What really struck me the first time I visited Venice, and keeps surprising me today, was its light. Because Venice seems to rest on a very peculiar dimension, hanging in the balance among sky, earth and sea; it owns a suffused, humid, almost wet flare, an evanescent balance holding such beauty.
How can you resist the charm of a land where you can just forget the cars, use a motorboat, or better, a gondola instead of a taxi, and the Accademia Bridge instead of a road junction?
How could you not fall in love with its masks, prosecco, endless bridges, styles: byzantine, gothic, renaissance and baroque, melting together in churches and façades to create a magic harmony? You just can’t!
To me, the best thing you can do in Venice ( and everywhere, actually) is behaving like a spoiled little girl, observing every corner and wanting all those apparently “useless” things she finds in every alley: handmade marbled papers, along with their fountain pens and wooden box. Who knows? One day you might use it to write down something important, merry, sad, romantic or not, but anyway, your messages and ideas written there, on that paper and with that pen, are going to smell of cellulose, almond and vanilla.
And then, fabrics: velvets, brocades, damasks, silks and typical Venice embroideries, bringing with them ancient techniques and looms, and patterns telling the story of faraway places and times, when the Serenissima sailed the seas of half the world… and if they don’t match the home furnishings, who cares? They’re essential. Not to mention hats! The gondolier’s hats: that stranded boater with its red or blue satin ribbon, how could you live without? It is going to be great this summer, matching your high-waist bikini. If you cannot choose between the boater and the sailor hat, well, let’s have them both, just to be sure.
And so, as every single time, I get back to my city with my eyes filled with beauty, my luggage filled with “useless” stuff and my head still hanging in the balance among sky, earth and sea, with the certainty of living in a incomparable country… until my partner decides to turn on the TV and listen to the news, instead of lighting a candle, but that’s another story…
– Endless Rose jumpsuit
– Asos Heels
– My boyfriend’s shirt
