On set in Milan with Stefano Gabbana, Domenico Dolce and actress Felicity Jones for Elle USA. No detail goes untouched by this fashion duo.
In the summer of 2001, New York was hair-tampering hot. I had been living in the same snack-sized apartment on the unsavory tattoo parlor section of West 4th street for three years. The air conditioner barely worked. The cockroaches mocked me. But worst of all, I was living as a closeted maximalist. By day I worked in polite shades of navy, white and black as Marketing Director at Calvin Klein, where the walls, ceilings, furniture, flowers, blonde heads of my coworkers, and even the yellow sticky pads had all been bleached a pure white.
At night, I let out my inner sparkle, unleashing the gold embellishment, vintage embroideries and fur-lined grandma coats I had carefully curated from the grubby stalls at the Chelsea flea market.
I was rescued from both the gloomy minimalism of my day job and my paltry living conditions by a visiting Italian man who I met one night at a party (filled with boisterous Italians) in Nolita. After nine months of long-distance courtship and 12-person dinner dates (typical of Italians), I stuffed two suitcases with my most cacophonous clothes and moved across the Atlantic to live with him.
Ask anyone, and they will tell you that Italy and I got off to a rocky start. Nothing worked and everything was always closed. I yelled at the bank machines that were always broken, at the clerk at the post office where I had to wait in a 20-minute line to pay my bills, at the fruit stand owner who took three-hour lunches, at the shoe repair shop that was always chiuso, at the dry cleaner that took 10 days and didn’t deliver, at the café owner for not having wireless, at the yoga instructor who insisted on wearing socks. Why hadn’t anyone ever heard of take-out food? And why was everyone so goddamned happy all the time?
After a grueling series of one-on-one lessons for six hours a day, I became versed in “cocktail Italian,” a level of language proficiency that allowed for charming conversational exchange during apertivo hour and just enough comprehension to get through interviews with designers for FashionWireDaily.com, my first gig as a junior fashion reporter in 2001. Writing for an online fashion news website was a challenge in world that had not yet invented the smart phone and in a country that saw no practical use for the Internet. I would type out my fashion show reviews on my Sony Vaio laptop, sliding back and forth on the backseat of a taxi between shows, and then jet into expensive hotels where I would beg the concierge to let me hook up to his ancient-fax-sounding cable.
Five years of howling ensued, and then I calmed down and started to accept the Italians for the innately optimistic, refreshingly authentic, and truly passionate lovers of life that they are. Once I caved to the fact that nothing has a timetable and nothing can be accomplished over the telephone and everything must be decided over a two-hour seated lunch, life suddenly got a whole lot easier. I stopped doing all the time and started being. And then the city finally creaked open to me, like an off-limits attic that had suddenly awakened.
Milan at first seems like a dull, flat and very grey place. Most international fashion journalists complain incessantly about a lack of depth and creative talent. This condemnation now irks me because, as I’ve finally come to realize, this is a city that brims discreetly with intriguing creators and incredible interiors. All the good stuff happens behind closed doors and isn’t marketed, sold or packaged for visitors. For the last 13 years, as my job shifted to fashion-and-design journalist roles at Harper’s Bazaar, Wallpaper* and The Wall St. Journal, I’ve slowly started to penetrate Milan, hopping inside buzzing architectural and design studios, famous fashion ateliers, rinky-dink workshops, dusty vintage shops and grand fashion designers’ homes, and peeling back the cold layers to expose the city’s heart-thumping core.
There have been some exhilarating moments with some of the Milan’s greatest fashion designers: dancing with Beyoncé on the decadent floor of Donatella Versace’s Via Gesù Palazzo during one of her heady, post-show parties; taking a stroll through Giorgio Armani’s closet at home (and discovering that 99 percent of it truly is navy blue); watching Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana suit up into Batman and Robin outfits to try to tame a catty Naomi Campbell, who arrived as Catwoman for a photo shoot; making risi e bisi with Rosita Missoni at her country home outside of Milan with vegetables she had just pulled from her garden. And then there was the greatest day of all: the day, not too long ago, that Caffè Cucchi, scene-y old-fashioned pasticcerie with a fabulous mix of patrons that is my daily go-to, finally got wireless.
Sometimes I laughed with abandon, like the time Roberto Cavalli tried to get me to kiss his pet snake. And sometimes I shook with fear, like when I interviewed the formidable Miuccia Prada for a whole 18 minutes, or when I got bit by Franca Sozzani’s fluffy (and ferocious) dog Lazlo during a dinner the Vogue Italia Editor hosted during Milan fashion week. Along the way, I learned the principles of fashion, good style, manners and design, but most importantly, the finer points of fruitful living—the Italian way.
I used to think that the Italians needed serious schooling in the science of organization and logistics, but now I realize that it was me who was in need of schooling in the art of life. La DoubleJ.com is my love letter, wrapped up in a vintage envelope, to the merciful Milanese who taught me everything I really want to know, as well as who I want to be.
lrisi e bisi – a classic Venetian dish of rice and peas, similar to risotto
chiuso – closed
– J.J. Martin
