Piedmont = cashmere

Cashmere, castles, chocolate and wine

Welcome to Piedmont, amici!

Amici, close your eyes and imagine a region nested in the Italian Alps with brooks and rivers of unique composition and purity. 

on a clear day you can see the Alps anywhere in Turin

Turin the Italian S.Korea

How many of you have watched: Umma, Pachinko and Squid Games??

Quadrilatero lane aka the Roman lanes

turinepi21 w Myanmar / Burma

This 8th edition of Turin Epicurean Capital is dedicated to and in support of the people of Myanmar who underwent the coup and who are still fighting for their democracy everyday 😰

With them in mind, all the turinepi21 vids show Lucia wearing the work of a talented Burmese tailor🧵 - sarta in italiano - based in Yangon.

Follow our friends ➡️ New Education Highway on their IG to know what happens in Burma as it is quite hard to get their news in other countries. Read about and get to know some of the activists and may peace 🕊 democracy, economical stability AND health be re-established soon 🙏

Stefania Mairano's art

Last summer our eyes caught some bright colors in a shop window. It was an ocean themed display of necklaces, pins, earrings, rings and cufflinks; some were boats, others were fish, but every piece was handmade in ceramics by Stefania Mairano.

courtesy of Stefania Mairano

July in Turin

Here are 5 good reasons to visit Turin in July!

1. The sales!!

shoe designer Manuela Gomez drawing her client's foot

St John celebrations

Among the many things Italy is famous in the world fashion, and historical costumes are definitely two.

If you love fashion and its history, if you love Europe because it feels just like a time machine, then Turin is your best destination particularly during the St. John the Baptist Day celebrations.

Timeless jewels

Turin's creativity is constantly twirling, giving life to many new events, projects and products. This is where among the many unique galleries, Creativity Oggetti stands out as one of those places of wonder where design, art and fashion merge.

Adriana Delfino at TurinEpi 17

On the second day of the fourth edition of Turin Epicurean Capital 2017, after our mandatory risotto lunch, Turin fashion designer Adriana Delfino started our journey through the senses, with sight and touch.

Adriana Delfino

stars and shoes

Since the dawn of humanity, men and women have always been fascinated with astrology and its power of prediction, and at Turin Epicurean Capital we always keep an eye on our horoscopes both for fun and curiosity. 

Patrizia Balbo, astrologer and author

the shoe artisan

Turin is full of secrets however, there is a name that is quickly moving through the grapevine. More than a name, it's a professional title and a downtown street name: the Via Carlo Alberto shoemaker - like the name of his website.

inside Beppe's shop

Chocolate and perfumes

December 2016 in Turin opened with L'Essenziale - the essential, a special event devoted to perfumes. The most interesting presentation for us epicureans was tonight at the international bookshop Luxemburg near Piazza Carignano.

Inside Libreria Luxemburg, Roberto Drago and Guido Gobino

behind the black raven feather

how the Alpini uniform changed over the years, left to right: 19th century, WWI, current. By Alberto Bonis 

Fashion has always had a special love for feathers and definitely, the Italian military uniforms particularly respect them. As in many cultures around the world, birds are symbolic animals and this is even more true for Alpini - the special Italian Alpine military corps.

Looking through the history and at their spirit, the Alpini's black raven feather, sticking out of their felt hat, just fits perfectly with them and Italy.

Like the raven in many aboriginal cultures around the world, the Alpini endurance and sense of duty is so great even Bialetti made an Italian coffee pot with the feather to honor and remember them!

Adriana's inspiring purses

Ho the things Adriana's mind can create!

key words this week are: RE.generate and ECO fashion and what does our friend fashion tailor - as she doesn't like to be labeled "designer" - mean?

handmade Adriana Delfino clutch

Turin dreamers' hat

Turin never sleeps but it dreams, and on October 5-9 2016, everyone can become a dreamer too;)

Ulderica Masoni a bijoux aficionada

Ulderica with Hermione and Gigi, her Chihuahua furkids

Back in November 2014, right before the Sar.To presentation, our friend Marcello Oliviero of the Maison Walter Dang, kindly introduced us to Ulderica Masoni THE luxury fashion authority in Turin!

As it is appropriate for a fashion expert, Ulderica wears many hats, one at the time and always with great style, thanks to her modelling experience. She's also very knowledgeable about fashion, design, art and history and owns a degree in law! 

Among her many activities, she is also the author of a luxury fashion blog written in Italian: Hermy & Mom and of the related SoMe accounts like Twitter, however, it is through Instagram and Facebook that you can enjoy her beautiful pictures even if you can't read Italian!

Ulderica is originally from Vercelli the rice town of Italy. She has always had a natural flare for fashion but her real love was the jewelry and in particular: earrings!

When she was 15, she got into "Lui Lei" - an accessories shop that sold the trendiest brands like Moschino (when Mr Moschino was still alive ;( ), Sharra Pagano and Ugo Correani. She had meant to buy a single pair of earrings and, like an Alice in the fashion Wonderland, that's when her career really started. That day she met the shop owner, who had had a career in fashion, and who gave Ulderica the opportunity to start working as a model too, to get to know the fashion world first hand, and to get to know the key people in the business.

red underwear for NYE

Buon Anno- Happy New Year!!

Here we are at the end of 2015 and like every year, we made it to the "red week", or that week of the year when Italians devote some of their time to buy red underwear to properly welcome the new year.

Shocking Elsa Schiaparelli

Adriana Delfino wearing her own homage to Elsa "Schiap" 

Turin fashion designer Adriana Delfino in collaboration with Talen.To closed her fashion presentations about women designers with Elsa Schiaparelli. After stylish Coco Chanel and genius Madeleine Vionnet, Elsa or Schiap's sense of fashion can be described as artistically shocking and highly creative.

Her creativity survives as new to our days as we enjoy her fashion legacy on a daily basis whenever we wear fuchsia, wrap dresses, decorative zips, huge pockets and many other things that are now considered "normal".

All her creations witness her quick wit, education and curious nature, Elsa is born in 1890 to a wealthy Roman family: her father is an intellectual, one of her uncles an astronomer, the other one was Ernesto Schiaparelli, a famous archaeologist who directed the Egyptian museum of Turin. 

She grows up surrounded by culture and books but, as she later writes in her autobiography Shocking Life her mom has always made her feel very self-conscious about her look.

After a short time in a boarding school in Switzerland - where she is sent after the publication of a love poem booklet, she follows a family friend to London.

Paris is the first stop of this trip and also her debut in the fashion world because for an important evening, she makes herself a wrap dress with a sheet. Unfortunately, as she can't sew, over the hours the dress falls apart.

Vionnet the fashion architect

This week, Turin fashion designer, Adriana Delfino held the second presentation about French designer, Madeleine Vionnet.

Adriana's presentations takes place at Spazio 28 in collaboration with Talen.To in Corso Vittorio Emanuele II 28, in the courtyard, in Turin,

Adriana will present Elsa Schiaparelli on Tuesday, Dec 1st @6:30pm and on Wednesday, Dec 2nd @10:30am.

To reserve, e-mail: torinospazio28@gmail.com or

call: 335 666 1281

As Vionnet is Adriana's favorite designer, we just couldn't miss, and a whole new world of fashion architecture opened to us under Adriana's guide.

Because of the many movies we all tend to consider Coco Chanel as the main female fashion innovator, however, Madeleine Vionnet was years ahead of her times for many things, and as a highly educated woman, the fashion style she developed is still unique, timeless and virtually impossible to copy! No wonder Adriana is so fascinated by her.

Rebekka's slow fashion in Turin

Right in downtown Turin, inside a courtyard, there is a shop where you can find Rebekka, a quite unique fashion line made of eclectic patterns and styles. Olivia Magee is the Irish owner who has been calling Turin her home since 1990s.  

Originally from Cavan County in Ulster, Olivia left the emerald island to come to Italy and learn Italian; without knowing much and following a friend's recommendation, she ended up in Turin, and the city has slowly grown on her for its atmosphere, architecture and long avenues.

At the end of her first year as an au pair in Turin, Olivia decided to stay and took a job in one of Piazza Vittorio bars and right there she met Mario, her husband and her best friends.

When talking about Italian fashion, Milan and Florence come up right away, yet the very first fashion show in Italy took place in Turin, where a long sartorial tradition and sense of fashion has always been in the DNA of the locals. If the Italian silk hub is on the Como Lake, the cashmere one is in Biella, one of Piedmont provinces. As for the Turin area, Chieri has the textile hub since the middle ages with its wool, cotton and hemp fabric production. By the 15th century a moleskin guild was established to guarantee the quality of its production. 

Olivia's husband Mario has worked in the textile industry all his life; his grandfather had a loom and Olivia has always been totally fascinated by it and by the swarming creativity of Turin and Chieri so tied to the fashion world and the famous brands.

Fashion though wasn't in Olivia's plans for a while, in fact, after getting married and having three kids, she was an ESL teacher. In 2014 though she manifested her wish to work in fashion and decided to collaborate with a stylist friend of hers.

Tulips, Fashion, Food in the Pralormo castle

In Piedmont we are very lucky people, in fact, we have more castles than the Loire Valley in France!
Many of these castles have always something going on, from festivals to presentations, even movie and fashion shootings. Naturally most castles have beautiful gardens and many are still inhabited by the original noble families who built it centuries ago.
Some castles are also open to the public who can choose among medieval, renaissance, baroque or a more contemporary castle.

During the tulip season though, the castle of choice is il castello di Pralormo or the Pralormo castle!

Located at just about 1h driving from Turin, this castle was built back in the Middle Ages and the descendants of the first counts of Pralormo have been living there since 1600!