Last night I thought instead
of sleeping, they say that nighttime is mysterious, dark
and silent. Who said this doesn't live in Milan.
It was late, maybe two or three a.m., and on the street
people were still eating ice creams, riding their scooters
and laughing loudly as one does only in the evening. What
a racket.
But it didn't disturb me at all. I had a vision in my head,
and I was smiling.
Let's
start from the beginning: after having designed all the
things for winter - the bags, no? - and having figured out
all the samples, we finally set off to the seaside to wait
until in the city everything was cut, sewn and ready to
be checked, perhaps modified, and sometimes get desperate.
We
went to the seaside in Sicily, the Aeolian Islands, Vulcano.
On Köbi's birthday each year we grab some clothes and
our snorkeling gear and off we go!! To Vulcano to be happy.
The apartment is on the western side of the island between
the sea and the vulcano. Nobody is there, the tourists arrive
in hordes but much later on.
I
won't say anything, here, about the sea and the black sand,
left there for us by the volcanoes.
Nor about nature, about the flowers, about the colors, the
yellows the pinks the reds, the green and the blue. Nor
about the fragrances. No word either about the food, the
wine, the new the old the sweet one. Nothing about the thick
cream we found under every thing ice cold we ate.
You might think it was because of all that, I couldn't sleep
last night.
As always we returned fat and tanned like babies.
Today
we saw the samples, for this reason I was smiling. It happens
that, at the beginning of the collection, nothing "real"
is ready on our big worktable. It's a high table; you can
stand up in front of it. On top there are hundreds of different
messy inventions, material samples, lace, pins, scissors,
spread all over the table: flat as paper, laid there, abandoned.
You grab it, move it and where the hell has it gone! Cuttings
that won't sit in the right place, two hands aren't enough!
It doesn't work. Then, when everything has been sent away
to be sewn, all of a sudden there it is.
It really is quite something. It is a thing. There, on the
table. It has character, it is. And it's so nice, so sudden
and unexpected, yet present and real, that you can touch
it and look at it and think that, today, in my world and
in my space, there it is, it's mine and Köbi's, and
for whoever wants it, and at first it didn't exist.
It is this that makes me smile; because it's so simple,
not at all pretentious, happy and silly and red.
I will
put it here, a quick photo, as quick as this little chat,
so that you may have a look at it as well, then tell me
if I am exaggerating or if you understand me and if it is
the same for you too. Tell me if you agree that it was better
to do it rather than not doing it.
This is the first piece and then it goes on. On the next
show it will be there, the dog, the flowers and all their
colors.
Marina Wiesendanger
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