Over the clink of espresso saucers, mopeds, and distant train station announcements, Arash Radpour finishes up a phone conversation. He is casually dressed in a t-shirt, jeans, and a light trench coat. Next to him sits a suitcase. We are standing at a café’s high-top table just across the street from Rome’s Termini station. I […]
Marsha Salvatore has lived in Rome for 12 years. She hails from Cincinnati but with a name like Salvatore, it’s not hard to guess her heritage. It’s April Fools day and we are sitting at the back of the club while performers John Gilbert and Jose Salgado move around the room, prepping for the show. […]
“This is a designer who’s really breaking out now. He’s doing something that Pucci really needs, with this younger, fun aesthetic that he’s been doing at MSGM.” Christina Binkley – Wall Street Journal 2016 is a special year for fashion house Emilio Pucci. Their spring line is the first full collection created for Pucci by […]
I‘m headed into Trastevere to talk with director Douglas Dean about his newest theater production of Hamlet. I cross the Tiber and head towards the statue of poet Giuseppe Gioacchino Belli, who surveys the piazza in his top hat and coat, gripping his cane maybe a bit too tightly. There is a slight irony […]
Humans like consistency. It can instill respect, a sense of safety and security, or, in the case of my early morning walk to the ancient Roman wall near my apartment in San Giovanni, even awe. It always blows my mind to think that my eyes are scanning across the same exact stones and bricks […]
“In Italy, creativity is very important and recognized in everything, in all that is produced here.” – Leo Pizzo In 1971, Sara Di Giorgio Pizzo and Leo Pizzo started a jewelry brand together. Forty-five years later, the family business is going strong with a second generation poised to add their expertise to the ever-changing landscape […]
People will stare. Make it worth their while. – Harry Winston Harry Winston clearly had an eye for precious stones from a very young age; in a way, his career as a jeweler began when he was 12 years old. The year is 1908 and Jacob Winston asks his son Harry to run an errand […]
It’s Valentines Day and I am meeting Antonella Salvucci at Zanzara, a trendy bar near the Vatican. We are standing outside when Keanu Reeves walks past us and gets into the passenger side of a vintage Fiat 500. I look at Antonella and she exclaims, “This is Rome!” Antonella Salvucci’s interest in […]
“Jewelry is not fashion. It has to last, not be discarded as soon as something else comes along.” Elsa Peretti, world class jewelry designer, has been with Tiffany & Co more than 40 years. At 76 years of age, her life has been an epic adventure. She ran in the same circles of art giants such as Dali, […]
Finishing the last sip of my espresso, I notice the cafe’s lavatory is out of order, so on my way through Piazza Del Popolo, I clean espresso and pastry sugar from my hands in the water pouring from a lion’s mouth, next to an obelisk the first emperor of Rome took from Egypt more than […]