Travel & Hotspots

May’s Milan Diary

Day 2

In other words; the delightful madhouse that is Milan Fashion Week.

That you step out of a taxi and the driver wishes you a ‘buona sfilata’. In other words, a good show. That can only happen here. In Paris, they are far too snobbish to admit they are involved in fashion, New York is too big to find a taxi driver who knows that fashion week has started, and London, well, I’ll just say it, I’ve never been there during Fashion Week, so I wouldn’t know how it is.

But here, here they know that Fay is showing next to Gucci, that Alessandro Michele has changed the location of his show from Viale Piave to Via Valtellina, and they drop you off exactly at Corso Como 10 when you say: ‘Just drop me anywhere, it doesn’t matter where’, because they know you’ll have the most fun there.

Milan then. The city where everything is possible and everything is allowed. As long as it’s in the name of love or fashion. So I might as well take a detour in a taxi to pick up someone’s ticket for the Gucci show in a desperate attempt to absorb the beauty of fashion. Out of respect for fashion, I ultimately didn’t go inside. Hey, I could see everything online and keep myself busy by jumping into a taxi and holding it for a fellow industry friend who had to go pedal to the metal to Linate right after the show (she did).

I had at least tasted it all. And hey, I had already interviewed the woman behind Patrizia Pepe this morning and would travel to a new little hotel after Gucci (there’s a period BG, before Gucci and AG, after Gucci). Blindly booked on Booking.com, but it’s quite a treat. Hallway, shower, bedroom, and a spacious living room with kitchen in the very heart of the center. And no-fuss wifi. Just hatsekiedee. Log in once and we don’t talk about anything else. The rest of Italy with their login codes disguised as novels could learn a thing or two from that.

Anyway. I left my little apartment in the very heart of the center because I would be dismissed from my mother role if I came home without something from the Disney Store. So I headed towards Disney and saw complete chaos in the street. Right in front of the Max Mara store. Almost forgot. The party. With guest of honor Gigi Hadid.

I pushed my way through all the hysterical teenage girls, loudly declaring that I was ‘on the list’ to justify why I could go past the barriers and they could not. They screamed, I filmed. They got water, I got champagne. Or prosecco, I want to clarify. Either way, they were far in the majority, but I was just on the right side. Now I was…

While I was filming the hysterical crowd, a Belgian colleague tapped me on the shoulder… On the left. Gigi. Two meters next to me.

I filmed, Facebook lived, and I also peeked at that green velvet suit hanging on the rack behind me. It screamed my name.

Just when I thought everything was over, Gigi suddenly came down. And suddenly I was standing next to her taking a selfie. And we talked. I told her I was Dutch, she asked where I was from. I was team 020 (although, actually 030-born), she was 010. And by the way, now that we were bonding… I was the one who had given her a high five during the finale of Tommy last week.“Was that really you??”You understand, Gigi and I are going to get a friendship tattoo tomorrow.

When Gigi was really really REALLY gone, I spoke with our real friend Noor. And with Nicola Maramotti, my dear Max Mara contact. Married to the son of the founder of Max Mara and responsible for all international stores.
To shake off all the glamour a bit, I walked to the favorite restaurant of my beloved and me: Rosy y Gabriele. Nothing fancy, but Italian like you can’t imagine. An aquarium on the left, not quite successful paintings all over, families, and the very best Italian food ever. The waiter recognized me and gave me a small table when I saw my Belgian colleagues. This was also their hidden gem. We ate, we talked, we drank. About fashion, life, and especially about food.

Milan, I love you. Because you always serve me exactly what I didn’t expect.