Milano and Beyond

Well once again it's been a while.  Lots to report so I'll make a few entries at once and try to get up to date.

Milano...what can I say?  Given that our two days were spent there during fashion week (this was not be design, let me say), we were completely surrounded by fashionistas, which was both amusing at times and mildly irritating...  Imagine a wall of six foot tall women each wearing 12 inch stilettos and carrying an array of very large Max Mara/Louis Vuitton/Valentino/Gucci shopping bags coming at you at speed down a very narrow street and you've got the picture.

Never in our lives have we felt so completely under-accessorised.  

We mostly window-shopped,  (EP did, however, find herself a new pair of very groovy Campers), but this was more down to a bad shopping run

 for me than by design, once again. Desperate to obtain a pair of Prada shoes in the very place that Mario set up his little shop in 1913, I had to come to terms with the fact that there wasn't a pair of those pumps in a 39.5 at any of the five (yes, that's five) Prada stores in Milan.  It was a sad realisation, let me tell you.

Just so that you don't think that the Milano experience reduced me to complete shallowness, let me also say that by far the highlight of the two days was doing a tour of legendary Italian designer Achille Castigliano's studio, led by his daughter Giovanna.  There were three of us in the group (EP, me, and a design student from Japan who was studying in Milan), and it was truly mindblowing.  Aside from being able to look at and play with a vast array of things he had designed, all in the one space, there was also the delight of hearing her talk about her father, his fascination with what she called 'clever things', from silly pairs of glasses and other knick knacks to beautiful chairs that he collected for his studio table.  She was wonderfully irreverent about her Father, his wicked sense of humour and the absurd, and this was one of the best things about it.

We also had a fabulous japanese lunch at Nobu in the Armani Palace - there are a few bits of the city that aren't owned by Giorgio and don't sport one of his logos, but they're hard to find!

On the final morning in Milano we took the lift (NOT the stairs) up to the roof of the Duomo, the amazing Gothic cathedral in the centre of the city.  It's quite amazing - you can walk all around the eaves of the building and then climb up the stairs onto the roof proper, which is where this photo was taken.

Onwards to Venezia...