This Electric Threesome
Makes
Combining
Motherhood, Business
and Adventure Look Shockingly Fun

lUberta,  lSandra & lSveva

Seven years ago at a red-carpeted Dolce & Gabbana party at the Cannes Film Festival, Uberta Zambeletti, Sandra Musso and Sveva Camurati charged onto the dance floor in identical 1960s purple and yellow floral nightgowns and began to rock out with Gloria Gaynor, the evening’s highly paid entertainment.  Hundreds of guests surrounded them in adoration. The craziest thing is that the trio hadn’t even been invited to the party.

“We drove three hours from Milan and snuck in through the kitchen because Sveva’s husband was doing the catering,” says Zambeletti.  “We zoomed in and out, slept in a one-star hotel, and the next afternoon we were sitting quietly in [Milan’s] Parco Sempione with our kids.”

Ransacking and then ruling a celebrity-studded fashion party during a 36-hour marathon away from home is just one of the wonderful things that combusts when this spicy threesome gets together. From their early teenage friendship to their now-yearly trips tromping through Morocco, Berlin, Greece or Sicily, these best friends are like a Christmas tree plugged into a nuclear power plant. Together they bulldoze the straight-laced streets of Milan and electrify its uptight bourgeois circles with wild chatter, sparkling laughter and pattern-clashing outfits.

Ballsy and bold, these are not your average Milanese women. Each has turned her privileged Italian family background into a hard-working, modern mother story. Camurati, who spent her formative years playing under the seamstresses’ tables at her grandmother’s high-end Milanese fashion atelier, Lady Jais, now runs her own handmade jewelry business featuring intricate embroidered necklaces called Sveva Collection. Musso, who grew up in an aristocratic Genovese palazzo complete with helictoper pad, is a down-to-earth, perpetually smiling former PR executive for Moncler and Tod’s. She now does PR for Sveva Collection.  Zambeletti, born in London and raised in Madrid to Italian parents, is a former fashion designer who has reignited Milan’s indie retail scene with her one-of-a-kind clothing boutique, Wait and See.

“Even at 12 years old Sveva was the coolest girl in town,” remembers Zambeletti. “She was as f-ing amazing then as she is now.” If you ask us, all three are officially F-ing Amazing. They know as much about Milan’s high-end private secrets and its hidden treasures as they do about its trashiest joints.  They are as comfortable plucking the most expensive marron glacées in town as they are browsing a hardware store.

“My son spent his childhood saying, ‘Mom, can’t you be normal like the other Milanese moms?’” says Zambeletti, recalling that he specifically asked for her to wear the bon-ton uniform of pressed dark jeans, navy blue cashmere sweater and low-heeled shoe. “I tried it twice and then I came to pick him up from school in a leopard-print top, leather trousers and sneakers. He was so upset.” “I’ve always dressed very colorfully which makes me very eclectic compared with most Milanese women,” says Camurati, who loves embellishment and touches of fur or feathers.

Even better than their style, these women are perpetually up for an escapade.  “Whatever we do, we always say, ‘we just have to have fun,’” says Musso, the threesome’s official event planner. “My husband is insanely jealous about all of our adventures.”

For DoubleJ, they hit the streets of Milan—from the gritty Tram Station to the iconic Colonne San Lorenzo—and opened up their address books to reveal their secrets on the best places in town. This is the cool girl’s guide to Milan.

– JJ Martin