of his collection, rendered entirely in black stretch neoprene and glossy black face shields. Each collection was so remarkably different from the other, but all reflecting on the body in their own unmissable ways.
2.
I didn’t think there was a single person more disinterested in holiday cruises than I am…until I met David Prior, a former travel editor, and now the founder of his own namesake travel company (beloved by the likes of Alice Waters, and Gwyneth Paltrow, and just about every savvy travel enthusiast I know). In this scathing essay, David explains his stance, which offered up even more reason for my aversion. By all means though, if cruises are your thing, do you. Just don’t expect to find any trips through Prior.
3.
On the concession stand front, my new faves are everyone’s Faves…a better-for-you version of Starbursts, currently available in flavors grape and strawberry. (And I say this as someone who’s typically on Team Twizzlers).
4.
After two weeks of eating heavenly gelato: shoveled in cups, swiped into cones… sometimes under clouds of whipped cream, reading this suddenly makes me crave another altogether scoop-able European dessert—preferably from my favorite spot, Chez Janou off Paris’ Place des Vosges. Though as Genevieve Ko professes, the best versions are often the simplest and can easily be replicated chez anywhere.
5.
Aside from a daily gelato, another thing I’ve been shoving in my mouth on the regular since arriving in Puglia: taralli, a regional ring-shaped cracker that appears on every table with the habitual meal-starting bread basket, and during aperitivo hour (Taralli goes deliciously with wine, but what doesn’t?)