Italian taste is not only a matter of fashion but a matter of food too. Printed in 2013, “10 x 10 – An Italian Theory”, is a concept style book in which 10 top Italian celebrities sit at their dinner table with the twenty-eight-year-old Sicilian author and interviewer Alessandro Enriquez – fashion designer and journalist for Elle.it and Marieclaire.it – and talk about their lives.
Ten different “kitchen stories” take the reader through Italian heritage, memories, lifestyles and tastes. But who sits at the table? Alessandro interviews some of the most promiment Italian figures in the fashion panorama: the fashion designer of Costume National Ennio Capasa, the fashion designer Albino Damato, the fashion icon and stylist of Vogue Japan Anna Dello Russo, the heiress of the Missoni fashion house Margherita Maccapani Missoni, the designer Paola Navone, the architect Fabio Novembre, the sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro, the actress Eleonora Abbagnato, the singer Ornella Vanoni and the creative director of Moschino Rossella Jardini.
With a confidential and persuasive attitude, Alessandro catches a glimpse of these celebrities’ souls who naturally give in to reveal their most inner tastes, and who openly confess the attatchment and nostalgia for their roots. All of it beginning with their love for food; a characteristic and fond passion that they all have in common. The ingredients come from distant worlds and long-lost times; childhood recollections and small family secrets handed over like treasures. Invented recipes or real existing ones taken from the immensity of the Italian culinary culture.
According to Anna Dello Russo, oil is the main ingredient – it’s home; the smell of the olives in Apulia. For Ornella Vanoni the yellow risotto is a love promise made in Milan that sounds like a beautiful song, while Margherita Maccapanni Missoni and her family are represented by the chromatic masterpieces of salmon pink, yellow mustard or the intense green of mint leaves.
As the Count of Cavour once said food is diplomatic. It’s not just a nutritional matter: the table, the welcoming act, the chosen menu all say something about who we are and the way in which we perceive our guest. Alessandro Enriquez’s “10 x 10 – An Italian Theory”, is a collection of personalities who have put their stories out in the world, putting food culture and creativity before anything else.
