A LITTLE WORLD ON MY OWN

Women handbags are small worlds where all the laws of nature cease to exist. Small bags for great thoughts. Large bags for great passions. Notebooks and lip liners united by a single destiny. Perfumes, hair bands, sheets written in a stream of consciousness. Cinema tickets and dried flowers. Sand, shells and candy wrappers. Capless pens and coins. Books with pages wrinkled by the wind. Pictures of your mother when she was young. A letter that your sister has stuck in your wallet just before taking a plane. And then there's your back, who would not want to carry all that weight. And what of those things you can not do without.
My passion for big bags has a long history. My grandmother Rosa gave me my very first one and it was exactly half my height. I could barely carry it and I had to place it on my knee if I wanted walk. I proceeded lame. It was one of those doctor models, with an opening snap. An intense dark brown. The interior was velvety. The shoulder strap was short, perfect to wear on the shoulder. I put everything inside. My father made me a notebook with a deep blue cover. My aunt Giulia, a teacher by profession, gave me pencils and markers. I could barely write my name. I wrote mostly incomprehensible multicolored hieroglyphics. I felt already very grown up, though I had been in this world for only 4 years. In the garden there still was the apple tree, a successful graft of my grandfather Francesco. Stones and some leeves. One of my mother's old bras. The Wild Swans by Andersen. A shirt and a pair of shorts. A slice of cake. A little world of my own. I never learned how to make good use of the space. I have always used big bags and I always filled them up with curious things. In case they could be useful.

PARADISE

I would love to know if there is a paradise for unpaired earrings. People I meet often find it interesting that I always use earrings different from each other. The truth is, that it's not exactly something I want. They do not know that behind what they consider an original outfit, there is instead a profound tragedy of loss. They do not imagine the frantic search that precedes the last few minutes before going out. The acceptance, once again. The disapperance and the hope of a fortuitous discovery are the following mechanical reactions. Furthermore there are the epiphanies, in form of nocturnal intuition, incredibly sharp. In the dreamlike vortex, I know exactly where to look for the other half lost. I can even touch them. Together again, in perfect combination. The awakening sadly doesn’t leave any clue. Oblivion takes over.

Unfortunately I have never found any of the earrings that I lost, but I can say I had a chance to lose at least two in every country in the world (almost). I've lost one, red and triangular, on the promenade that leads to Notre-Dame. I've lost another one, silver and aquamarine, at Park Güell, while I was enjoying the sun reflecting on the glass animals, I guess. I've lost one going to college in Tartu, without doubt due to a snow storm. I've also lost one in Vietnam, in the tangle of the markets, maybe. I do not remember the many that I lost in Germany. I can only make a rough estimate of those lost during the whole course of my life. I like to think that they were found by someone who then wore them at the same time as me. Loved in spite of everything. I like to think that at the time of the discovery, someone said "I wonder what happened to your mate.".

LET'S START

Let’s start from the very beginning.

I used to be very wild as a little girl. My hair was always cut quite short and even if my mother persisted to comb them and put pink clips on them, my hairdo was always weird. Something in between a splendid princess and an orphan right out of a Dickens’s novel.

Almost same problem with the shoes. I’ve never understood why they had to be so small and narrow compared to my feet and above all, why I always had to wear those terrible white cotton socks. I’ve always suspected that one of my direct ancestors had been one of Cinderella’s half-sisters and now and then, when my mother could’t see me, I took off the shoes. Walking barefoot was always a relief.

Besides those little misadventures, I wouldn’t say that my childhood was bad, but, and that’s a fact, I always felt different and totally out of place. I remembered that the only thing that could calm me down was climbing up the big pear tree in my grandpa’s garden. Watching the sky from above. Reading a book among the fronds. Feeling like on the top of my vessel. Finally free.

My father used to be a book restorer, so I always saw needles and threads scattered in my house, piles of different materials, cardboard and paper collected untidily, waiting to being used. Books everywhere. Books were also a salvation for me. Sewing was part of my DNA, that just came out naturally, by trial and error, I guess. Nobody taught me how. I was 7 when I started and I used to sew really simply things. Small blankets for my sister’s stuffed animals. Tiny dresses for our dolls. My mother was so worried that accidentally I could have hurt myself, but it never happened. It was also in my DNA  to be disobedient.

A couple of years later, I was in a physiotherapistic clinic, waiting for my mother’s visit. Bored to death, I took a fashion magazine lying on a small table, right in front of me and started to leaf through. My attention was suddendly captured by a photo, so I tore out the page, I put it in my pocket, intending to draw inspiration by it. No revelation. Maybe a vocation. I would say a big intuition, yes. I sewed my very first big "thing“ when I was almost 12. I had no sewing machine, but a lot of those big needles that my father used for sewing his books. I could barely handle them. At home I had a couple of old jeans and I decided to use them to make me a skirt. With some small scissors I unstitched every part of them and then I put them back together again. I used a pair of big scissors that my father gave me to shape the material, trying to make a flared skirt. I adorned it, cutting round some small pieces, using the belt loops to make a sun with its sunshines. I also cut a moon and some stars. I sewed every day. All summer. I also began to draw my own collection and I read a lot of books about fashion that my father found for me at the library, always being inspired by styles from the past. Every day a little step more. They were really exciting days. Unfortunately I never had the chance to wear that skirt, but I always kept that particular emotion in my heart. Creating, being inspired, was the best thing that could ever happen to me.