Accessories Widely regarded as a pioneering act in the world of fashion, the Nudes collection has always embodied the ever-present idea of diversity in Christian Louboutin’s designs. For the designer, Nude isn’t just a colour – it’s a concept. Originally launched in 2013 with five shades, the collection has steadily evolved into something much bigger, becoming an ode to inclusivity, regardless of gender, and a core part of the Maison’s values.        “The Nudes shoe doesn’t dress the leg but continues to undress it. The shoe disappears in favor of the silhouette of the leg, like an illusion. The leg is no longer wearing a shoe: it simply dissolves into a shoe and that’s what gives it its radiance.” -Christian Louboutin     From five shades to eight, the Nudes family is now bigger than ever, with Spring-Summer 2020 introducing new styles for women and for the first time ever, a selection of men’s pieces, including two unisex models. Designed to make the perfect companion for this year’s summer adventures, the first is the Pool Stud, its thick rubber soles and signature studs ideal for pool-side lounging. Back in the city, the Louis Jr low top sneaker keeps things chic with its pared back lines and sleek contours. Over on women’s, the Cheeky Point booty is sure to win hearts over with a mesh upper, patent toe cap and dainty bow, its ladylike appeal an elegant twist on the Nudes theme.      No collection would be complete without a range of bags for stashing those all-important essentials, and this year there’s something for everyone. Designed for both the masculine and the feminine wardrobe, you can always count on the Nude LoubiLab bag to provide style on-the-go with its signature studs and contrasting Louboutin red body strap. Broadening the offer further, three of the Maison’s most iconic women’s styles including the Elisa, have also been given the Nudes treatment.     Launching exclusively online worldwide from May 27th , the Nudes collection will be available on Christian Louboutin’s European and US online boutiques, as well as in the new boutique opening in mid-July in rue Saint-Honoré, in Paris. And believe us when we say, everyone will be welcome! Widely regarded as a pioneering act in the world of fashion, the Nudes collection has always embodied the ever-present idea of diversity in Christian Louboutin’s designs. For the designer, Nude isn’t just a colour – it’s a concept. Originally launched in 2013 with five shades, the collection has steadily evolved into something much bigger, becoming an ode to inclusivity, regardless of gender, and a core part of the Maison’s values.        “The Nudes shoe doesn’t dress the leg but continues to undress it. The shoe disappears in favor of the silhouette of the leg, like an illusion. The leg is no longer wearing a shoe: it simply dissolves into a shoe and that’s what gives it its radiance.” -Christian Louboutin     From five shades to eight, the Nudes family is now bigger than ever, with Spring-Summer 2020 introducing new styles for women and for the first time ever, a selection of men’s pieces, including two unisex models. Designed to make the perfect companion for this year’s summer adventures, the first is the Pool Stud, its thick rubber soles and signature studs ideal for pool-side lounging. Back in the city, the Louis Jr low top sneaker keeps things chic with its pared back lines and sleek contours. Over on women’s, the Cheeky Point booty is sure to win hearts over with a mesh upper, patent toe cap and dainty bow, its ladylike appeal an elegant twist on the Nudes theme.      No collection would be complete without a range of bags for stashing those all-important essentials, and this year there’s something for everyone. Designed for both the masculine and the feminine wardrobe, you can always count on the Nude LoubiLab bag to provide style on-the-go with its signature studs and contrasting Louboutin red body strap. Broadening the offer further, three of the Maison’s most iconic women’s styles including the Elisa, have also been given the Nudes treatment.     Launching exclusively online worldwide from May 27th , the Nudes collection will be available on Christian Louboutin’s European and US online boutiques, as well as in the new boutique opening in mid-July in rue Saint-Honoré, in Paris. And believe us when we say, everyone will be welcome!

Fashion ROME - 29 MARCH, 2020 - WE TURNED OUT TO BE SO SMALL These days of confinement, in a suspended time that we can hardly imagine as free, I try to ask myself what is the meaning of my actions. It’s a vital and urgent questioning for me, which demands a careful pause and a delicate listening. It’s trying to name, with the precision of love, my fears and my desires. It’s the possibility to face the aphasia that every trauma provokes. After all, the tragedy we are living is providing new reflections. We could never have imagined to feel so connected to life through a bond of trembling and heartbreaking tenderness. We could never have thought to reconnect, so deeply, with the fragility of our creatural destiny. Our need for reciprocity. We turned out to be so small. A miracle of nothing. Above all, we understood we went way too far. Our reckless actions have burned the house we live in. We conceived of ourselves as separated from nature, we felt cunning and almighty. We usurped nature, we dominated and wounded it. We incited Prometheus, and buried Pan. So much haughtiness made us lose our sisterhood with the butterflies, the flowers, the trees and the roots. So much outrageous greed made us lose the harmony and the care, the connection and the belonging. We ravaged the sanctity of life, neglectful of our being a species. At the end of the day, we were out of breath.     ROME - 7 APRIL, 2020 - ABOUT WHAT WE WOULD NOT WANT TO BE THE SAME AS IT WAS Now that the devastation caught us unprepared, we have to think about what we would not want to be the same as it was. Because the greatest risk, for our tomorrow, is abdicating our responsibility for a true and necessary discontinuity. Our history is littered with crises that taught us nothing. With economic collapses and social devastations that were tackled by imposing the same recipes from which they originated. With wounds that were not able to regenerate our minds. With a mourning that we were not able to live in order to change ourselves and our relationships. This crisis represents a fundamental test for us all. It’s a test, because there is sorrow, exertion, danger. But also because there is an evaluation and a judgment. Through sorrow we can look at our recent past with a critical eye. At our list of debts, misunderstandings, false notes, mistakes. At our missteps and recklessness. At the thunderous absence of thoughts we dared not express. This present, then, entrusts us with important responsibilities. Everyone can take on responsibilities, according to one’s role and actions, to play a part in a constellation of molecular and widespread changes. As for me, in my own small way, I feel the urgent need to change a lot of things in the way I work. I have always been professionally inclined to change, after all, bringing with me a natural and joyful creative restlessness. But this crisis has somehow amplified such transformative urgency, which can’t be deferred anymore.     ROME - 27 APRIL, 2020 THE MOTIVE OF A CHOICE The change I imagine involves the capacity to reconnect with the deepest reasons that inspired my entry into the fashion realm. I feel the need to renew a bond, purifying the essential by getting rid of the unnecessary. I crave the authentic motive of a choice. The full set of reasons that set me on my way. I understood, as time went by, that these motives have different names and different intensities, but they inevitably gather around the same urgency: the possibility to tell. This possibility, so ancestral and powerful, always gave me the chance to build expressive passages, to make room for that core of the unspeakable that shakes my dreams, to celebrate the nostalgia for the imperfection, to praise the beauty that blossoms from shape to shape. This possibility allows me to catch, with bites of infinity, the daily falling in love with the existence.   ROME - 2 MAY, 2020 - A NEW CREATIVE UNIVERSE I am fully realizing though, that this possibility to tell cannot be constrained by the tyranny of speed. Now we know that too furious was our doing, too insidious was our ride. In this renewed awareness, I feel the need of a different time, released from other-imposed deadlines that risk to humiliate creativity. A time that can stand still, awaiting; that can go through the gift of inactivity, slowly. A time that can bring forth the promise of an epiphany, and that can linger on the dream, on the play, on the prefiguration. A time that now, more than ever, is necessary to build new and more powerful narrations. That is why I decided to build a new path, away from deadlines that the industry consolidated and, above all, away from an excessive performativity that today really has no raison d’être. It’s a foundational act, audacious but necessary, that aims at building a new creative universe. A universe that essentialises itself in the subtraction of events and that oxygenates through the multiplication of sense.     ROME - 3 MAY, 2020 - THE SACRED POWER OF PRODUCING REVERBERATIONS Therefore, I will abandon the worn-out ritual of seasonalities and shows to regain a new cadence, closer to my expressive call. We will meet just twice a year, to share the chapters of a new story. Irregular, joyful and absolutely free chapters, which will be written blending rules and genres, feeding on new spaces, linguistic codes and communication platforms. And beyond. I would like to leave behind the paraphernalia of leitmotifs that colonized our prior world: cruise, pre-fall, spring-summer, fall-winter. I think these are stale and underfed words. Labels of an impersonal discourse that lost its meaning. Containers that progressively detached themselves from the life that generated them, losing touch with reality. I believe that we can build our tomorrow also starting from a renewed capacity of denomination. Here comes the desire to baptize our new encounters by naming them after a language that has marvelously ancient roots: classical music language. Accordingly, there will be symphonies, rhapsodies, madrigals, nocturnes, overtures, concerts and minuets in the constellation of my creative path. Music, after all, has the sacred power to produce reverberations and connections. It travels beyond the borders, reconnecting the fragility to the infinity.     ROME - 5 MAY, 2020 - COMMUNITY OF PURPOSE In this silence, that is a living thing, my listening embraces all the extraordinary people that I’m connected with. Recalibrating time, to set the pace at a human level, wants to be a promise of revived care towards this amazing community of purpose I proudly belong to. It’s my project, pro-jectum: the art of extending the existence in the future. A plural future, where “we” provides a foundation. A future that contains the hug that today we cannot give each other, but to which we will return with an expanded comprehension. With a herd understanding and recovered breath. It will be the time when we will learn to listen for the sound of the forest growing, at night.     ROME - 16 MAY, 2020 - IN THE THROES OF WHAT IS MISSING Now that we are still apart, my love for fashion burns. Our species, after all, is like that: we love like crazy in the throes of what is missing.     Images courtesy of GUCCI ROME - 29 MARCH, 2020 - WE TURNED OUT TO BE SO SMALL These days of confinement, in a suspended time that we can hardly imagine as free, I try to ask myself what is the meaning of my actions. It’s a vital and urgent questioning for me, which demands a careful pause and a delicate listening. It’s trying to name, with the precision of love, my fears and my desires. It’s the possibility to face the aphasia that every trauma provokes. After all, the tragedy we are living is providing new reflections. We could never have imagined to feel so connected to life through a bond of trembling and heartbreaking tenderness. We could never have thought to reconnect, so deeply, with the fragility of our creatural destiny. Our need for reciprocity. We turned out to be so small. A miracle of nothing. Above all, we understood we went way too far. Our reckless actions have burned the house we live in. We conceived of ourselves as separated from nature, we felt cunning and almighty. We usurped nature, we dominated and wounded it. We incited Prometheus, and buried Pan. So much haughtiness made us lose our sisterhood with the butterflies, the flowers, the trees and the roots. So much outrageous greed made us lose the harmony and the care, the connection and the belonging. We ravaged the sanctity of life, neglectful of our being a species. At the end of the day, we were out of breath.     ROME - 7 APRIL, 2020 - ABOUT WHAT WE WOULD NOT WANT TO BE THE SAME AS IT WAS Now that the devastation caught us unprepared, we have to think about what we would not want to be the same as it was. Because the greatest risk, for our tomorrow, is abdicating our responsibility for a true and necessary discontinuity. Our history is littered with crises that taught us nothing. With economic collapses and social devastations that were tackled by imposing the same recipes from which they originated. With wounds that were not able to regenerate our minds. With a mourning that we were not able to live in order to change ourselves and our relationships. This crisis represents a fundamental test for us all. It’s a test, because there is sorrow, exertion, danger. But also because there is an evaluation and a judgment. Through sorrow we can look at our recent past with a critical eye. At our list of debts, misunderstandings, false notes, mistakes. At our missteps and recklessness. At the thunderous absence of thoughts we dared not express. This present, then, entrusts us with important responsibilities. Everyone can take on responsibilities, according to one’s role and actions, to play a part in a constellation of molecular and widespread changes. As for me, in my own small way, I feel the urgent need to change a lot of things in the way I work. I have always been professionally inclined to change, after all, bringing with me a natural and joyful creative restlessness. But this crisis has somehow amplified such transformative urgency, which can’t be deferred anymore.     ROME - 27 APRIL, 2020 THE MOTIVE OF A CHOICE The change I imagine involves the capacity to reconnect with the deepest reasons that inspired my entry into the fashion realm. I feel the need to renew a bond, purifying the essential by getting rid of the unnecessary. I crave the authentic motive of a choice. The full set of reasons that set me on my way. I understood, as time went by, that these motives have different names and different intensities, but they inevitably gather around the same urgency: the possibility to tell. This possibility, so ancestral and powerful, always gave me the chance to build expressive passages, to make room for that core of the unspeakable that shakes my dreams, to celebrate the nostalgia for the imperfection, to praise the beauty that blossoms from shape to shape. This possibility allows me to catch, with bites of infinity, the daily falling in love with the existence.   ROME - 2 MAY, 2020 - A NEW CREATIVE UNIVERSE I am fully realizing though, that this possibility to tell cannot be constrained by the tyranny of speed. Now we know that too furious was our doing, too insidious was our ride. In this renewed awareness, I feel the need of a different time, released from other-imposed deadlines that risk to humiliate creativity. A time that can stand still, awaiting; that can go through the gift of inactivity, slowly. A time that can bring forth the promise of an epiphany, and that can linger on the dream, on the play, on the prefiguration. A time that now, more than ever, is necessary to build new and more powerful narrations. That is why I decided to build a new path, away from deadlines that the industry consolidated and, above all, away from an excessive performativity that today really has no raison d’être. It’s a foundational act, audacious but necessary, that aims at building a new creative universe. A universe that essentialises itself in the subtraction of events and that oxygenates through the multiplication of sense.     ROME - 3 MAY, 2020 - THE SACRED POWER OF PRODUCING REVERBERATIONS Therefore, I will abandon the worn-out ritual of seasonalities and shows to regain a new cadence, closer to my expressive call. We will meet just twice a year, to share the chapters of a new story. Irregular, joyful and absolutely free chapters, which will be written blending rules and genres, feeding on new spaces, linguistic codes and communication platforms. And beyond. I would like to leave behind the paraphernalia of leitmotifs that colonized our prior world: cruise, pre-fall, spring-summer, fall-winter. I think these are stale and underfed words. Labels of an impersonal discourse that lost its meaning. Containers that progressively detached themselves from the life that generated them, losing touch with reality. I believe that we can build our tomorrow also starting from a renewed capacity of denomination. Here comes the desire to baptize our new encounters by naming them after a language that has marvelously ancient roots: classical music language. Accordingly, there will be symphonies, rhapsodies, madrigals, nocturnes, overtures, concerts and minuets in the constellation of my creative path. Music, after all, has the sacred power to produce reverberations and connections. It travels beyond the borders, reconnecting the fragility to the infinity.     ROME - 5 MAY, 2020 - COMMUNITY OF PURPOSE In this silence, that is a living thing, my listening embraces all the extraordinary people that I’m connected with. Recalibrating time, to set the pace at a human level, wants to be a promise of revived care towards this amazing community of purpose I proudly belong to. It’s my project, pro-jectum: the art of extending the existence in the future. A plural future, where “we” provides a foundation. A future that contains the hug that today we cannot give each other, but to which we will return with an expanded comprehension. With a herd understanding and recovered breath. It will be the time when we will learn to listen for the sound of the forest growing, at night.     ROME - 16 MAY, 2020 - IN THE THROES OF WHAT IS MISSING Now that we are still apart, my love for fashion burns. Our species, after all, is like that: we love like crazy in the throes of what is missing.     Images courtesy of GUCCI

Men   At home with Alessandro Calzoni, exclusively photographed by Zeb Daemen.   Who are you and what is your profession?   Who am I ahah, the most difficult question you can ask to a person. It reminds me a bit of the first days at university when in order to impress your classmates or the professor you had to come up with something cool, but at the end you always start with your name and conclude with a clumsy “that’s it ahah”.  Generally speaking I don’t like to define myself but I’ll give you few adjectives my closest friends used to describe me, should I consider that cheating ahahah? They see me as an honest person, a loyal one. Extremely stubborn and determined. Too altruist, I usually tend to not put myself first and yes, it can be good but it has its side effects.  What I can tell you from my side is that I’m a kind of a mixture between a strategic mind and an aesthete. This caused lot’s of trouble in my life but I’m so grateful to be who I am and to had to deal with this kind of a contrast. It shaped me, it pushed me to explore. I have started university 3 years later compared to my peers, I never believed in it’s entity, in it’s structure. I’m not saying that studying is not fundamental of course. It’s more a critique to the system. I come from a small village in Umbria, Italy, composed of 1000 souls maybe even less. I couldn’t find my way.  So at a certain point of my life, 6 years ago, also due to lot’s of health problems that were hitting my family, I decided to leave Italy, I needed to breath fresh air. I didn’t know a word of English. It was my first time taking a flight (I was 19) and I could have lost my hearing due to problems I had when I was a child, so I called my doctor few moths before and I said, “I have to take a flight to go to London”. Of course he was quite concerned but I decided to rick it and.. yeah it was quite painful for 4 days I could barely hear people talking. But that’s another long story. After years of attempts now I’m working at Startupbootcamp FashionTech in Milan while I’m attending my last year at university. I’m focusing on Marketing and Business Development and now you may ask yourself where’s creativity in all this and to reply to that question I will ask the help of a superior entity: Albert Einstein “Creativity is intelligence having fun”. I love what I do and considering that I’m just at the beginning I’m sure it will get better and better every day.      How do you think Covid-19 will affect the fashion industry both long-term and short-term?  How do you see the impact of Corona crisis on the general perception of fashion? Do you believe everything will just go back to normal after Covid-19, or how do you see it will be?   I guess there are already lot’s of people heavily expressing themselves on this topic, everyone from Fashion “experts” to politician trying to predict, trying to say something, but the funny thing is that nobody knows what the future will look like I’m not talking about weeks, moths I’m talking about seconds.  I don’t want to add another prediction or opinion on that pile.  I can maybe tell you what are my wishes, what I will try to sustain in the future through my work and my projects, what I believe could be a great ecosystem to live in. I was walking to meet a manager from Prada 2 year ago and I was listening to the words of Kate Raworth, professor at Oxford University, on a TED talk titled “A healthy economy should thrive not grow”.  That morning I understood what leader should do, what visionary leaders do. I understood how badly involved we are in this system built upon consumerism and false values. I understood how dependant we are from growth, financially, politically and socially speaking. I believe now we have the chance to restart from zero. Now that we are experiencing the cracks in our society. Now that we are rediscovering the human value. We should stop treating economy and finance as a science. We should stop depending on growth. We should choose a higher ambition, as Kate R. says: “humanity's 21st century challenge is clear: to meet the needs of all people within the means of this extraordinary, unique, living planet so that we and the rest of nature can thrive”. I strongly believe we need a financial, political and social innovation in order to overcome this structural dependency on growth and instead focus on finding the right balance between us and this planet.     How do you spend your Quarantine time and are you still able to create while being quarantined?   Before the lockdown started I moved back to my hometown, I was going through a though time personally and professionally speaking and I could have never stand the life in Milan. This months have been crazy. Work and my last exams are taking it all, but I promised myself that as soon as I finish my thesis I will restart to dedicate more time to my creative side and my body.  I kind of need it.      What is in your planning or was in your planning for this year and how will Covid-19 effect that?   Luckily, my plans didn’t change that much. Apart from the fact that I will have a digital graduation ceremony, nothing really changed. I’m trying to focus on what I have and thankfully I’m surrounded by nature and so when I have 10 free minutes I just get out and enjoy it.      What is your daily beauty routine like? And what beauty products you cannot go without?   Ahaha I guess you will be disappointed by this but, I do not have a specific beauty routine and I don’t use any product apart from lukewarm water 2/3 times a day to deterge my face. I have a close friend that works as beautician and well, she tried multiple times to give me advices and tips but.. still, I toil on.     What is the coolest new thing you have learnt since being quarantined and how did you learn it?   I don’t know if we can define it cool, but.. I’ll leave it to you to judge. As I was saying before, few months ago I started to face quite a though period, but though from my point of view doesn’t mean negative, it’s just part of the game of life.  In the past 4 years I have been sacrificing a lot. I never went on vacation and I didn’t get out on Friday nights just to have fun. It sounds surreal and you may not believe me but that’s what happened. I have dedicated every second I had to accomplish good results in my professional career, zeroing my personal life.  This past December I was quite exhausted, so I decided to spend 4 days with few friends and my former partner in Corvara in the Dolomites. I promised I wouldn’t have touched anything regarding work or university. So I did. It was good being there, but at the same time I felt more like a “spectator” of the scene instead of “character”. I wasn’t active, it wasn’t me. I wasn’t able to be silly, to be light. I was trapped in the cage of duty.  This and other events made me think a lot. …and to go back to your question I guess during this quarantine I’m learning how to balance my professional and personal life. I’m reshaping my way of intending success.  I’m defining what I would love my future to look like, but this time including also my personal life. I’m rethinking my way of approaching life.        Tell us something about yourself that isn't on your resume.   Mmmm I guess I have to think about this one. I’m really good at gardening ahaha. Since I was a child I’ve always been close to nature, I lived most of my childhood with my grandparents and they plunged me in their world that was composed for the 98% of agriculture.  My uncleenvy me so much because he says everything I plant, even a dry branch come to life ahah.  He doesn’t know the trick: I just exchange the almost dead wood with a new one after few weeks that nothing happens ahaha.     What's the first place you'd want to go when it's safe again to travel and go out of our homes and why there?   I guess I will not value the physical place that much.  I want to meet again with people I haven’t met in a while.  I also hope to meet a special person that lives a bit more far from my hometown.  Instead if we want to talk about places I want to visit in the future, I love to go and explore those places where nature is extreme, in colors, shapes and weather. I would love to visit Shiprock,  New Mexico – Wadi Rum, Jordan – the Namib desert.  But I guess I will have to wait a bit more for all this.     9. What is your favorite song at the moment and why? Do you have a playlist that you would like to share with us?   Few weeks ago I was writing the first part of my thesis and I bumped into an album from Milky Chance, called Mind the Moon. Since then I never stopped listening to it. Go check it out.      What is the first thing you like to do when you wake up, and last thing you like to do before going to bed?   First thing I do when I wake up, even before breakfast, I try to understand how I will split my time in relation to my to do list. So I take a peace of paper and I start to separate it in 3 columns, one is about university, another one about work and the third one is about my IG profile and everything that’s related to that.  But if I have to stick to the question “what I would LIKE to do..” everything changes: I would love to wake up, maybe close to someone special, eat something and then workout before the day starts. At night, before bed time, I usually dedicate what’s left of the day, so between 8.30 and 10.30, to my close friends. I’m not the most social person on earth even if I know lot’s of people I have the tendency to get quite close just with the chosen few ahah. These are the people who pushe me to do always better, the ones I’m working hard for, the once I would love to share the best and the wort of my entire life.       Have you ever been to Amsterdam? If yes, describe your experience of Amsterdam in one sentence.   Unfortunately not! But I would love to. Soooo.. I’ll wait for your invitation now.        What is your go-to work-out for staying in shape? What does working out mean to you?   It can have so many meanings. I believe it really depends on the mood and on the phase of the life you are in.  Usually for me it’s a mixture of personal aesthetic and a way to get distracted. Let’s say 80/20%.  I don’t enjoy it that much but I know it’s important in order to balance myself and given my nature I can’t stand my body falling apart. It’s been 4 years since the last time I worked out properly, consistently.     What is your favorite painting and has it inspired you for any of your work thus far?   I have discovered just 2 years ago this New York based artist: Leonardo Drew. I love his way of juxtaposing materials. It’s exactly what I usually try to express through my aesthetic.  I love everything that’s raw.        INSTAGRAM: @alessandrocalzoni    At home with Alessandro Calzoni, exclusively photographed by Zeb Daemen.   Who are you and what is your profession?   Who am I ahah, the most difficult question you can ask to a person. It reminds me a bit of the first days at university when in order to impress your classmates or the professor you had to come up with something cool, but at the end you always start with your name and conclude with a clumsy “that’s it ahah”.  Generally speaking I don’t like to define myself but I’ll give you few adjectives my closest friends used to describe me, should I consider that cheating ahahah? They see me as an honest person, a loyal one. Extremely stubborn and determined. Too altruist, I usually tend to not put myself first and yes, it can be good but it has its side effects.  What I can tell you from my side is that I’m a kind of a mixture between a strategic mind and an aesthete. This caused lot’s of trouble in my life but I’m so grateful to be who I am and to had to deal with this kind of a contrast. It shaped me, it pushed me to explore. I have started university 3 years later compared to my peers, I never believed in it’s entity, in it’s structure. I’m not saying that studying is not fundamental of course. It’s more a critique to the system. I come from a small village in Umbria, Italy, composed of 1000 souls maybe even less. I couldn’t find my way.  So at a certain point of my life, 6 years ago, also due to lot’s of health problems that were hitting my family, I decided to leave Italy, I needed to breath fresh air. I didn’t know a word of English. It was my first time taking a flight (I was 19) and I could have lost my hearing due to problems I had when I was a child, so I called my doctor few moths before and I said, “I have to take a flight to go to London”. Of course he was quite concerned but I decided to rick it and.. yeah it was quite painful for 4 days I could barely hear people talking. But that’s another long story. After years of attempts now I’m working at Startupbootcamp FashionTech in Milan while I’m attending my last year at university. I’m focusing on Marketing and Business Development and now you may ask yourself where’s creativity in all this and to reply to that question I will ask the help of a superior entity: Albert Einstein “Creativity is intelligence having fun”. I love what I do and considering that I’m just at the beginning I’m sure it will get better and better every day.      How do you think Covid-19 will affect the fashion industry both long-term and short-term?  How do you see the impact of Corona crisis on the general perception of fashion? Do you believe everything will just go back to normal after Covid-19, or how do you see it will be?   I guess there are already lot’s of people heavily expressing themselves on this topic, everyone from Fashion “experts” to politician trying to predict, trying to say something, but the funny thing is that nobody knows what the future will look like I’m not talking about weeks, moths I’m talking about seconds.  I don’t want to add another prediction or opinion on that pile.  I can maybe tell you what are my wishes, what I will try to sustain in the future through my work and my projects, what I believe could be a great ecosystem to live in. I was walking to meet a manager from Prada 2 year ago and I was listening to the words of Kate Raworth, professor at Oxford University, on a TED talk titled “A healthy economy should thrive not grow”.  That morning I understood what leader should do, what visionary leaders do. I understood how badly involved we are in this system built upon consumerism and false values. I understood how dependant we are from growth, financially, politically and socially speaking. I believe now we have the chance to restart from zero. Now that we are experiencing the cracks in our society. Now that we are rediscovering the human value. We should stop treating economy and finance as a science. We should stop depending on growth. We should choose a higher ambition, as Kate R. says: “humanity's 21st century challenge is clear: to meet the needs of all people within the means of this extraordinary, unique, living planet so that we and the rest of nature can thrive”. I strongly believe we need a financial, political and social innovation in order to overcome this structural dependency on growth and instead focus on finding the right balance between us and this planet.     How do you spend your Quarantine time and are you still able to create while being quarantined?   Before the lockdown started I moved back to my hometown, I was going through a though time personally and professionally speaking and I could have never stand the life in Milan. This months have been crazy. Work and my last exams are taking it all, but I promised myself that as soon as I finish my thesis I will restart to dedicate more time to my creative side and my body.  I kind of need it.      What is in your planning or was in your planning for this year and how will Covid-19 effect that?   Luckily, my plans didn’t change that much. Apart from the fact that I will have a digital graduation ceremony, nothing really changed. I’m trying to focus on what I have and thankfully I’m surrounded by nature and so when I have 10 free minutes I just get out and enjoy it.      What is your daily beauty routine like? And what beauty products you cannot go without?   Ahaha I guess you will be disappointed by this but, I do not have a specific beauty routine and I don’t use any product apart from lukewarm water 2/3 times a day to deterge my face. I have a close friend that works as beautician and well, she tried multiple times to give me advices and tips but.. still, I toil on.     What is the coolest new thing you have learnt since being quarantined and how did you learn it?   I don’t know if we can define it cool, but.. I’ll leave it to you to judge. As I was saying before, few months ago I started to face quite a though period, but though from my point of view doesn’t mean negative, it’s just part of the game of life.  In the past 4 years I have been sacrificing a lot. I never went on vacation and I didn’t get out on Friday nights just to have fun. It sounds surreal and you may not believe me but that’s what happened. I have dedicated every second I had to accomplish good results in my professional career, zeroing my personal life.  This past December I was quite exhausted, so I decided to spend 4 days with few friends and my former partner in Corvara in the Dolomites. I promised I wouldn’t have touched anything regarding work or university. So I did. It was good being there, but at the same time I felt more like a “spectator” of the scene instead of “character”. I wasn’t active, it wasn’t me. I wasn’t able to be silly, to be light. I was trapped in the cage of duty.  This and other events made me think a lot. …and to go back to your question I guess during this quarantine I’m learning how to balance my professional and personal life. I’m reshaping my way of intending success.  I’m defining what I would love my future to look like, but this time including also my personal life. I’m rethinking my way of approaching life.        Tell us something about yourself that isn't on your resume.   Mmmm I guess I have to think about this one. I’m really good at gardening ahaha. Since I was a child I’ve always been close to nature, I lived most of my childhood with my grandparents and they plunged me in their world that was composed for the 98% of agriculture.  My uncleenvy me so much because he says everything I plant, even a dry branch come to life ahah.  He doesn’t know the trick: I just exchange the almost dead wood with a new one after few weeks that nothing happens ahaha.     What's the first place you'd want to go when it's safe again to travel and go out of our homes and why there?   I guess I will not value the physical place that much.  I want to meet again with people I haven’t met in a while.  I also hope to meet a special person that lives a bit more far from my hometown.  Instead if we want to talk about places I want to visit in the future, I love to go and explore those places where nature is extreme, in colors, shapes and weather. I would love to visit Shiprock,  New Mexico – Wadi Rum, Jordan – the Namib desert.  But I guess I will have to wait a bit more for all this.     9. What is your favorite song at the moment and why? Do you have a playlist that you would like to share with us?   Few weeks ago I was writing the first part of my thesis and I bumped into an album from Milky Chance, called Mind the Moon. Since then I never stopped listening to it. Go check it out.      What is the first thing you like to do when you wake up, and last thing you like to do before going to bed?   First thing I do when I wake up, even before breakfast, I try to understand how I will split my time in relation to my to do list. So I take a peace of paper and I start to separate it in 3 columns, one is about university, another one about work and the third one is about my IG profile and everything that’s related to that.  But if I have to stick to the question “what I would LIKE to do..” everything changes: I would love to wake up, maybe close to someone special, eat something and then workout before the day starts. At night, before bed time, I usually dedicate what’s left of the day, so between 8.30 and 10.30, to my close friends. I’m not the most social person on earth even if I know lot’s of people I have the tendency to get quite close just with the chosen few ahah. These are the people who pushe me to do always better, the ones I’m working hard for, the once I would love to share the best and the wort of my entire life.       Have you ever been to Amsterdam? If yes, describe your experience of Amsterdam in one sentence.   Unfortunately not! But I would love to. Soooo.. I’ll wait for your invitation now.        What is your go-to work-out for staying in shape? What does working out mean to you?   It can have so many meanings. I believe it really depends on the mood and on the phase of the life you are in.  Usually for me it’s a mixture of personal aesthetic and a way to get distracted. Let’s say 80/20%.  I don’t enjoy it that much but I know it’s important in order to balance myself and given my nature I can’t stand my body falling apart. It’s been 4 years since the last time I worked out properly, consistently.     What is your favorite painting and has it inspired you for any of your work thus far?   I have discovered just 2 years ago this New York based artist: Leonardo Drew. I love his way of juxtaposing materials. It’s exactly what I usually try to express through my aesthetic.  I love everything that’s raw.        INSTAGRAM: @alessandrocalzoni