Serija "Život iz kofera", epizoda "Milano"

10 Corso Como aka my favorite concept store and all-around Heaven
The last weekend that I spent with my parents and friends in Milan made me realize how awfully uninspiring one-language environments are compared to the opposite. In order to communicate effectively with everyone around me in Milan, I have to keep switching between Slovenian, Croatian/Serbian, English and Italian all the time and I don't know why, but I find such situations much more comfortable than having to limit myself to a single language. For me, being in Milan is like living in a linguistic fairy tale and when I return to my "normal life" in Ljubljana where I only speak Slovenian with an occasional bit of Croatian/Serbian, it all becomes a little boring.

Apart from eating well (and in large quantities) all weekend, we saw two exhibitions at Palazzo Reale (and two at the Triennale, but those didn't really speak to me):


Bridal kimono detail. Via antichikimono.com.
Shunga: Japanese erotic prints from the Edo period that I didn't care about much -- instead I kept returning to a beautiful white bridal kimono embellished with bright, colorful details. The kimonos (from Taisho, Meiji and Showa periods) were borrowed from the Gloria Gobbi collection in Rome, making this city rise significantly on my "to visit in near future" list (to see the entire kimono collection, but also because Rome is an amazing place to be in in general).


Edward Hopper: The Wine Shop
Edward Hopper: This exhibition felt like a series of flashbacks on my life: Stairway at 48 rue de Lille, Paris reminded me of a certain Vienna pension in Graben, Parisian Woman Walking looks more like a woman hailing a cab in Manhattan mid-afternoon, The Wine Shop resembles the Croatian/Italian coast off-season so much I can almost feel the emptiness in the air and Hopper's train stations are the same as those in Northern Serbia. Most American painters are too American for me, but it surprised me how much Hopper's (not in the least un-American) aesthetic is similar to mine (i.e. what I'm used to).


View inside 10 Corso Como

Our trip wouldn't be complete without a venture into 10 Corso Como, my favorite concept store and all-around (fashion/lifestyle) heaven. I really appreciate this place although it's so much "a world of its own" that I can never connect to it 100%; it's almost as if there are too many beautiful items, everything is special and I get lost not knowing where to begin. We saw some strange contemporary photography in the gallery and went to the rooftop while the sun was going down and it became cold. Somehow Milan is always like that.


Installation on Via Montenapoleone
Honorable mentions: The Duomo being the first thing I saw coming out of the subway. Olivera Katarina in the car. Getting Orhan Pamuk's The Museum of Innocence that I wanted to buy in Belgrade but then forgot to return to the bookshop. The Saturday market in Isola. Eco installations on Via Montenapoleone. Having drinks and cannoli at the bar. The strong wind of the upcoming train. Seeing very few mindblowingly well-dressed people. That red velvet McQueen dress in the window. Feeling strange about the Sunday calmness because Sundays in Belgrade are so much different. The city not being as aggressive as I had in mind.


Near where this was taken in 2005.

P.S. Martina at The Little Fashion Treasury has recently done a post on Milan with even more beautiful photos from 10 Corso Como → check it out!