The first piece is a perspective of the Faraglioni. The sea magically stuck, filled with boats and their trails in the water. The green of the plants makes the frame and a tree, shaped by the wind, whilst overlooking the road, appears to lean towards the water, attracted.

The second is a snapshot of the boat which became, for a couple of days, the holiday home. This crystalizes a moment which became my routine, divided between the wish to freeze on the camera some material print of the beautiful surroundings and the desire to let it go and let myself dive into the blue of the sea.

The third represents my idea of liberty. The contrasting colours between the well-defined rope and the surroundings, natural and immaculate. A symbol which can, at any time, decide of the sails direction and of the temporary trails to leave in the water. Liberty and quietness are the two feelings conveyed through this picture. Both amazing feelings which the sea only can trigger.

The fourth snapshot is the most recent piece, taken October last year whilst spending holidays in the opposite part of the world. This unequivocal background belongs to New York, my venue for a couple of days stretching between my work and appointments. A city that I had the chance to see covered with snow back in 2003, which showed this time a completely different face and managed to steal my heart again.

The last piece is a night snapshot, taken in New York as well. This picture is very special to me because it is rare enough to capture the fog with desired effect! The Big Apple is one of its kind, not only due to the various activities, shows, ethnic groups, habits and opportunities you may find there, but also, if not primarily, for the views and instants the city offers, always changing in accord with the light and the moment of the day, and hence giving the impression of a constant movement.

We usually call them “thong” if they are very mini, “culottes” if maxi…but, the Bridget Jones ones are just panties…those very tight panties-girdle better known as “shaping underwear”. Celebrities don’t move a step on the red carpet without wearing them under their super tight dresses, but we should think twice before wearing them, especially if there is the remote possibility of showing us while wearing just those. Better a bit of belly to that terrible embarassing moment, when you read on your boyfriend’s face “is she wearing her Grandma’s panties?”.

Tattoos

The latest Salvatores’ movie named ‘Siberian Education’ raised again a very debated question: are tatoos a fashion issue or an ancient ritual? According to the Siberian language, you have to suffer if you want to get a tattoo. You do not have to get a tattoo as it is fashionable, but if you want to imprint on your skin a special event of your life or to communicate something about yourself. I like very much this interpretation, although it is difficult to apply it to the present days and I faced my first tattoo experience exactly in this way. While thinking about getting a second one, the only advice I can give you is: think about it, because it will last forever.

Credit cards

I often think about “freezing” it just as did Becky in “Shopaholic”. The truth is that I couldn’t live without it. I don’t have only one, but two, just because one works better abroad and one in Italy, one gives you extra insurances while the other is accepted everywhere. One is charged at the end of the month and the other one within 15th. Without  my credit cards, my never ending online shopping nights couldn’t exist!  My best dream is leaving for a long trip with a small bag almost empty: just a bottle of water, a toothbrush and a black card with unlimited credit.

Lingerie

What you are wearing under your clothes is just as important as your outwear. One invisible thong can change the appearance of your trousers and a right bra can certainly help the neckline. Among the essential pieces: microfiber for nude effect, something silk to feel special, at least one wonderful bra, some perfect slip to sleep and to seduce as well.

Glasses

Every girl must have at least two pairs of them: one more sporty and light and a pair of “diva sunglasses” that covers the face and give you the illusion of anonymity. You don’t need sunglasses (only) to protect from the sun: they hide eye sockets in the morning, and give a mysterious look, making every outfit more interesting with a little effort. In addition, if worn during a trip by train or plane, they can even provide some protection from intrusive travelers, even better if paired to an Ipod.

The clumsy

We love Bridget because she is like we are: she powerfully entered in the collective imagination thanks to cult situations like singing in pajamas completely drunk, cooking a the blue broth, promising to eat never  more carbohydrates, stop smoking and not going out any more with bastard men . She is able to  inspire our compassion as she is always  in the wrong place at the wrong time. Dressed as a Playboy Bunny at a fashion party, wearing Grandma’s underpants when it happens to her to have sex for the first time with the presumed man of her life. She is the next door girl, struggling with her extra weight, full of good purposes that will last for the space of a few pages, eternally conflicted with the “top beautiful” girls, desperately looking for a charming prince. We are  rooting for her, because if she managed to win over Mr Darcy, why shouldn’t we?

2) Men who hate women

The Warrior

Elizabeth Salander is the nemesis of every abused woman. Borderline in appearance like in her behavior, the protagonist of the trilogy of Larsonn is a contemporary heroine who, handles pc codes with the same ability of an hacker, she is serenely bisex and, just like those who survive to an abuse, she is very dangerous. Dark in deep, she is still able to be good, according to her very personal logic, that I totally agree with, as in the case of the tattoo made on the chest of her abuser. The warrior is iconic even in her style: a dragon tattooed on her back, piercings and black leather, just like her soul, reinforced combat boots to kick her tormentors and the fortitude that makes me love her even in the movie version. The Warrior is the friend, the aspiration model when you feel like a doormat, the intelligence against the brute force. And she always get back at somebody…so you better watch out!

3) I love shopping

The compulsive fashion addicted

The crazy  journalist, uncontested extreme shopping Queen, she is the protagonist of the most famous saga of the globe, I love Shopping, of the genius Kinsella. I totally understand Becky. I think about her everytime I write #ineedit on Twitter. When I check the mail I’m always worried about the credit card statement ( I did really buy a basket of flowers and fruits? And of course the high heel gold sandals were indispensable, even if it’s January. Then would’nt you take that cashmere sweater, which was on sale with 50% discount? Virtually in that case I earned, because I will wear it again next year. Well, I could have avoided the notepaper , but it had a delicious perfume). In those fateful moments when I  can’t do without a pair of stilettos, a jacket, a collier I remember  the scene of the scarf. And I feel relieved because among all the obsessions, online poker iseven worst!.

4) 50 shades of gray

The ambiguous

Anastasia is hateful. Everything she does is fine, but never deserved. She is the apotheosis of the ambiguous woman, bigoted and full of bourgeois habits. One minute before she is a shy and modest student, and the moment after she becomes the slave of Mr Grey, which is not a slobbering politician, but one of the few males still interesting, beautiful, young and very very rich. I know, girls, there is much to take in consideration if someone tells you “do you want to write?Here’s a publishing house for you my love. It’s yours. ” “Don’t you know how to dress? Don’t worry here is  the best personal shopper. ” “Don’t you feel so good? Here is  the helicopter to take you home. ” Like any saint our casta diva shows herself a weak creature, proven by the life and much in need of help. If you are planning to give her a hand I would not recommend yours. She will bite it when you don’t expect it.

5) The Devil Wears Prada

The boss

She is terrible, but if she is  in charge of  directing of  the most glossy magazine of the planet since a very long time,there should be a reason. She’s powerful, more feared than beloved,  she has a strong character. She does not know fashion, she creates it, deciding about the success or the failure of a stylist, a collection, a colour. Despite working for this kind of woman will get to spend a good part of your salary in psychoanalysis sessions, if you prove your value with triple  jumps on 12 heel stilettos, you can learn more in six months with her that in three-years of university master . She personally knows Stefano Giorgio, Miuccia, Donatella and Tom. She attends the jet-set but she is very lonely. She hasn’t gone on holidays since ages, she has changed at least three husbands, and it seems that the last time she smiled, Europe didn’t exist yet. Are you sure you would like to be in her shoes?

It’s incredible how a vase filled with beautiful flowers can delight the eyes and the mind, making the day more beautiful, positive and happy! Doesn’t matter at all if you are at home or in the office, you have to put flowers on your desk. I love peonies and white roses: they are so delicate, feminine, scented and they have no seasonality.

High heels

Every woman, even the less fashion addicted and easy going one, should have a pair of incredible high heel shoes in her closet….shoes to wear when you need to feel more beautiful, feminine, tall…making you feel over the top!…It could be a timeless model of decolletes, as for sure, they will make you walk immediatly with a  more elegant posture. It’s the kind of shoes that everyone loves, men included!

Rimmel

I can’t live without it! I can go out without make up, without foundation, with my hair tied up, without lipstick…but I can’t do without rimmel as I would feel naked! With the rimmel my eyes are perfectly enhanced and my gaze becomes deeper and more sensual.

Fragrance

There are people who love changing it every day, alternating sweet notes to fresh ones and other people who choose one fragrance and use it all life long. I did so: I chose one fragrance, or, to be honest, it chose me! My boyfriend gave me it as present and, since that day, I had never gone out without it! In my opinion the best fragrances are the Iris scented ones: feminine, sweet and exciting.

Music

Someone said: “I could live with nothing…but I couldn’t live without music … “. I totally agree: every woman should have a good-mood soundtrack for sad moments, one for tenderness ones and another for the moments she feels down for no reasons… Audrey Hepburn in “breakfast at Tiffany ‘s  called them dumps, do you remember? When I need to feel better, I listen to Frank Sinatra, Elvis, Django Reinhardt and David Bowie: they have a therapeutic effect!

In the morning you are always in a hurry, that’s true, but life can improve in a radical way if you try to spend 10 or 15 minutes just for yourself. I set the alarm clock a bit earlier so I have time for my make up, for a new hairstyle or to smooth  a scented cream on my body. Then, when I go out I feel relaxed and ready to go through a new day.

Eat with love

Take even just 10 minutes to eat without doing anything else. It’s not healthy to eat in front of the pc while checking emails. You need to take a breath to think, stop, reflect and recover energies. Since I have my pink lunch box, I appreciate even more my lunch break

Practing sports to recharge batteries

With the exercise bike at home, at the gym or in the park, women must remember to train their body. Working out makes us more mentally reactive.

Lots of beauty cuddles

During the day taking few minutes to retouching my lipstick or my nail polish makes me feel more trim, in this way my mood gets better. When women feel more beautiful the rest doesn’t matter at all!

Love

SinceI work 12 hours a day, it’s not easy to find the time for love, but this is necessary so, I find the time to! During the day I always send my boyfriend some cute sms just to make him feel my presence even if I am committed. If you don’t have a boyfriend you can send a sms or an email to a person who is closed to you. Love makes us feel good and can make special even the more normal day.

The Iron

Just to give you an idea of my level of ironing ability, I can put creases in a pair of terry cloth socks. It is for this reason that I consider an iron a dream object. It would be a dream to be able to know how to use one, or not to walk around in perpetually wrinkled clothes, or not to hide my shirts under a sweater because of how on their own they look like “an elephant sat on them”. An iron could even make me pass for a groomed person. It could, if only I knew how to master it.

The Spoon

For me, the spoon is an object of my dreams because it caresses my palate. The fork, for example, could never do the same thing! Nutella sticks to a spoon like nothing else. It can reach those hard-to-reach corners in a yogurt container like nothing else can.  In other words, the spoon is an instrument of pleasure (come on now, don’t be naughty).

The Heart

I love everything in the shape of a heart. Its not-perfectly-round form best describes the feeling it represents, because love is not perfection, but rather a happy union. Just its shape alone makes me laugh, cry, think, and yes… dream. In short, it can stir up strange creative mechanisms in my brain; perhaps that’s why I have them all over my home and body!

Jewelry Catalogues

The dream isn’t so much in the jewelry, but in the paper displaying the two-dimensional gleam of rings covered in diamonds or the preciousness of emerald necklaces. And leafing through these glossy pages, my imagination takes flight. They represent that filter between the “I want but I can’t”, leaving my heart filled with the hope of “sooner or later” that makes me go on dreaming!

High-heel Shoes

Well, yes, I’m an average woman after all. Let’s speak the truth: who among us has not wanted those beautiful, hand-crafted shoes that make you taller and cooler and that look fabulous even sitting on the shelf? What normal woman? Come on.

What about you? What are your dream objects?

Sew on a button

I kid you not, I am really great at bringing shirts to the cleaners and waiting a week for someone to sew on a button for me. I have even taken tutorials on YouTube on how to do this, but evidently I am just not capable. Sewing, ironing, understanding how the heck you do laundry, these are things that I would like to learn to feel like a better woman.

Make a cheesecake

And not one of those you get at the supermarket, in the airtight packages. I mean one of those cheesecakes done right. And if you say it’s easy, I’ll come to your house and tear you limb from limb. Despite the fact that I love those places with window displays of eighteen-layer cakes and delectable cheese-filled sweets covered with creamy toppings of wild berries, I would not like to keep on contributing so significantly to their coffers. Being able to prepare something delicious seems to be one of the greatest satisfactions there is, and this from someone who can’t even make a plate of pasta, so these are all theories, but it would be a challenge.

Take six months sabbatical

Just visit two or three places randomly: spin the globe and, with eyes blindfolded, point to where the surface feels the smoothest and go where fate takes you. Then, devise a plan to become rich, I think six months away should be enough, write a book about men (since everyone here is writing a book except me and I have no choice) and invent a battery recharger for cell phones that can make it last ten days.

Become Minister of Something

So that I can establish rules of good taste and impose strict prohibitions, such as: not to wear tight pants with a low waist if your waistline is too evident, to avoid shoes with Shogun-knife pointed toes, jackets with a lining that “makes soap bubbles”, fireproof shirts (or those made of shiny materials that easily ignite a blaze of objectionable odors), blonde extensions… I could go on and on!

Learn to surf

I dream of becoming a professional, someone who sleeps with my surfboard in my bedroom, with a perfect, perky butt, looking great even without make-up and hair done, and spending six months of the year teaching surfing in Australia. Then coming back here to write how I do it now, taking cookies out of the oven for my friends and buying a new pair of shoes each week. Like that.

Let’s start with the color that’s been my favorite since I was a little girl: pastel pink.

When I was small I used up hundreds of pink crayons, I was obsessed with them! As I grew up, pink became the color of my passion: fashion. It’s feminine and fresh. It calms me. At a tender age, I wanted to create an entire world of pink; today, it’s more connected to a state of mind. I can declare with certainly that my karma is pink and, obviously, when I find a dress that represents this, it’s truly hard to resist.

The second color is yellow, the color of the sun, of summer, of warmth. I love the warm weather, and when it’s summer I see the whole world in yellow. Even now, if I were to think about the beach or the sea, the dominant color would definitely be yellow. It’s full and enveloping, and when I wear it I feel bright and confident.

The color that most closely represents my nature is azure blue: light, impalpable, yet ever present, like the sky and the sea. I’m a calm person, I love to travel and – just like the sky – I silently observe things. This blue, from the point of view of fashion, is a changing color that can live in harmony with others, without ever dominating or being overstated.

My fourth choice is more of a combination than a color: the classic black & white. I love black & white photography. It represents bygone times, memories and origins. When I look at photos and films shot in black & white, I try to reconstruct the colors of the setting portrayed.

The last color is quite unusual and represents my love for my boyfriend and my dog, Piggy. It’s true, it’s not a color; it’s transparency, something that cannot mask its true appearance, cannot be dirtied. It’s the symbolic color of the loves of my life because I cannot hide anything from them and they cannot hide anything from me. It’s as if we were glass containers full of water, completely clear to one another.

These are the colors of my life. Now it’s your turn to tell me yours!

Of the five colors, the most sought after is certainly electric blue: modern, youthful and striking, it’s used in various intensities and is also combined with black. Ignite and brighten your look! As a great lover of colors, I think electric blue is just the right balance to add color to those gray winter days. A vivid shade but not too much so, giving you a touch of color without overdoing it.

The eternal must-have is black, valued for its simplicity and for its ability to hide flaws. I love wearing it, but without going all one-tone; I use different materials and play with their varying transparencies and weights. This is an iconic color and the symbol of cultural and music movements, always a good source of inspiration.

Fashionistas know that it’s farewell to bordeaux and hello to Burgundy! I love it; it’s fashionable, elegant and sexy. Wear it with gold and pastel colors, but don’t overdo it… otherwise you may look like a piece of furniture from an antique market! I especially like it for pants, a very chic color with an old-world charm. An all-burgundy look is “THE” must-have for winter 2012!

Titanium is the new trend. The introduction of lamé has brought a new wave to the fashion scene, especially this season with references to the world of metals being seen on all the runways. Somewhere between gray and brass, it’s a modern color to be worn with caution. I like to use it as a point of light or to break up a look, perfect for accessories with its precious appearance.

My last choice, and the most stylish, is also very close to my heart. It’s print mania, and theprint is the new trend! Not a color but a graphic mix, elaborate prints are adored by designers and fashionistas. Clean graphic elements or eccentric geometric shapes, they are the perfect example of the pop influence in the fashion world. I suggest you create fun combinations with black & white, using different materials and prints.

These are my color style choices, and I’m sure they’ll be helpful to you! And what’s your symbolic color for this winter?

Baci V.

The Pashmina

London, Milan, Paris… fabulous cities with unpredictable weather! A journalist has to travel light: practical luggage, roomy trolley cases, multi-pocket bags for a multitasking woman! Shoes take up enough space on their own, not to mention accessories and belts to change up the usual all black look! Jackets are really too much. So what’s the solution? A wonderful pashmina solves any style-related problem! All the better if it’s a solid color and of high quality. An investment that – more often than not – is well worth it! As long as you don’t forget it draped over the narrows seats in the front row!

The iPhone

Those who always have the latest thing already have the 5; others have downloaded the new software, but what’s certain is that no one can travel, work or live anymore without being able to take photos, tweet or post on Facebook. In other words, it’s a work tool but also a link to the rest of the world! By looking at the covers you can learn to distinguish the real fashion victims, those with the teddy bear, from the medium victims with the bunny ears. Then there are the true purists, with the sleek, shiny and minimal iPhone. This army of soldiers usually doesn’t have children… otherwise they would choose that awful rubber trim!

The Army Parka

There are the easy&cheap ones, which you can easily find at big low-budget stores, while for those with an unlimited budget, there are mink-lined parkas suitable for polar temperatures! There are old army jackets with patches and brand new ones made of tech fabric and in oversized style. The important thing is that it is a parka and that it is green. The trendiest already filled us with envy six months ago, at the winter fashion shows. Now, it’s our turn to show off our parka going from a flight to a taxi. Quick, comfortable and the very latest trend!!!

The Moleskine

How can you live without one? It’s true, there’s the aforementioned loyal cell phone… but what if the battery runs out? Or if it’s stolen? Or if you have to take notes on the go while you’re talking to your daughter who’s on the other side of the world and won’t let up? Then you can use the ever-faithful Moleskine, perhaps in red. So low profile, so useful, yet so cute! I love it! It’s perfect for fashion journalists as well as for people who prefer the black version!

The Bikers

Black, black and more black. Perfect in a thousand ways: with leggings and an oversize sweater, under a parka with jeans and a white shirt or to downplay the classic little black dress that can sometimes be a little too serious. Bikers give you an instant edge. They proclaim to the world “I am a busy woman, on the go, but I’m also young.” In the first row, you’ll see many journalists dressed in all black with their tough bikers lying at their feet. So cool!