1. Do things depending on the mood.
   Vinyasa yoga. Pilates if you’re tired. Lagree if you have more energy.

2. You do not need to become a person who meal-preps on Sundays.
   Going to the supermarket every evening and figuring dinner out from there is also a system.

3. Eat the healthy dinner. Have the carrot cake.

4. Keep looking for the perfect carrot cake.
   The search is currently ongoing. Crouton, near Strasbourg-Saint-Denis, has been investigated.

5. A city does not have to be forever for you to love it.
   Madrid wasn’t. Paris might not be. Milan might be.

6. Allow the honeymoon phase.
   Photograph the buildings. Photograph the streets. Let Paris feel like a film before you start noticing everything wrong with it.

7. You are allowed not to know your final destination yet.

8. Colour, but keep it simple.
   Stripes. Patterns. A soft sweater that works with everything.

9. Own at least one slightly ridiculous thing.
   Feathers are acceptable.

10. Wear the sneakers.
    Even when the options offered were ballet flats or heels.

11. Grow your hair just because these are the years to try having long hair.

12. Change your hair when something changes, if you want.
    Just don’t assume the haircut has unlocked the secret of your personality.

13. Freedom can look like leaving the house in workout clothes.
    Paris permits certain indignities that Milan apparently does not.

14. Friendship does not require constant contact.

15. Remember the tiny things.
    Something someone said months ago. Something they like. Something that made you think of them.

16. Listen properly.
    Being close to someone is partly knowing that what you tell them will not disappear the moment the conversation ends.

17. When someone is having a bad time, find out what they actually need.
    Sometimes they want to talk. Sometimes they want space. Sometimes they just need you to suggest doing something completely unrelated.

18. Be a distraction when distraction is the kind thing.

19. Read on trains and planes.
    And accept that sometimes the book you bought will remain on page five for an embarrassingly long time.

20. Go back to the classics.
    The Catcher in the Rye.
    White Nights.
    And perhaps finally read Il fu Mattia Pascal instead of cheating on the school assignment.

21. When the day becomes too much, walk. Alone.
    Towards the Marais. Towards Canal Saint-Martin. It does not really matter.

22. Five euros of reassurance can occasionally be worth five euros.
    You don’t have to believe in tarot to enjoy being told something comforting.

23. Do more when you know you’re about to leave.
    Go somewhere different every day. Concentrate everything into the time that remains.

24. Dinner for ten.

25. Go out.

26. And ideally, one morning, don’t reach for the phone.
    Don’t replace it with journaling, meditation, a twelve-step morning routine or whatever else the internet has decided is morally superior.

Wake up.

Get ready.

Exist.

1. The thing you are doing right now.
   If you’re cooking, cook.
   If you’re interviewing someone, do the interview.
   If you’re walking the dog, walk the dog.

2. Dinner.
   Cooking for people is not really about feeding them. It is about seeing them happy because you made something for them.

3. Improvisation.
   Nothing in the kitchen needs to be completely fixed. Start somewhere, taste it, notice what is missing, add the thing that makes everything come together.

4. Sweet things with things that do not belong with them.
   Chocolate + chili.
   Peach + Camembert.
   Pear + earthy wine.
   Duck + figs.

5. A properly made coffee.
   Moka or machine. Depends how much time you have.

6. Bad photographs.
   Especially on film.
   If the exposure is wrong or the lighting is strange, the mistake belongs to you. Keep it.

7. Things you make yourself.
   Manual mistakes are still yours.

8. Your roots, even if you had to leave them.
   You can hate where you came from, leave it, change completely, and still let it remain part of you.

9. The different people you become in different cities.
   You do not need to be exactly the same everywhere. Eventually, the work is learning how to carry all those versions of yourself together.

10. Friendships that survive the argument.
    Closeness is not always the absence of conflict. Sometimes it is what remains after both people have behaved badly, admitted it, and stayed.

11. Knowing when care becomes control.
    Wanting to protect someone does not automatically give you the right to decide for them.

12. Asking for help.
    Everyone needs it.

13. Giving help.
    Partly because one day you will probably need some too.

14. The people you know they can become.
    Caring about someone can also mean caring about the version of them they have not reached yet.

15. Your dog when you are walking your dog.
    Not your phone. Not the person you are texting. Not whatever else is happening around you.

16. The things that keep pushing you forward after they are gone.
    A photograph of a paw.
    A tattoo on the back of an arm.
    A dog that is no longer there, still somehow telling you to keep moving.

17. Aperitivo time.

18. Vinyl records.

19. Macallan 18 Double Cask.
    Apparently “whisky” is far too imprecise a category and we should all educate ourselves accordingly.

20. Your dignity.
    Although Ludovico admits he regularly loses his.

21. Time.
    Not more time.
    The time to actually do things.

1. Live everywhere you go.
   Home does not necessarily need to be a fixed place.

2. Identify less with nations and more with the cosmos.
   Labels are useful until they start becoming walls. Eventually, we are dirt and stardust.

3. Learn the language yourself.
   From friends, travelling, books, music. Speak it even when speaking it feels uncomfortable.

4. Do what you think is right.
   Almost nothing worthwhile is easy.

5. Don’t try too hard to write.
   Write continuously. Let it arrive before you start interfering with it.

6. Read your words out loud.
   Some things are supposed to exist in a voice, not only on a page.

7. When words fail, make noise.
   Preferably with a Selmer Mark VI from the 1950s.

8. Listen properly.
   To John Coltrane. To the person in front of you. To birds, cicadas, stray dogs fighting, cows and chickens. Sometimes listening to almost no music is the point.

9. Photograph the garbage.
   Decay can be beautiful too.

10. Poor character is ugly.
    So is being cruel to people who have nothing to offer you.

11. A good party needs two things:
    Good music and an air of freedom.

12. Go home after you’ve had fun and before you’re exhausted.
    Second location, maximum, if it’s really giving.

13. A city is a colour palette.
    How you feel about a place might tell you more about yourself than it tells you about the place.

14. When you need to disappear:
    Studio. Normandy. Vani, Georgia.

15. When you need to see people:
    Outside. Anywhere.

16. Cheap meal:
    An entire roast chicken for €7. MASTER POULET MÁSTA POULET.

17. Read:
    The Yoga Sutras by Patañjali.

18. Carry:
    A red book to write in.
    A saxophone if your definition of “carry” is unusually ambitious.

19. Own less.
    Especially if there is a reasonable possibility you will suddenly decide to move countries again.

20. Vulnerability is strength.

21. Fall in love before you realise you have.

22. Stay interested when you are evolving together.

23. Never make “always” a rule.

1. Call it movement, not working out.
   Run because your body needs it. Do Pilates slowly. Do something aerobic enough to make your heart work. Muscles are there to be used.

2. Eat the protein.
   Your muscles have work to do. Feed them accordingly.

3. Put your own oxygen mask on first.
   Especially if you are responsible for another person, or a small furry creature.

4. Elegance has nothing to do with money.
   It is how you speak to the cashier. How you treat people. How you treat yourself. Attention to detail without becoming stuck-up.

5. Old money TikTok is not elegance.

6. Simplicity + attention to detail.
   Apparently this is the formula.

7. Sage.
   Favourite herb. Favourite smell. Put it in chicken rolls with prosciutto if you have a Riccardo available to cook them for you.

8. Short penne.
   No discussion.

9. Espresso.
   Oat milk generally. Coconut milk if iced latte.

10. The Late Mattia Pascal, Luigi Pirandello.
    For discovering that wanting to escape your life and invent another one is not, unfortunately, an experience unique to you.

11. The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller.
    A more recent attachment.

12. Gleneagles, Scotland.
    Where she rode her first horse and learned to ride a bike. Later, where her sister went on honeymoon.

13. Milan:
    Breakfast: a tiny unnamed pastry shop near Wagner with the best cream brioche.
    Lunch: a club sandwich at God Save the Food.
    Dinner: Trattoria della Pesa.
    Cotoletta: Consorzio Stoppani, with orange zest.

14. Primary colours. Green. White. Cotton. Flowers. New.

15. Dinner for two.

16. London. Milan.
    She was asked to choose one. She declined to respect the rules.

17. Coquelicot.
    Favourite French word.

18. Splendido.
    A contender in Italian.

19. You do not have to love the place that shapes you.
    Padua did something to her, even if part of what it taught her was simply what she did not want.

20. A childhood dream can disappear without completely leaving you.
    At four: cardiac surgeon. Later: trauma surgeon, military doctor, Red Cross. Eventually: human rights. Somehow, the two worlds found their way back to each other anyway.

FOR BOOKS

Librarie Sans Titre
11th, Avenue Parmentier
Her main bookstore.

Violette and Co.
11th
For feminist essays. Considering Diane estimates that around 80% of her books are about feminism, this feels like an important one.

Le Monte-en-l’Air
Near her home in the 20th.
Books, with the possibility of sitting down with a coffee.

Yvon Lambert
Marais
Another favourite for books and art.

O.f.r.
Marais
She likes it. She is, however, “annoyed about the Instagram hype.” Fair.

FOR COFFEE

Ten Belles
Canal Saint-Martin
One of her favourites. Her order: an iced latte with cow’s milk and a scone.

Dreamin’ Man
Rue Amelot
Another coffee address she loves.

FOR WINE

Buttes Snack Bar
19th
Natural wine, ideally accompanied by tarama.

FOR DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, PROPERLY

Canal Saint-Martin
She goes there to sit, write, read or draw. Sometimes for an ice cream with a friend, sometimes just to stay for a while.

THE NEIGHBOURHOODS

20th, 11th, 10th, 19th.

Diane says she spends “95%” of her time around these four arrondissements. Of the 20th specifically: lively and working-class, but somehow peaceful at the same time.

AND ONE FROM THE INTERVIEW

Fitzcarraldo
11th
Where we met for brunch at the end of August. Tortilla and a bagel to share. I found the bagel divine.

I met Eugenia in Paris through a friend, although neither of us seems particularly certain anymore about exactly who introduced us. I think it might have been Ludovico. Maybe the uncertainty is nicer.

Eugenia is one of the gentlest people I know. I am often hectic, impatient, moving between ten thoughts at once, and she has always had the opposite effect on me. When I’m around her that makes everything feel slightly quieter. But in the best way you know.

At first she can seem shy. Then you spend more time with her and realise that underneath the softness there is a very funny, observant person with extremely good remarks and a particular way of looking at things. She listens. She notices. And she is one of those people who makes you feel that what you’re doing genuinely interests her.

I recently found out that she is leaving Paris for a while, and it made me realise two things at once: that I’m going to miss having her here, and that despite all the time we’ve spent around each other, there is still so much about her I don’t know.

I don’t know which books she loves. Which films she returns to. What she does when she’s alone. What Milan means to her now that she has lived elsewhere. What Paris changed. What she believes in, what she finds beautiful, what she finds ridiculous, what she keeps beside her bed.

So before she left, I asked.

The format I have in mind for Palomita Office is to interview people in their own homes. I want to see where they live, what they keep around them, what’s on their shelves, inside their wardrobes, next to their beds. But Eugenia was moving out of hers when she agreed to be interviewed. It was her last week in Paris, so this time, she came to mine.

When she arrives, she tells me she initially thought my building was the yoga studio downstairs.

YASMINA: No, that would be next level. Yoga question: did you read the questions beforehand, or are you free-falling?

EUGENIA: I read some of them, but honestly I’ve had a super busy week.

She notices the Dictaphone and is immediately intimidated.

We struggle to open a bottle of wine. I have never opened one before and, for some reason, assumed she would know how. We’ve made a tiny aperitivo for each other and, for a moment, it looks like we might not even manage to drink the wine.

EUGENIA: Can I say “brave, we did it”?

I give her glasses from L’Avant Comptoir du Marché because my landlord is a thief.

I ask her to sit opposite me. I haven’t exactly prepared dinner: crisps and a selection of cheeses. She has just come back from a workout, so naturally we start there.

DEPENDING ON THE MOOD

EUGENIA: It depends on my mood. Vinyasa yoga, Pilates if I’m tired, Lagree if I have more energy. More energetic things.

You stopped doing those workouts, no? Why?

YASMINA: I had my Dynamo phase where I was going almost every day. But I think I’m paradoxically in a period where I want to be less stimulated. Going to classes can feel like too much. There are too many people.

So I’m trying to do yoga at home, and obviously I run.

EUGENIA: That actually makes sense. I probably work out two or three times a week.

YASMINA: What’s something you do every single day?

EUGENIA: Grocery shopping. For dinner. Every day.

I go after work. It’s basically my routine. I wish I could do bigger grocery shops, but whenever I do, I’m terrible at organising everything. I obviously have three supermarkets under my apartment, so I buy different things, make strange combinations, and then end up with random leftovers.

That’s just how it is.

YASMINA: I get it. I tried for years to become one of those people who plans everything in advance.

I was talking about it with Ludo, and then I discovered that all his recipes are made with ChatGPT.

EUGENIA: Exposed.

YASMINA: Do your recipes… exist?

EUGENIA: Yes, but they’re extremely simple. Pasta, risotto, big salads. That’s basically it.

I try to eat healthily because I have a huge sweet tooth, so I compensate for all the desserts I love with healthy meals.

YASMINA: Favourite dessert?

EUGENIA: Carrot cake.

I still haven’t found the perfect one, though. The last one I tried was from a bakery called Crouton, around Strasbourg-Saint-Denis, near where I live.

PARIS WAS SUPPOSED TO FEEL LIKE A FILM

YASMINA: You moved to Paris two years ago.

EUGENIA: Yes. Two years ago, for an exchange, a double-degree programme.

We met in January 2025, and I had arrived literally a week earlier.

I remember we were at Mazarin. You arrived like, “I work at YSL,” with brown hair, dressed in black, completely different, wearing a blazer.

We laugh. I have shifted forms quite a few times this year, and because Eugenia is a close friend, she has witnessed most of them.

EUGENIA: I’ve lived in the same apartment the whole time.

I like my neighbourhood. It’s very lively. I’m surrounded by restaurants, bars, young people. But I don’t think it’s somewhere I would live forever because it’s too noisy. It feels more like a neighbourhood for a particular phase of your life.

Long term in Paris, I could see myself in the 7th, the Marais, maybe the 10th or 11th. So much happens there.

YASMINA: Did you know Paris before moving here?

EUGENIA: Yes. I had been with my family and I didn’t like it!

It hadn’t won me over at all. I complained about how dirty it was. Then I came back another time with friends and liked it much more.

I chose Paris myself when I decided to move here. And I had this idea that living here would feel a little like living in a film.

YASMINA: I feel like we all have that idea.

Before Paris I was in Madrid. I really liked it, but I never saw it as somewhere I would live forever.

I remember talking about this with my roommate at the time, Costi’s sister. We were talking about the idea of a final destination. As in: what is the city where you think, this is it, I could actually stay here?

I knew quite quickly that Madrid wasn’t mine. Not because I didn’t like it. Just a feeling.

What do you think your final destination is?

EUGENIA: When I first moved to Paris, I was completely in the honeymoon phase.

It really did feel like the film I had imagined. I photographed everything: the buildings, the streets.

Then eventually you get used to it and start noticing the flaws.

I don’t know what my final destination is. I haven’t found Paris particularly difficult, but one thing I struggle with sometimes is that it doesn’t feel very easy to escape the city.

YASMINA: You’re from Milan.

EUGENIA: Yes.

YASMINA: Could Milan be your final destination?

EUGENIA: Milan could be, because I know I can live well there and I genuinely like it.

I wouldn’t say there is necessarily something Milan does better than Paris as a city. But when you’re inside Milan, it feels like a big city even though it’s actually quite small. And it has a very open spirit.

I definitely feel at home there.

YASMINA: Milanese fashion or Parisian fashion?

EUGENIA: Milan, I think.

Paris is such a mix. Fashion-wise, you see everything.

But in Milan, especially in the more residential neighbourhoods, there is this very recognisable “per bene” style. Very polished, very Milanese.

I really noticed it when I went back after Design Week last year. I looked around and thought: this is such a specific style.

She looks down.

Can I give Paloma a piece of cheese rind?

FOUR THINGS FROM MY WARDROBE

YASMINA: Let’s talk about clothes. How would you describe the way you dress?

EUGENIA: Difficult.

YASMINA: Actually…

Part of me wishes we were doing this interview at your place, because one thing I want to do with Palomita Office is look inside people’s wardrobes and make them tell me about their clothes.

But today you’re at mine, so come with me.

I take her into my bedroom and warn her that my wardrobe is going to be a disaster.

I ask her to choose four things from my wardrobe that she would actually wear. She finds the exercise very funny.

I then have to explain the organisation of my wardrobe, despite there being absolutely no organisation.

YASMINA: I like this. It’s also a way for me to rediscover what I own.

I’m deeply embarrassed by the state of this wardrobe, I’m not going to lie.

Eugenia chooses four things.

A pair of lime-green Carmen Says trousers with blue feathered trim at the bottom. A beige turtleneck I’ve owned for maybe seven years, even though I currently hate beige. Blue striped Brandy shorts. And a pair of pink striped Gucci shorts.

EUGENIA: I can explain why I chose them.

First of all, I would genuinely wear all four. They could all exist in my wardrobe.

They’re colourful, which I like. I like stripes and patterns, but I still want things to feel quite minimal and simple.

A basic, soft, comfortable sweater that works with everything is perfect.

And then I chose the more ridiculous piece because I think the feathers are fun.

YASMINA: I do wear those Carmen Says trousers, but after five minutes I start feeling embarrassed.

Still, I think it’s important to own clothes that are a little stupid or fun. I always think about your pink trousers. I love them.

EUGENIA: I probably chose things you don’t wear anymore.

YASMINA: No, exactly.

I’m in a slightly darker aesthetic now.

Although I’m realising that lately I’m becoming less and less elegant, which makes me a bit sad.

You’re very elegant.

EUGENIA: Not today.

YASMINA: If you could look at yourself from the outside, would you say your style has always stayed the same?

EUGENIA: No. It has changed, and I can actually tell you when.

Even since moving to Paris, I’ve become much more easygoing.

Milan is smaller, and you always have this feeling that if you go outside, you might run into someone. So you don’t really leave the house in your gym clothes.

In Paris, I have the impression that everything is more relaxed. Maybe nobody is even looking at you.

YASMINA: I used to be fascinated by this idea when I was younger.

I read all those books and interviews about how to dress like a Parisian woman. How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are, Jeanne Damas, even French Women Don’t Get Fat.

And I remember reading things like: “You will never see a Parisian woman wearing workout clothes outside the gym.”

Bullshit.

We are all in workout clothes.

And I actually love that.

EUGENIA: Me too.

Because you feel free. It’s less formal, less structured, and sometimes you need that.

In Milan, that isn’t quite as possible.

You have to come visit me.

YASMINA: This winter. Promise.

And then we’ll do Part Two at your place.

EUGENIA: You should do different parts.

Interview lots of people now, and then maybe later you go deeper.

Interviews inside people’s homes are like those YouTube videos with celebrities.

HAIR, OBVIOUSLY

YASMINA: You have amazing hair. I’ve always thought that.

EUGENIA: That’s not true!

YASMINA: It is.

Mine refuses to grow and I’m desperate.

Very basic question, but what’s your relationship with your hair?

EUGENIA: I actually always had hair like yours, around shoulder length.

I’ve only grown it out over the last two years. I thought: I want to try long hair, these are the years to do it.

So I grew it against the wishes of my mum and grandmother, who constantly ask me, “So, when are you cutting your hair?”

YASMINA: Why?

EUGENIA: I think they find it messy. Like it doesn’t look properly maintained.

YASMINA: Do you believe that thing people say about hair reflecting your personality?

When I had short hair, people used to tell me I looked more aggressive. With longer hair, apparently I look more romantic.

Bullshit again.

We get distracted and I tell her the latest gossip.

EUGENIA: No. Stop the game.

Eventually, we return to the hair.

EUGENIA: I do think that when something important changes in your life, you often change your hair.

But I don’t think it necessarily says anything about your personality.

YASMINA: You’ve never wanted to change the colour?

EUGENIA: No. Maybe go a little blonder.

When I was a child my hair was much lighter and it darkened naturally as I got older.

So maybe there’s also something about wanting to return to what I think of as my original colour.

THE SMALL DETAILS

YASMINA: You’re one of the friends who calms me down the most.

I don’t really know why. Maybe it’s the way you speak, or the fact that you don’t ask me a thousand questions.

Not that there’s anything wrong with asking questions.

But you ask the right ones.

I’ve always thought of you as a very calm person, and at the same time I always feel very close to you.

What does feeling close to someone in a friendship mean to you?

EUGENIA: For me, it happens when you start opening up more and telling each other personal things.

You move past that phase where you only ask each other questions about work.

I don’t need to be in constant contact with people at all.

I like calling people, and I can spend hours on the phone. I’m always connected, but not in a visceral way.

When I’m sad, I call my mum and complain.

But closeness is also in the tiny details.

When I realise someone thought of me in a particular situation. Or they remember something I said ages ago and bring it up again.

Having somebody on the other side who genuinely listens. Someone who remembers what you tell them.

And another important quality for me is simply being funny.

Someone who makes you laugh, who always has the right joke ready.

I feel very comfortable with people like that.

YASMINA: And when one of your friends is going through something difficult, what kind of friend are you?

EUGENIA: I try to understand what the other person actually wants.

Everyone is different. Sometimes people want space.

I try to make myself present, suggest things we can do, even without directly talking about whatever is wrong.

Sometimes I try to be a distraction.

THE BOOKS WE DIDN’T READ

We move on to culture.

EUGENIA: I love reading, but I wish I read more.

I read when I travel, on trains, on planes, but lately I haven’t picked up many books.

I would love to have more of a routine.

I just bought The Vegetarian, but I’ve read about five pages.

YASMINA: One book everyone should read?

EUGENIA: These are exactly the questions I told myself I had to prepare for, and then completely forgot.

I think we should go back to the classics.

Maybe The Catcher in the Rye. I read it in high school.

YASMINA: I loved it.

I had this beautiful copy and I have absolutely no idea where it is now.

Stolen from my cousin, obviously.

Okay, another game.

We are very lucky that my landlord studied philosophy and has this habit of buying endless amounts of books, bless her.

So if you had to choose one book from this bookshelf to take home, what would you choose?

And if you want, I’ll actually lend it to you.

EUGENIA: Disclaimer: I read on Kindle.

She looks through the shelves.

Political economy… maybe not.

YASMINA: I joined the American Library in Paris, so don’t judge me based on these books.

EUGENIA: White Nights!

Read it. It’s short. You can finish it in one evening.

I loved it.

YASMINA: Wait, there’s a Russian version too.

EUGENIA: Right, I forgot you speak Russian.

YASMINA: If you had to learn one difficult language, what would you choose?

EUGENIA: German.

Although for a while I really wanted to learn Japanese. I wanted to go to Japan too.

I miss long trips.

The last proper one I did was Brazil last summer. I loved it.

YASMINA: You still haven’t chosen a book.

EUGENIA: Maybe this one.

Il fu Mattia Pascal.

It was one of those books I was supposed to read for school, and I cheated and didn’t actually read it.

I regret that now.

I think it’s one of those books you’re supposed to have read.

WAKING UP

YASMINA: First thing you do when you wake up?

EUGENIA: I look at my phone.

I need something to wake me up, so I look for light. I check my notifications even if it’s really early.

I’m slightly ashamed that this is my morning habit, but without it I genuinely don’t wake up. And half the time there isn’t even anything to look at, you know?

YASMINA: I used to do the same. Paloma helped because now I have to go outside pretty much as soon as she wakes up.

We’ll see how that goes in winter, though.

EUGENIA: Paris in the morning is beautiful, though. There’s nobody around.

YASMINA: If you could change that habit, what would you want your mornings to look like?

EUGENIA: I’d love not to look at my phone until just before leaving the house.

Not even replace it with something else. Just get ready. Wake up and exist.

I need routines in general. I need more stable routines.

YASMINA: And when you’re overwhelmed by a day, how do you change it?

EUGENIA: A walk. Alone.

Or sometimes I call someone.

I like walking towards the Marais or Canal Saint-Martin.

YASMINA: We’re almost done, and you’ve actually said much more than you think.

EUGENIA: Really?

FIVE EUROS OF REASSURANCE

YASMINA: Wait. I have one last category.

Do you remember when I became completely obsessed with learning tarot?

I remember you were one of the few people who didn’t make fun of me. You were basically like, let’s do it, I want to try.

Do you actually believe in it?

EUGENIA: No.

YASMINA: Okay.

EUGENIA: But I did it once in my life, during a pretty dark period.

I was with some friends around Brera, where there are these women who read cards, and we stopped. We each paid five euros to ask one question.

I don’t know. Somehow it did reassure me, even though she obviously told me things that were quite generic.

YASMINA: Don’t worry. I once paid sixty euros to talk about two men with a tarot reader.

EUGENIA: You would’ve saved money by just talking to them.

YASMINA: Fair.

So tarot?

EUGENIA: I don’t know. Sometimes it’s just something fun to do. Just to see what comes out.

YASMINA: Do you think they basically tell us what we want to hear?

EUGENIA: Yes.

You can always twist everything and reinterpret everything.

It’s a bit like ChatGPT.

YASMINA: There are people who analyse their tarot readings with ChatGPT now.

Also, you can give Paloma the little bits of cheese rind if you want.

EUGENIA: Slowly, Paloma.

IF YOU COME BACK

YASMINA: Something personal you’re proud of?

EUGENIA: Something good coming up.

YASMINA: You’re leaving now. If you come back to Paris, what do you hope will be different, and what do you hope stays exactly the same?

EUGENIA: I hope the social life stays exactly the same. Especially the way it’s been recently.

I swear, I love it. I hope all of that stays the same.

I think when you know you’re about to leave something, you try to concentrate everything into the time you have left.

Recently I’ve gone out somewhere different every single day, and I’ve had this feeling that every day I was doing something beautiful.

I don’t really know what I would want to change.

RAPID FIRE

YASMINA: Last part of the interview. The so-called rapid fire.

EUGENIA: Okay. I’m scared.

YASMINA: Sea or mountains?

EUGENIA: Sea.

YASMINA: White or black?

EUGENIA: White.

YASMINA: New or vintage?

EUGENIA: New.

YASMINA: Perfect or imperfect?

EUGENIA: Perfect.

YASMINA: Breakfast out or aperitivo out?

EUGENIA: Aperitivo.

YASMINA: Plan everything or decide at the last minute?

EUGENIA: I’d like to plan everything, but unfortunately I decide at the last minute.

YASMINA: Ballet flats or heels?

EUGENIA: Sneakers.

YASMINA: Cook or be cooked for?

EUGENIA: Be cooked for.

YASMINA: Croissant or pain au chocolat?

EUGENIA: Pain au chocolat.

YASMINA: Dinner for two or dinner for ten?

EUGENIA: Ten!

YASMINA: I knew it.

EUGENIA: Why?

YASMINA: Because we like big dinners.

Stay home or go out?

EUGENIA: Go out.

YASMINA: And to finish: your favourite word?

EUGENIA: I DON’T KNOW.

PALOMITA OFFICE PHOTO EVIDENCE

YASMINA: Crawling into people’s brains.

No seriously, I had so many fucking reasons for starting this project. Reasons that were urgent, some of them, and others that go waaaaay back. I could answer this question with a literal book. Maybe I’ll do that someday. But for now, it’s just connecting, re-connecting.

Something about touch. It’s just my favourite of all 5 senses. And I feel like maybe it’s the sense that is the most activated with this whole thing that I’m doing.

Hearing, too, because I’m really taking the time to listen to the people that I talk to (and I can’t wait to talk to you again, in person hopefully soon). You know, I listen to them twice, sometimes even 3 or 4 times depending on the recording. Once when I’m actually talking to them, and then again when I listen back to the recording.

So there’s something about touch and wanting to touch people in a very genuine, positive and heartfelt way.

My intentions are really for no one to be hurt. To make peace with people that I have hurt. To make peace with the people that have hurt me.

To not forget.
To not lose.
To find again.
To discover.
To cherish.
To love, love, love, love always.

My biggest intention is to love.

You recently told me that the person you are now feels closer than ever to who you truly are. But I can’t help thinking that the person you were before, the person that I met, still lives somewhere inside you too.

Why do you feel so detached from her?

YASMINA: Painful question, very. Thanks, BOBO :)

This question was so fucking hard to answer. I think, compared to one year ago, there have been massive changes in my emotional sphere. There’s been a massive heartbreak, expectations I had that failed, and I think all of that inevitably changed the way I relate to myself and to other people.

But I also think I slightly disagree with the premise of the question, because I don’t know if I actually feel detached from the person you met a year and a half ago.

I think this voice I have now was always in me. It was there then too. But a year and a half ago I was muffling it. I was maybe trying much harder to project an image of everything being, I hate the word perfect, but aligned. My life being aligned, me being aligned, everything somehow making sense.

The shit that you see now, the blood and the spit and the pain and the wounds that are still open and bleeding and the scabs that I’m still picking at, I think all of that existed then too.

Maybe because we had just met, maybe because I was in this mindset of not wanting to be exposed, I didn’t want you to see it.

And then I think the pain and the massive heartbreak, without going too much into my private or intimate sphere because the people who know will know which characters in the story I may or may not be referencing, made all of it blast open. This immense pain didn’t necessarily create those wounds but it did make me want people to see them. I want you guys to see the wounds and see how scarred I think I am. Not in a vengeful way. I think it became almost a visceral, primal instinct to stop hiding them.

I’ve spent a lot of my life adapting to different fragments and ideas and people and fictions. I identify a lot with this idea of changing forms/shapes a lot, with the idea of being someone who can adapt to many places and many people. And I think at some point I just snapped. And when I snapped, it was almost like: woah. Okay. This is what this feels like.

Honestly Ludo I don’t think the person you saw last year disappeared. The hopefulness and the romanticism and the optimism, I don’t think any of that is gone. I think it shifted.

And, actually, I think it’s coming back. Also through this project, in a way. Just in a more responsible, aware and raw form.

So maybe... ritiro cosa ti ho detto, I don’t feel detached from her as much as I feel detached from the version of myself I was trying to show you then.

Good night !!!

One of the first things I remember noticing about him was an Instagram account linked in his bio, separate from his personal one. It seemed to be dedicated to photography. There were images there, evidence that he had decided at some point that the things he was looking at were worth collecting and showing. And then, at least from the outside, it stopped. I’ve always wanted to know why.

Ludovico is from Turin and lives in Paris. He is one of the most caring people I know, although caring does not make a friendship uncomplicated. We have fought. We have misunderstood each other. We have irritated each other. And then, somehow, remained friends. I think there is something interesting in that too: sometimes closeness is not the absence of conflict, but what remains after it.

He cooks better than almost anyone I know. He takes photographs. He has an almost suspiciously serious relationship with whisky. He cares about objects, places, elegance, food, people and dogs.

He also once loved a dog enough to have the imprint of her paw tattooed on his shoulder after losing her.

I think Ludovico pays attention to things.

So I wanted to ask him what he sees, what he keeps, what he misses, and what he thinks deserves to be cared for.

We meet on a Saturday for an aperitivo in the 5th.

YASMINA: You’re always the one cooking at things. Can I have a verre de rouge, svp?

WAITER: Oui.

LUDOVICO: And a pint of blonde for me.

WAITER: A pint of blonde. Careful with the phone.

YASMINA: Thank you. I honestly can’t remember ever going to a dinner where you weren’t the one cooking.

LUDOVICO: Okay, and what’s the question? Why? I like cooking. It relaxes me. It puts me in a mood that I would even call festive. I like cooking and seeing people happy while they eat something I made. That’s why I experiment, I look things up, I see things, I ask ChatGPT for recipes too.

I know I’m going to be the one cooking

Some of the things you guys have eaten came directly from ChatGPT, but starting from my ideas. Like: “I have cheese, raisins and watermelon in the fridge. Would that work in a risotto? Can I make a salad out of it?”

My cooking has always been like that. It relaxes me.

I don’t necessarily need to cook for myself, though. If I don’t feel like it, I’ll make myself some stupid pasta, something basic, nothing special. I don’t plan my grocery shopping. I go to the supermarket and think: “Oh, this looks good. This looks good. I’ll buy this and make something with it.”

With friends, it’s not that I don’t trust their cooking. It’s simply that I enjoy doing it. So at first I’ll be like, “Do you need a hand? Do you need a hand?” And then at some point I realize everyone else has stopped doing fuck all, and I end up cooking everything myself.

By now it’s basically a habit. I already know I’m going to be the one cooking.

YASMINA: I want to organize my birthday now. Like I was telling you guys, I want to rent this house somewhere in the countryside, I don’t even know where yet. I’m not deciding the menu, I’m not doing the groceries, and most importantly I’m not…

LUDOVICO: No. You’ll send me to the market with a car and Romain to do the grocery shopping.

That’s what I like about cooking. Nothing is fixed.

You can start with an idea and then suddenly think: “Fuck, this would actually work really well in here, let’s add it.”

Or: “It’s sweet, it’s good, but it needs something to make it a little crunchier”.

I like finding all those little elements that make everything come together.

YASMINA: Okay, then you really have to win me over. Let’s make a full-day menu.

I spend a whole day with you, from the moment I wake up until the moment we go to sleep. I want three meals, and I don’t want to eat out.

LUDOVICO: Okay.

I’m unfortunately not the best in the morning. I’d go out and get you a pain au chocolat, some viennoiserie, and I’d give you a properly made coffee at home, either with the moka or the machine, depending on how much time we have.

For lunch I’d have prepared this recipe I absolutely love.

FULL RECIPE HERE

You take romaine lettuce. You blanch it for five seconds and then put it into cold water.

Meanwhile, you cook duck breast properly on the grill.

In another pan, you take figs, so this would obviously be a summer recipe, considering the season. You lightly caramelize them so they still keep the texture of the fig, but release enough of their juices to create a sauce.

Then you add butter, sugar, the figs and two or three sprigs of rosemary.

You remove the figs, strain the sauce to get rid of the rosemary, and let the sauce reduce a little more.

By then, the duck breast is ready and just needs to rest.

You cut it into large pieces and plate the duck, the caramelized figs and the blanched romaine. Pour the sauce over it, add a pinch of salt, and that’s lunch.

In my ideal kitchen I’d also have an oven, so I could make dessert.

There’s one dessert I’m particularly good at making that reminds me a little bit of you.

YASMINA: Okay. A cake?

LUDOVICO: A flourless, gluten-free chocolate and chili cake.

YASMINA: Chili?

LUDOVICO: I’ll explain why it reminds me of you.

You’re completely normal, completely calm, like chocolate. And then every two or three minutes, you come up with some fucking idea.

YASMINA: The fucking idea is the chili.

LUDOVICO: More or less.

In the afternoon, we’d relax for a bit. We’d talk, listen to records, listen to some music.

Then we’d go out again, go for another walk, have another aperitivo, see what the plans are.

I know, I talk too much.

YASMINA: No, I was just checking that it was still recording.

LUDOVICO: For dinner I’d keep things light, although not exactly light. Peach and camembert salad. You crush walnuts, hazelnuts and cashews.

In the sauce the peaches release, you warm up some Camembert, and then you make a salad that should be quite bitter, so probably arugula.

You combine the sweet caramelized peaches, the crushed walnuts, hazelnuts and cashews, the Camembert. That’s your only dish.

And finally, for dessert, pears in wine.

But not in sugary wine, because I hate that. The wine shouldn’t be too sweet.

It should be quite earthy, so that it clashes a little with the sweetness of the pear. I love mixing something sweet with something that apparently has nothing to do with it.

YASMINA: Do you generally like ethnic food?

LUDOVICO: I like spicy food. My body doesn’t handle it particularly well that night or the next day, but I love Indian food and Thai food.

YASMINA: Have you found any ethnic restaurants in Paris that you like and would recommend? Even ones that aren’t particularly famous.

LUDOVICO: Not unknown ones, no. So I can’t really tell you much about ethnic restaurants.

What I have developed an education in, though, is smash burgers, because there are days where I just don’t want to cook. I tried one on Friday because I didn’t feel like cooking and it was horrible. Absolute shit. It was just around here. They had this two-for-one deal with a blue-cheese smash burger. You think: “Okay, that has to be good.”

And then this thing arrived somehow wet and dry at the same time, with terrible bread.

Disgusting.

YASMINA: What’s the best burger in Paris, for you?

LUDOVICO: I have to say Junk Saint-Germain isn’t bad. The best burger I ever found in Paris was one night from a food truck that moved around. It was somewhere around here. I never even figured out the name.

YASMINA: Do you think you could find the name again?

LUDOVICO: No. This was when I first arrived here. So two years ago.

YASMINA: You arrived in Paris two years ago?

LUDOVICO: I arrived in May 2024, and then we met in January or February 2025.

YASMINA: When we met, we followed each other immediately, and there’s something I noticed that I don’t think I’ve ever properly spoken to you about.

I don’t even know what happened to it, but you had, or maybe still have, an Instagram account for photography.

I wanted to ask whether you still take photographs, how you take them, and, if you stopped, why you stopped.

What do we keep when we stop showing ourselves?

LUDOVICO: I don’t use that account anymore because I got bored of Instagram as a place where you put yourself on display.

I like Instagram as an escape valve.

You scroll, you rot your brain watching idiots, and I have to admit that I enjoy snooping on other people’s lives. I opened the photography account because I had thirty or forty pictures I really liked. I was proud of having taken them and wanted to post them.

But that was during the period when everyone was obsessed with having a perfectly coordinated Instagram feed and color palette. So I never posted them on my main profile, even though I obviously could have.

I still take photographs. I have loads I could publish, from our trip to Venice to my little trips outside Paris. I still haven’t developed some of my rolls of film.

Photography has always been something I appreciated.

Especially with old or analog photography, you capture a moment that can’t be modified.

You can’t change what was there.

The photo came out badly? Fine. That’s exactly what’s beautiful about it. Nobody is perfect. With analog photography, if you don’t know how to use the camera properly or you mess up the exposure, the lighting, the settings, that mistake belongs to you.

It’s manual. You made it. There’s something incredibly satisfying about that.

YASMINA: Your academic background is in economics. If you had studied something radically different, what would you have chosen? For example, I studied Political Science, and now I work in the thing I genuinely want to do, which is fashion, because I’m very attached to clothing. But in another life, I love furniture, and I would have loved to be an interior architect or do something in design.

Except I can’t draw.

LUDOVICO: Before starting university, I wanted to become a doctor.

I took God knows how many entrance exams for Medicine in Italy, both for public and private universities. But, as usual, I’m a bit of a procrastinator and I hadn’t really researched everything properly. I had the state entrance exam, the courses and all of that. I did what I thought was right, but it didn’t work out.

Then I moved into Law, which I never actually liked. But because of family reasons, my grandfather and my father everyone being lawyers, I stayed in it much longer than I wanted to.

It was useful, though, because eventually leaving became my decision.

Even the people who had originally told me that I had to continue eventually realized it wasn’t the right path for me.

YASMINA: And you studied in Turin, right?

LUDOVICO: The first part, yes.

I studied both Law and Economics in Turin. Are you making a video out of this? Like a little film?

YASMINA: For now, I’m turning them into written pieces. Everything I publish, I’ll let you read and approve first.

LUDOVICO: Don’t worry about that.

Everyone knows my life anyway.

Everyone knows my life anyway.

If there are things that shouldn’t be said, I’ll be the first person not to say them.

YASMINA: I want to go back to Turin for a second. So many people I’ve met in my life have told me: “You would love Turin.” I’ve never been, even though I’ve been almost everywhere else in Italy. So: Turin in three words.

LUDOVICO: Bear in mind that I don’t see you living there.

YASMINA: You don’t see me there?

LUDOVICO: No. I would live there, though, and I probably will one day, because my roots are there and my family is there. I’m very attached to roots, I like knowing my family history. I even have lots of books about my family at home.

Three words: one - Turin is a city that feels frozen in time. That’s technically more than one word, but to me it functions like an adjective: frozen in time.

Then: peaceful.

Compared with Milan, you don’t have the same amount of things on offer, but you have a peace and a calm that, for me, you don’t find in any other city.

Milan is chaotic. Rome is chaotic. Venice is chaotic.

YASMINA: Venice is very chaotic.

LUDOVICO: Turin is calm. If you live in the center, you can walk everywhere. It’s peaceful. It’s beautiful. When you look up, I’m not going to say it feels like Paris, but the style is similar. The city is structured in a similar way. There’s a river running through it. One side is for rich people, the other is for everyone.

It’s quite similar to Paris, and I actually recognize myself in both places.

So: frozen in time, calm, and home.

I can’t describe Turin to you in order to make you love it.

I can’t describe Turin to you in order to make you love it.

I can describe it so that you understand it.

I could talk endlessly about beautiful places in Turin: Piazza San Carlo, Piazzetta delle Erbe, Piazza Palazzo di Città, Porta Palazzo with all its problems… Turin is many things. First and foremost, for me, it’s home.

I grew up there. I spent twenty-five years of my life there. It’s like if you spoke to me about Rome through your neighborhoods, your experiences, your things.

Objectively, Turin is beautiful, but it has been very marginalized within Italy.

We lost what used to make us great: the automotive industry. Companies like Bertone, Fiat and Zagato were all based around Turin because of the Fiat industrial ecosystem. Then Fiat left, and the city administration basically decided everyone should become museum guards and waiters for a tourist city. But Turin has never been a city that can survive exclusively on tourism.

YASMINA: You live abroad now.

I don’t know how often you manage to go back, but you go back fairly often, right?

LUDOVICO: It depends.

YASMINA: As you know, I don’t go back to my city very often because I hate it. Do you feel like a different person when you go back to Turin?

LUDOVICO: Absolutely. I’m going to psychoanalyze you a little now too, so forgive me.

YASMINA: Maybe we’ll cut this part.

LUDOVICO: We’ll see.

Privately, I’ve reached a point where I’ve accepted who I am in Turin and who I am in Paris. More and more, I’m becoming the same person in Paris and Turin. It took a long time. It took therapy. More than anything, it required accepting myself. I’m the first person to judge myself, and when I judge myself I find a thousand things wrong.

In Turin, I had reached a point where I would go out specifically to get drunk and completely fucked up, with very few people I actually considered friends.

In Paris, instead, I found this bunch of people who were initially strangers and with whom I had the opportunity to become a better version of myself.

Little by little, I’m bringing that person back to Turin too.

When I go to Turin, it’s still different, though. I go there for my family. I go to see them. Unless I have a wedding, a party or some other event, I mostly stay at home with them.

In summer there’s the swimming pool. Why the fuck would I go wandering around outside in that heat? Turin can get to forty degrees too.

But yes, it’s completely normal to be two different people. It’s not a problem. It doesn’t mean anything is wrong.

The important thing is to make peace with who you are in one place and who you are in the other, and eventually carry both versions of yourself wherever you go.

I’m not the same person I was in London. I’m not the same person I was in Madrid.

I’m not the same person I was when I first arrived in Paris. And I’m definitely not the person I was when I left Turin.

I’ve changed. I’ve lost a lot of weight. I’ve done a thousand things. I’ve lived and worked abroad for two and a half years.

Turin will always remain part of me. It’s also the place that gave me the possibility to leave.

I left Turin because I couldn’t take it anymore. Now I go back and, even though I still find it closed-minded, I’ve accepted it.

I’m not at the stage where I can say I would go back there to work. I still see that as a step backwards. But I won’t pretend I could never do it.

YASMINA: There’s one thing I think you carry with you in every city.

LUDOVICO: Alcohol.

YASMINA: No. Well, yes, but specifically whisky. When did you realize whisky was actually something you were passionate about and not just something you liked drinking?

LUDOVICO: When I started discovering brands and products. My passion for whisky started the way things tend to start in my family: completely randomly, in a very sweet and childish way. I would dip my lips into my grandfather’s whisky glass.

YASMINA: I love that.

LUDOVICO: That’s how I started getting into gin and tonic too, and then whisky. After a while I realized whisky cost me less and got me drunk faster.

YASMINA: So if you ranked alcohol, whisky would be number one?

LUDOVICO: Yes, but talking about “whisky” as one generic thing is an understatement. I fell into this beautiful rabbit hole. In Italy we talk about whisky as though it were one thing. But then you discover bourbon, rye, malt, single malt, blended whisky, Japanese whisky, fast-aged whisky. Every single wooden barrel it ages in changes the aromatic profile of the whisky. Just to name some very famous brands: Lagavulin, Laphroaig, Talisker.

YASMINA: Very cool. And now you actually work a little bit in that world, right?

LUDOVICO: Yes, recently.

YASMINA: Does working in it change anything? Does it make you more passionate about it, or does it somehow distance you from it? Because with fashion, for example, people tell me: “Working in fashion made me hate fashion.” For me, it’s the opposite.

LUDOVICO: I’ve only been working in that industry for two months. I had already worked on a startup project connected to the sector.

YASMINA: It’s more or less your dream industry, right?

LUDOVICO: Yes, but not in the right position. I’m someone who hates computers. For work, I would need much more human contact than computer contact. I understand that everything you create eventually requires a computer. A presentation is still a presentation. But for me, the ideal balance in a working day would be fifty percent computer, and the other fifty percent talking to people, understanding what their problems are, understanding what they need and figuring out whether you can give it to them.

YASMINA: Human contact is really important to you. And I know friendship is really important to you too.

It’s not just friendship

LUDOVICO: It’s not just friendship. You and I are friends because I care about you. I care about who you are. I care about the person I know you can become. And I care about you in this more delicate situation you’re in now, with all your mess, without going into the details. But that human relationship based on respect and mutual understanding is something I’ve always looked for.

YASMINA: I thought about all the friends I want to involve for Palomita Office and for now there are people I haven’t excluded from the project, but with whom I have to be a little careful. I don’t think they’d react with outright hostility, but they might react like: “You’re interrogating me and I don’t want to argue with you.” You and I have argued before.

LUDOVICO: We’ve argued, and the friendship stayed.

YASMINA: I reread that question yesterday too. And the friendship stayed for a simple reason: I realized I had gone too far and behaved badly.

LUDOVICO: We’re actually mixing two different situations. In one, I behaved badly. In the other, you behaved badly. I genuinely overstepped when I grabbed you, made you sit down, said, “No more alcohol,” and took your glass away. You were right to get angry because it wasn’t my right to do that.

YASMINA: Arguing is kind of an intimate gesture. Well, maybe “gesture” isn’t the right word, but…

LUDOVICO: It means you care about the person. Especially, at least, with the kinds of arguments we’ve had. For me, there are two kinds of arguments: constructive arguments and arguments that have an objective. Going back to what we were saying, you and I have had two arguments.

One was the big one. The other one happened because of something I said, or something about you that I shared. I think in that situation anyone could have told you: “You’re an idiot. Don’t do that.” But taking the glass away from you, I agree that I shouldn’t have done that.

YASMINA: But now I see there was an instinct to care for me. I’m really happy because my parents associate you with this protective figure.Not “protective” in the sense of someone going, “I’m going to protect you,” but more like: “She has a genuinely good friend who’s there and who’s available.” I realize that sometimes I stress myself out and want to do everything alone. I’ve always had this very strong independent instinct, I want to be autonomous.

And I realize sometimes it becomes a problem, because I do need help. Everyone needs help.

Love, everyone needs help

LUDOVICO: Love, everyone needs help. Everyone deals with their own problems using whatever tools they have. I like helping people because I like to believe that if I help other people, other people might help me one day.

YASMINA: If we were in the Middle Ages and you were a king, I think you’d be Ludovico the Good.

LUDOVICO: I’d say The Great.

YASMINA: You know, like English kings all had these names.

LUDOVICO: At the moment I’m Ludovico the Unemployed, but that…

I used to jokingly call her my girlfriend

YASMINA: As you know, because you’ve genuinely been part of my daily life and you’ve basically been family to me, I recently got a dog. I know there was a very important dog in your life because you have her paw tattooed.

LUDOVICO: You said you wanted to get personal, right? I’m happy to talk about it because it’s something I like talking about and because I like the meaning I’ve created for it in my head. The paw tattoo didn’t simply start as “I’m going to get a paw tattoo.”

I was leaving Madrid, and she was already ill. We knew she wasn’t necessarily in the final months of her life yet, but the situation was serious. So I thought: “Okay, I already have a tattoo. I’m going to get one in Madrid for her.”

I took her front paw and photographed it. That photograph stayed there until September of the following year, when I finally decided to get the tattoo done. I organized everything, and for the first time my sister also came with me to watch me get a tattoo.

She stayed with me, and it became a bonding moment with my sister too. The meaning is obviously connected to the dog, but it’s also connected to a promise for the future.

She and I were incredibly close. I was her whole world and she was mine. I used to jokingly call her my girlfriend. Every time I came home, she would first pretend to be offended with me and then jump all over me. She would lick my entire face and put her paws right around my collarbones.

The meaning of my tattoo comes from the way she would greet me, putting her paws against my collarbones. It eventually became : “Even though I’m not here anymore, I’m still putting my paw on you and pushing you forward.” That’s why I chose the back of my arm.

YASMINA: I lost my childhood dog in January, Pepper. You know that. Pepper was my whole world, even though I wasn’t his. He had chosen my parents. Maybe because I was young when we got him?

LUDOVICO: Not necessarily. Animals choose people. Dachshunds in particular are quite specific about it. A guard dog or protection dog chooses a family and protects that family. A sheepdog is different. A sheepdog chooses a flock and protects the whole community.

If someone had ever tried to hurt me, my mother, my sister or my brother, my dog would have moved heaven and earth to destroy them. A sheepdog works more preventively.

A dachshund, on the other hand, is a hunting dog, so its bond is connected to survival. There’s a reason people say a dachshund chooses its “carniere,” meaning the person who gave it meat and fed it.

Paloma chose you. And now I’m going to say something quite strong, so I hope you don’t get angry. She has chosen you as the person who feeds her, but not yet as the person who guides her.

I’ll explain what I mean. It’s completely fine to spoil her. But when you’re outside with Paloma, you’re often not actually paying attention to Paloma.

You’re paying attention to the friend you’re with, the phone call, whatever shopping you need to do and everything else. When you’re with your dog, you need to treat the walk, metaphorically, like a hunting session.

YASMINA: That’s actually one of my biggest daily resolutions. When I’m with Paloma: no phone, no headphones, no calls, nothing.

LUDOVICO: You can still have those things.

But you need enough mental space and discipline to say: “Okay, I’m on a call, but now I’m stopping.” That’s one of the biggest lessons dogs teach you. You have to find…

YASMINA: Patience?

LUDOVICO: No.

It’s not patience.

You have to find the time to actually do things

You have to find the time to actually do things. If you’re cooking, cook.

If you’re doing the interview, do the interview.

If you’re walking the dog, walk the dog.

YASMINA: Okay. I’m going to ask you the last questions and then we’ll stop. There was this category I was interested in and it’s love and intimacy.

LUDOVICO: If I tell you everything, basically none of it will be publishable.

YASMINA: Ludo, for you, what does it mean to be intimate with someone? I mean romantically, not platonically.

LUDOVICO: Intimacy is a bit of a touchy subject for me because I’ve been burned, particularly once.

I don’t think I’ve ever been in love with someone. I don’t think I’ve ever completely opened myself up to another person. I don’t think I’ve ever been completely intimate with someone. I think there’s sexual intimacy and then there’s sexual intimacy. There’s the kind where you think: “Sure, let’s do it.” And there’s the kind where you feel there’s a deeper relationship underneath it. My relationship with intimacy is very complicated, and I’m working on it quite a lot.

YASMINA: Don’t worry. I’m in a very Sartre mood.

LUDOVICO: This isn’t a Sartre mood.

This is: we’re talking about heavy things, so let’s lighten things up with some nicotine.

I tell him things I can’t publish. I tell him something I realized the day before.

LUDOVICO: Good morning, baby. I didn’t want to tell you because we would have argued, but…

YASMINA: Merci, I mention someone I can’t mention here, quoi. No, but now we’re talking about you.

LUDOVICO: But I also want to tell you something. There’s one thing I’ve always noticed about you, and it’s something I think you need to be careful about. You run away from yourself.

YASMINA: A lot.

LUDOVICO: I’ve never heard you say: “I feel bad because…” or “I feel good because…” I’ve only heard: “I feel good because of my ex’s name.” “I feel bad because of the guy that I’m seeing’s name.” “I feel bad because of Jeff” (Jeff doesn’t exist, yet). “I feel bad because my mother replied to me.” “I feel bad because one of our mutual friends’ name said this to me.” “I feel bad because of another mutual friend’s name.”

You live in relation to other people.

YASMINA: That’s true.

That’s true.

That’s true.

LUDOVICO: And it makes sense that you might want to run away from yourself because you might be having all those problems. But the person I’ve seen in your good moments is not someone who… And this is not a declaration of love, even though your parents would like it to be.

YASMINA: My parents would love that.

LUDOVICO: Actually… let me remind you that you also told me we were going to get married.

YASMINA: I was bluffing. But anyways, when last week that shit happened with Palo, and you messaged me asking if I needed help and if you could come meet me, I texted my sister and said: “Why did you tell Ludovico? I don’t want people stressing me out.”

And she replied: “Sorry, Mum told me.”

So I texted my mother: “Why did you message Ludovico? I didn’t want that, he stresses me out.”

And she said: “Sorry, I told Dad.”

At that point I thought: “Okay, if Dad said it, then fine.” My parents have never met you, wait no they have, and they trust you so much.

LUDOVICO: Is your father going to get me into diplomacy or what?

YASMINA: No.

Okay, I’ll ask you the final questions. I’m going to go check on Paloma and then maybe we’ll see each other later. I want quick answers.

A street in Paris.

LUDOVICO: Rue Mouffetard.

YASMINA: A bar.

LUDOVICO: I can’t… Balto.

YASMINA: A whisky.

LUDOVICO: Macallan 18 Double Cask.

YASMINA: Something you collect.

LUDOVICO: Vinyl records.

YASMINA: Something that is considered a good quality in other people, but that you personally hate.

LUDOVICO: I can’t explain it in one word, so I’ll say it quickly. When you’ve just met someone and you see there’s potential, and then that person immediately starts going: “We have to see each other. Let’s see each other. Let’s meet tomorrow. Let’s meet again.”

YASMINA: That clingy thing.

LUDOVICO: Exactly.

YASMINA: Something you always lose.

LUDOVICO: My dignity.

YASMINA: Your favorite word.

LUDOVICO: It’s a phrase:

*************************************

YASMINA: Lol, stop. Your last meal. For me, it would be five banana breads.

LUDOVICO: My mother’s braised beef with cream and mushrooms.

YASMINA: A time of day.

LUDOVICO: Aperitivo time.

YASMINA: Something you miss.

LUDOVICO: Having a dog.

YASMINA: And the last thing you would want to tell me.

LUDOVICO: Never stop taking *************

YASMINA: Okay. I can’t put this in.

I’m stopping the recording.

You can read Ludovico’s question for me here.

YASMINA: Hello my love, I’m good, I’m really good. But I’m also — and I hate to admit this — probably slightly overwhelmed? Right now I don’t understand if I’m hot or I’m cold, cause I think I’m getting sick, and I think I hate everything about fall weather. I might not even like fall fashion after all, but yeah, this is it! I think I’m very happy and excited, I just need to understand how to slow down and how not to let all the excitement become detrimental to my mental health because it’s crazy and it’s scary how fast it can, like, backfire.

DIANE: How would you describe your current style?

YASMINA: I have been evolving with my style so much over the past, I think, six months. I went to Bangkok last December for Christmas, and I was in a dark place, and you know, I was in one of those moments where I was thinking, when I come back to Paris, I want to feel different. And for me, one of the first things that I thought of was style.

It’s evolved so much also this year when I changed jobs from YSL to Balenciaga, and I think a lot of people noticed that, and keep on noticing that.

I’d say there’s been a lot of, like, ripped jeans, colour, neon, pastel — of course, that’s how we met. But currently I’m leaning into darker things, maybe also because winter is coming. But maybe also because I’ve been influenced again by themes and figures that I think I was very attached to a couple of years ago, and it’s everything related to the underground, the 2010s, indie sleaze, Tumblr, kind of Alexa Chung. That’s what I’m trying to channel. I still don’t know if I have all the pieces in my wardrobe, but I’m banning myself from buying stuff because voilà.

DIANE: What’s your favourite color?

YASMINA: Black. I know it’s weird, but it just says so much.

But I’m also very attached to blue. One of my favourite books is Bluets by Maggie Nelson. She wrote a whole book on the colour. A love letter to blue. I really recommend it to everyone. Especially people going through, uhm, gruesome heartbreak.

DIANE: What are your biggest sources of inspiration?

YASMINA: Fashion-wise, I really love Hedi Slimane. I know I don’t rock the style, but I just love his eye, and his cuts. I love him so much. That’s all I’m going to say.

DIANE: What do you think about clothing in terms of its relationship to the body, weight, and silhouette?

YASMINA: Oh, we talked about this. Today I think I’m not in the best mood to reply to this because I’m not in the best headspace, but let’s go. Clothes are, I think, the biggest indicator of how I’m feeling in my body in the moment. When I want to expose myself, I let clothes do that. When I want to hide myself, I also let clothes do that. It’s a very intimate and delicate kind of vision and I’m scared to share this… but I still need to work on it.

DIANE: What are your hobbies and interests? Is there one that stands out more than the others? What was your favourite one when you were a kid?

YASMINA: Definitely writing. And brainstorming my writing. And editing my writing. And noting things down. For me, writing is my biggest hobby. I used to write plays for my friends. I had terrible directing skills — because I think I really wanted things to be exactly the way I wanted them to be and sometimes would act like this big bitch and sometimes I made my friends lose it. But definitely writing.

I also love reading. I run a lot. I run without a schedule. I run without a method. My friend Viktor says that I run like a bird. I ADORE playing my piano and singing at night and then posting on my Close Friends and then feeling cringe and deleting it. As much as I would like to, I’m not really a cinephile, although I’ve had my cinema phases, but mostly I like watching movies at cinemas or at festivals, never alone at home. I’m not the kind of person who’s going to watch movies on her laptop. I have a MUBI subscription and never use it.

I write so much, all the fricking time, and I take snapshots of everything through my writing. I talk to myself all the time. That’s a hobby, a full-time job.

DIANE: What’s your favourite dish?

YASMINA: I’m a sucker for Indian food. Favourite dish is gonna be garlic naan and lentil dal.

DIANE: Are you more into savoury or sweet?

YASMINA: Savoury.

DIANE: What’s your favourite souvenir with me?

YASMINA: The first we met. Just coming into your home, you welcoming me, your energy. The way I was excited about the pants, to meet you. I remember going back home and sending voice notes to my friend Benedetta and being like, “Oh my God, this girl, like, you need to meet her, we have to hang out with her.” And I remember thinking, “I hope I made a good impression.”

DIANE: How do you see yourself in 5 years?

YASMINA: Interviewing Paloma Wool.

Joking. I mean, not that much — I named my dog after her.

Jokes aside, I want to have my own brand, and I don’t know what that is. Hopefully I’m going to have an assistant because I’m starting to lose my shit, and I’m not sleeping.

No, but for real, I want to keep on doing what I’m doing. I think I’m happy and I want to stay happy. I feel vibrant, I hope this stays. I’m not gonna say something like, “I hope in 5 years I will rid myself of the ghosts I have right now,” because the ghosts are part of me and I carry them with me.

I think I want to stay like this, maybe wiser and more free financially.

And I’m not gonna say stuff about kids and having a partner because I have conflicted opinions about that.

BISOUS LOVE YOU SO MUCH!

My interview with Diane, Wuna is here.

Naturally, we stalked her Instagram. I remember looking at her and thinking: yes, this girl is cool. I think Benedetta and I followed each other before we had even properly met, and somehow I already knew we were going to become friends. Not long after, we spent a holiday together at my then-boyfriend’s house. I remember that period as one of the happiest of my life, and Benedetta is inseparable from the memory of it.

She is the most British Italian girl I know. She is from Florence, went to French schools, speaks perfect French, and has one of those voices I could listen to indefinitely: considered, precise, soft, with an accent and way of speaking that feel completely her. She studied politics and human rights, and there is something I love about the contrast between how gentle she is and how serious her mind is. I have always had the feeling that she is going to do something extraordinary with it.

Her taste feels similarly considered. Classical, elegant, polished, never cold. She is a cat mother, an aunt to a little girl she adores, and one of the most naturally caring people I know. The last time I visited her in Milan, I was eating gluten-free and she had already thought about where I could eat. It was such a small thing, but those are often the things I remember most about people.

With Benedetta, conversations tend to become deep without much effort. She is incredibly sweet, but there is also a seriousness and intelligence underneath that sweetness that I have always admired. She feels a little like a fairy to me, if fairies went to French school, studied human rights and had impeccable coats.

She’s calling me from her bedroom apartment in Padova, that she’s about to leave forever. She shows me the things she’s packing away. We’re on Facetime.

BENEDETTA: Okay. This… let me show you. I am packing my shit away because I am leaving this hellhole. I mean, it’s not that bad. There’s Santa Giustina over there. It’s cute.

YASMINA: It is cute.

BENEDETTA: Yeah. But anyways, I’m packing everything away because I have to leave the room on September 1st. But on Saturday… I mean, September 1st is a Tuesday, but I’m leaving on Saturday because by Tuesday I need to be in Milan for the new job.

YASMINA: Okay, so you’re moving to Milan.

Benedetta is moving back to Milan

BENEDETTA: I’m moving back.

Moving back to Milan because, studying politics and human rights, Milan is basically where you go if you want to work with companies or institutions in Italy. At most you go to Rome, but even there there isn’t exactly that much going on.

I’m going to work with Fondazione Francesca Rava, which is the foundation I went to Honduras with and the one I used to volunteer with.

I’m going to work on a project called In Farmacia per i Bambini, where basically you connect individual pharmacies in a certain area with an organization, so maybe a foster home, a community, or one of those places where women who are victims of violence go with their children.

Basically you organize this kind of collection through the pharmacies, and the goods are then donated to the community. Everything is centered around November, around November 19th, which is when the Convention on the Rights of the Child was signed.I’ll be working on this project until December. Then, who knows. I’m looking at Brussels, so fingers crossed.

YASMINA: You want to move to Brussels?

BENEDETTA: I don’t know, yeah. Mostly because if I want to do institutional affairs, Brussels and the EU are probably the best option.

I would love to work with the United Nations, but it’s not exactly easy, and there isn’t exactly that much money either, so, amazing.

No, honestly, I want to make money. That’s something I’ve realized. Is it ugly to say? Yes. But it’s true.

YASMINA: No, it’s important.

BENEDETTA: I mean, what am I supposed to do?

YASMINA: I was stalking you on LinkedIn because I needed to remember your parcours for this interview, and I saw that you wrote something about being interested in the intersection of healthcare…

BENEDETTA: Exactly.

YASMINA: And I was like, “Oh, this is new.”

BENEDETTA: But I think you don’t remember this. I wanted to… Okay, from the time I was four years old, I wanted to be a cardiac surgeon.

YASMINA: Okay, yes, I remember that. Yes, yes.

From the time I was four years old, I wanted to be a cardiac surgeon

BENEDETTA: Like, imagine a four-year-old…

YASMINA: What does a four-year-old know about cardiac surgery?

BENEDETTA: I knew everything I needed to know.

Back when YouTube still let you watch certain things, I used to watch operations.

YASMINA: How old were you?

BENEDETTA: From around seven onwards, I was genuinely studying it. I knew the whole structure of the heart. I was sure that was what I was going to do.

Then from cardiac surgery, I wanted to become a trauma surgeon and work in the army. I wanted to be a military doctor, in the military branch of the Red Cross.

That was my dream.

When I went to Rome for the June 2nd parade, every day for about a week we were rehearsing alongside basically every possible branch of the Italian military.

And all the guys and girls that I saw there, mind you…

YASMINA: Why?

BENEDETTA: Because they’re hot. They’re attractive. They’re so hot.

YASMINA: Because they’re in uniform?

BENEDETTA: Because they were in uniform. But also…

YASMINA: Yeah, there’s something hot about a uniform.

DIFFERENT LEVELS OF UNIFORM - HOT

BENEDETTA: There are different levels. There are different types of hot.

Like, there’s Carabiniere hot, but then there’s also riot police hot. You know? Different kinds of hotness. Different levels.

Every type was there.

Anyway, I kept seeing the military corps of the Red Cross and I… Oh my God, I could cry again.

I saw them every single day, and whenever they passed in front of me, because everyone had to march past for inspection, I would start sobbing.

I had always imagined myself doing that job, even though I’d never actually seen those people in real life.

Because who sees people in those roles in everyday life?

You see a police officer walking around and you can think, “Oh, it would be cool to be a police officer.”

But that role is so niche that you just don’t see those people around a city.

I thought I had moved on from that dream, but seeing them…

And it was beautiful because the military corps of the Red Cross would march in front of the volunteers from the Italian Red Cross, and whenever one group passed the other, they would salute each other.

There’s such a level of respect between them as healthcare colleagues.

And then there were also dogs doing CPR.

YASMINA: No fucking way, what?

BENEDETTA: Yes.

YASMINA: CPR? By dogs?

BENEDETTA: Yes.

YASMINA: On who? On a human?

BENEDETTA: On a human.

YASMINA: How does this happen? I love this. Wow.

BENEDETTA: It’s crazy.

So that was when I realized that the medical side had really stayed with me.

Then, because of some life circumstances, I ended up getting so behind with school that everything became kind of a mess. I did the last three years of high school in an Italian school, a normal Italian scientific high school.

I did biology, chemistry and all of that, had an absolutely insane teacher. I don’t know whether it was her fault or what, but biology became so awful for me that I gave up on that path.

I was already preparing for the medical school entrance exams, because back then there were still entrance tests.

But then, no medicine.

Human rights

And so, human rights.

It became my way of helping people, even if it wasn’t from a medical point of view.

Then, while studying, I realized that I could actually connect human rights back to medicine.

That’s where the intersection between the two worlds comes from.

My master’s thesis was about how neonatologists and physicians, so basically the medical field, contribute to advancing the recognition of newborn rights.

Rights that are specific to newborns, because legally they’re a bit marginalized. They’re not really considered that much.

They get put under this umbrella of children’s rights, but “children” is just too broad as an umbrella term.

So I realized that the medical world and the human rights world, and especially children’s rights, actually connect really well.

And it more or less reflects this intersection I’m interested in.

YASMINA: It’s true that you did a very specific master’s compared to a more general bachelor’s. When did you realize during your bachelor’s that this was what you wanted to focus on? Or had you actually already realized it before, from what you’re telling me?

BENEDETTA: International Relations is obviously very generic, but actually Human Rights is also incredibly broad.

There’s humanitarian law, refugee rights, children’s rights, women’s rights, the rights of people with disabilities… It’s so much.

I studied a bit of everything, but you really do have to specialize a lot.

I’ve seen master’s programs that, ignoring the cost because they obviously cost at least twenty thousand a year, connect the right to health with business analysis and things like that.

That could actually be really interesting.

We digress a bit over what I’m doing in Paris and my job. She asks me about how it’s like working in fashion.

BENEDETTA: Do you think you can actually stay healthy while working in an environment that toxic?

YASMINA: Yeah, I think I can. For now.

But you need to stay super alert. It’s so easy to fall into things.

I had a period this winter where I was starting to fall into certain things, but now I’m much, much more careful.

The dog really helped me, I have to say, because it’s like having a child.

BENEDETTA: Yeah, yeah.

YASMINA: You have a cat too.

BENEDETTA: Yeah, Teddy.

Teddy

YASMINA: But Teddy doesn’t live with you, does he?

BENEDETTA: No, he lives in Florence.

YASMINA: With your mom?

BENEDETTA: And my brother. He’s back in Florence from London.

YASMINA: Your older brother?

BENEDETTA: He’s the middle child. Then there’s my sister with Squishy.

YASMINA: Righ! You’re also an aunt to your sister’s daughter.

BENEDETTA: Yes, Beatrice, also known as Squishy.

YASMINA: Squishy.

BENEDETTA: Squishy is very squishy.

But no, Teddy doesn’t live with me. There were different periods where I was much sadder. And I thoguht about bringing Teddy to Padua, but he loves my mom, so I couldn’t do that to him.

And when you have to take care of someone, it’s like the airplane thing: make sure you put your own oxygen mask on first before helping others. The same applies when you have to take care of animals or people.

I always say that, honestly, I think Teddy got me through some extremely difficult times.

Even moments where I thought, “Okay, whatever. That’s it. Bye. I’m done,” if you know what I mean.

And then I would think, “No, but Teddy would stop seeing me come home. What would he think? That I abandoned him?”

YASMINA: No, I get that so much.

They’re these little beings, and there’s this part of the relationship where they really do feel like children to us. Paloma genuinely pulled me out of the shit. I was like, “Okay, now I have a daughter.”

I’m scratching my mosquito bites because that’s my worst habit ever.

BENEDETTA: I remember.

YASMINA: I forgot to put the mosquito repellent on and now, whatever. The Vape.

BENEDETTA: You call it Vape? I call it Vapé!

YASMINA: Anyway. So you’re leaving Padua. You’ve been in Padua for two years.

BENEDETTA: Yeah. Actually, I think some of the questions you prepared were about Padua.

YASMINA: I put some questions about Padua because it’s not a city I know. I’ve never been to Padua.

I had a “Veneto moment” in my life a couple of times, but now I’m very far removed from Veneto.

And I know you have some sort of connection to Veneto.

BENEDETTA: The connection is biological.

Both of my parents are from Padua.

YASMINA: Oh, I didn’t know that.

BENEDETTA: Both my parents are from Padua, but none of us children had ever actually lived in Padua until I moved here when I was twenty-two.

When I was little, my grandparents lived outside Padua, in these two small towns called Battaglia Terme and Monselice.

So when I came here in the summer to visit my grandparents, my idea of Veneto was basically those little towns where there is nothing. Literally nothing.

To me it was like that scene in the Hannah Montana movie where she’s like, “Hello, New York!” except she’s standing in the countryside.

That was me in Veneto.

Then I met Riccardo.

And my mom said, “This is karma, because you’ve spent your whole life talking shit about Veneto and now you’ve ended up with a guy from Veneto.”

He showed me completely different sides of Veneto: its history, the architecture, the art, even the culinary side.

And I was like, “Wait, so it’s not just countryside and cicadas?”

Wait, so it’s not just countryside and cicadas?

I absolutely did not move to Padua because I liked Veneto.

I absolutely did not move here because I liked Padua or because I wanted to connect to my roots.

Fuck the roots. I don’t care about them.

I moved because, at the time, Padua was the only university in Italy offering a master’s in this field.

I think now they’ve opened another one in Pisa. It was an extremely niche course, and Padua is a good university, with a very strong scientific approach.

Personally, I had a fairly bad experience here because it isn’t a stimulating city.

I’m kind of lazy by nature, so I need to be in an environment that pushes me, in a healthy way, to improve myself.

To go to the gym, to go after promotions…

YASMINA: I remember once we were talking about workouts and you told me you were struggling to find a good workout in the city.

BENEDETTA: Eventually I did find one.

But I’m used to more intense things, like HIIT workouts.

I did a lot of Pilates, even four times a week, but it doesn’t scratch my brain where I need it to be scratched, you know?

YASMINA: What’s your go-to workout, or your go-to movement?

I prefer the word movement to workout.

I’ve had really toxic relationships with the concept of working out.

So I don’t really “work out.” I run, but to me that’s movement.

I go running because my body needs it.

BENEDETTA: I like doing at least two intense workouts a week.

Usually it ends up being two because I’m pretty lazy and I don’t have much time.

I like more intense aerobic things, whether that’s running or kickfit, which is basically a fake boxing class.

YASMINA: What? It’s a class?

BENEDETTA: Yes. I love classes. I only go to classes.

I never go to the weights room, even though the gym I’m currently signed up to has this tiny, tiny little weights area with machines.

There’s always some girl in there. It’s a women-only gym, which I love because I hate men when they work out. They disgust me. I can smell the testosterone coming out of their pores.

YASMINA: You would love Paris. There are so many cool workouts.

BENEDETTA: I basically only do classes.

Twice a week I’ll do something more intense. Maybe another two times a week I’ll do Pilates.

In particular, I found an instructor who actually taught me how to use my core properly.

After ten years of doing Pilates, I finally understood how to actually engage your core even when you’re just sitting down. I like the contrast between working a muscle slowly and deeply versus using it quickly and pushing your heart and lungs. The human body needs to be able to do both.

I’ve also had ups and downs with this stuff. Now, instead of thinking about working out for aesthetic benefits, I think of my muscles as something that is there to be used. I need to work them. Otherwise, what’s the point of having muscles? But also, if you work out and train your muscles, those muscles need to generate new cells.

So you need protein. Have your protein. Don’t be afraid of eating that extra thing, and don’t be afraid of becoming too muscular because you need your muscles!!!

The same applies to all the other macronutrients, which I personally don’t track or anything. I’m more in this phase of thinking: you work out because it helps your body do what your body was meant to do.

It helps you live.

You need to put your body in the best possible conditions to help you live.

You need to put your body in the best possible conditions to help you live.

Classes also make me forget that I’m working out.

They detach me from that side of it.

It feels more like I’m doing something social that is good for me and also good for the people around me.

Milan

YASMINA: How do you feel about going back to Milan?

BENEDETTA: Milan shaped me in some way. I think it also helped me feel less sorry for myself, if that makes sense. It helped me grow up and realize that I am my own independent person, separate from what I’ve lived through. My past obviously shapes me, but it is not all of me.

In Florence, those dynamics were much stronger. I also think my relationship with Riccardo in Milan shaped me a lot. I don’t think Milan would have shaped me in the same way if Riccardo hadn’t been there.

I actually lived more like a Milanese person instead of like a student who simply happened to live in Milan. I think Milan shaped me much more than Padua did, even if the negative experience of Padua obviously had power too.

It definitely did something.

At the very least, it made me understand what I don’t like and what kinds of environments I don’t want to be in.

Elegance!!

YASMINA: For me, you’re one of the most elegant girls I know. And I don’t feel super elegant lately. Do you think elegance can be learned, or is it something inherent?

BENEDETTA: I saw that question and I was actually thinking about it. At first my answer was that it can be learned, it can be acquired. But thinking about it more, I think elegance is literally part of someone’s personality. Obviously, when it comes to personality, there’s the whole nature versus nurture thing.

One part of me thinks you’re born with elegance. Another part of me thinks that the environment you grow up in, your parents, your siblings, the places you go, where you travel, the schools you attend, the way you’re taught to sit at the dinner table, all shape your brain into having an elegant personality.

So I think it’s much more a personality trait and a way of being brought up than something you learn by watching some girl on Instagram explain etiquette.

Because that isn’t elegance.

YASMINA: I need to get off TikTok because I hate these girls who are like, “Here’s everything you need to know to become the classiest woman in the room.”

It’s not some blouse with lace details that’s going to make me classy.

BENEDETTA: No. That’s tacky.

That’s fake elegance.

I think a lot of people now confuse elegance with the whole old-money trend.

They think being elegant means going to watch a polo match. No.

You can be elegant in the middle of the countryside. It isn’t just about upper-class activities or the brands you wear. It’s about how you treat other people. How you present yourself to the world. How you speak to the shop assistant or the cashier at the supermarket. It’s also about respect.

You respect the environment around you and you respect yourself. You respect the way you treat yourself, how you treat others, how you present yourself, how you are reflected back to the world. You even care about, I don’t know, what materials are touching your skin because you’re aware that one thing might be better for you than another.

But it’s also about not being stuck-up. It’s about being down to earth, but with a specific kind of attention to detail.

And I think simplicity, elegance and attention to detail go hand in hand.

They complement each other.

So yes, I think it’s much more a question of personality and upbringing than something you can learn by reading a guide on how to become the most elegant woman in the world.

And it has absolutely nothing to do with money.

YASMINA: We’re almost at the end because I’m trying to keep the interviews around an hour long….

At the end there are two sections that need to be very quick because they’re rapid-fire questions.

BENEDETTA: Oh, which I hate.

YASMINA: Yes.

The first part is this or that, and then I’ll ask you a few things and you just have to say whatever comes into your head first.

Pastel colors or primary colors?

BENEDETTA: Primary colors.

YASMINA: Red or green?

BENEDETTA: Green.

YASMINA: Black or white?

BENEDETTA: White.

YASMINA: Cotton or silk?

BENEDETTA: Cotton.

YASMINA: Perfect or imperfect?

BENEDETTA: Perfect.

YASMINA: We’re very fashion-oriented.

New or vintage?

BENEDETTA: New.

YASMINA: Flowers or fruit?

BENEDETTA: Flowers.

YASMINA: Dinner for two or dinner for ten?

BENEDETTA: Dinner for two.

YASMINA: Florence, London or Milan?

BENEDETTA: London. Milan.

YASMINA: Croissant or cornetto?

BENEDETTA: Croissant.

YASMINA: Cooking or being cooked for?

BENEDETTA: Being cooked for.

YASMINA: What’s the best thing someone has ever cooked for you?

BENEDETTA: Oh my gosh. Help.

Something pretty simple: Riccardo makes these little rolls for me.

I think it’s chicken. Yes, I think it’s chicken.

He takes individual slices of prosciutto and individual sage leaves and prepares everything one by one. [Unclear passage.]

Sage is my favorite herb.

I love it so much.

YASMINA: I never have it here. I’m so bad at cooking. It’s literally my worst thing.

But I want to work on it.

Okay. A book that shaped you.

BENEDETTA: I have two answers.

The Late Mattia Pascal, because it made me realize that this desire I had when I was younger to escape wasn’t some completely unique experience.

It’s something that has been documented and that other people have lived through.

That feeling that something is wrong with you, that you need to leave your life behind and create a completely new one, is something humanity has experienced before.

More recently, a book I feel very deeply connected to is The Song of Achilles.

YASMINA: I always think about you when I think about that book.

I have it here because I’m renting my friend’s apartment. She’s a huge reader and she studied philosophy, so you can imagine how many philosophy books there are here. You actually share a name. Every time I see it I think, “I need to start this.”

BENEDETTA: I love it.

YASMINA: Favorite smell.

BENEDETTA: Sage.

YASMINA: I asked smell rather than scent because I wanted literally any kind of smell to count.

YASMINA: Some photo evidence because objects can tell me a lot about you. What’s your favourite piece of furniture at home?

BENEDETTA

:

YASMINA: What’s in your bag?

BENEDETTA:

YASMINA: What’s something completely boring that you randomly love?

BENEDETTA:

YASMINA: OMG TINTIN ET MILOU MA VIEEEEE

Favorite hotel you’ve ever stayed at.

BENEDETTA: I think Gleneagles in Scotland.

It’s where I rode my first horse. It’s where I learned to ride a bike. And it’s where my sister went for her honeymoon.

YASMINA: Wow.

Milan in three meal spots.

One place for breakfast, one for lunch and one for dinner.

BENEDETTA: For breakfast, there was this really small pastry shop near Wagner, on one of the little streets around there.

I can’t remember the name, but I can find it.

They have the best cream brioche ever.

For lunch, I’d say a club sandwich at God Save the Food.

And for dinner, I’d say Trattoria della Pesa.

YASMINA: What was that place called where they made the cotoletta?

BENEDETTA: Consorzio Stoppani.

YASMINA: I love that place, but it’s low-key the only place I’ve actually been to in Milan.

Now that you’re going back to live there, I’m going to come more often because I seriously need to improve my Milan game.

BENEDETTA: It’s really nice.

YASMINA: They make the cotoletta with lemon or orange zest, right?

BENEDETTA: Orange.

YASMINA: Favorite pasta shape?

BENEDETTA: Short penne.

YASMINA: Your coffee order.

I live in Paris, where there are fifty different coffee options. I know in Italy it’s usually more straightforward…

BENEDETTA: Espresso.

Also because I’m lactose intolerant.

YASMINA: Your favorite plant-based milk?

BENEDETTA: Usually oat milk, because I realized I can’t drink soy milk.

But if I’m having an iced latte, I like coconut milk.

YASMINA: Last question.

This is the same question I ask everyone: your favorite word in any language.

BENEDETTA: In French, it’s “coquelicot.”

YASMINA: I love the word coquelicot. I adore it.

In English it’s “poppy,” right?

BENEDETTA: Yeah. It’s so cute. I also love the way it’s written.

In Italian I’d say… I don’t know… “splendido.”

I love it.

YASMINA: We chatted a lot because we also needed to catch up.

BENEDETTA: Yeah.

YASMINA: Oh my God.

Okay. Love you, bye.

BENEDETTA: Love you, thank you so much.

YASMINA: Bye, bye.

No, I don’t have a forged personality. I think I have a forged identity, for sure, and I think it’s cool to separate identity and personality. My identity I believe is very related to my parents and the places where I grew up.

But I think personality-wise, I have always been influenced by very very specific figures that maybe to some extent I tried to imitate because I thought they had the head space I wanted to be in, in that moment. Like oh she’s so cool and laid back, let me get into the things she consumes, let me dress like her, let me go to the places she goes. And boom that’s my personality. I still don’t know if I feel good or bad about this sort of “imitation game” but I guess we all borrow things from each other. We interchange. All the time.

All my life I’ve always had people telling me - you’re still building an identity. No I think my identity is there and I know it is.

My personaliy has been changing a lot. I think I shape-shifted a lot. Shapeshifter is one of my favourite words and concepts and also the title of one of my favourite songs: you know, I’ve been, like, very sweet. I’ve been a bitch. I’ve been a saint. I’ve been a cunt. And all of this --- was related to the people that were in my life at that moment. Not to frighten anyone but sometimes my personality changes a lot in just a day haha.

I tell myself it’s a good because I want to be constantly challenged. I want to be so many things at the same time, and I think I am. It’s evolving. I am evolving.

Vik, is there something you would like to ask me or know about me that you never asked me?

Not that I can think of. Are you doing well? Can i blow you a kiss

Haha. I’m doing so much better.

Like, I finally feel so f. alive and that I’m going somewhere, not just running in circles because you know it, you knew it, and you told me very very bluntly, j’étais en train de foutre la merde!!

I miss you.

I wish you were here.

Yes for the kiss, sending you a big big big one and hope you’re having the best time in that other part of the world.

Are you wearing perfume at the moment? if yes, which one?

After climbing the avatar mountains, i don’t think there is much left but yes: Blamage by Nasomatto, a perfume created by mistake.

At the time, I was going through a phase of trying to rediscover my style, and I love vintage, so that meant spending an unreasonable amount of time scrolling on the app, looking for original pieces but also clothes made by smaller designers.

That’s how I found a pair of trousers by Diane’s brand, WUNA. I loved them, but I wasn’t sure about the sizing, so I messaged her. She told me I could simply come to her apartment and try them on.

Which, obviously, is a completely normal way to meet someone for the first time.

I looked at her Instagram before going. WUNA already felt like a little world: pastel, feminine, colourful, optimistic but soft. Nothing aggressive, nothing screaming for attention. The trousers I had found were organic cotton, drawstring, in these beautiful shades of blue and green.

Then I arrived at Diane’s apartment in the 20th and suddenly understood the clothes a little better.

I remember wanting to photograph everything: the colours, the objects, the way things were arranged. I didn’t, because I had just entered a stranger’s home and apparently retained some understanding of boundaries. We also had approximately ten minutes because someone was arriving for a shoot.

I tried the trousers.

I bought both colours.

At the time I was also trying to build a brand with my best friend, so naturally I had about a thousand questions for Diane. She answered them all.

A few weeks later, somehow, we were having dinner together at Rives in Paris. And then there were coffees, ice creams, conversations, addresses exchanged, books discussed. Diane became one of my closest friends in Paris.

Our friendship started with a pair of trousers, but what has always fascinated me about her is the world around them: colour, femininity, clothes, books, food, interiors, Paris, and the very particular way she seems to notice and put things together.

So I want her address book, but I also want to know where the eye behind it comes from.

For the interview, I meet Diane over brunch on a Sunday, end of August.

We’re at Fitzcarraldo, in the 11th arrondissement, we ordered a tortilla and a bagel to share. I find the bagel divine, I tell her before I start.

Do you remember how met, right?

Yes, of course.

On Vinted.

No!

Yes!

You found me on Vinted!

And then, you told me your Insta.

No, I think you actually found me on Vinted first, and then wrote to me on Instagram, I didn’t know you had found me on Vinted. Wait are we actually sure about this?

I think we are, yes. I wrote to you because I wanted to buy your pants.

Yes, on Instagram.

Yes, I wrote I love your pants and all but I don’t know about my size. And you told me I could come try them.

Yes.

And it was the first time I’d go to a stranger’s house found on Instagram like this, but I thought she must be okay, she’s a designer. It’s gonna be safe?

I think I also might have checked your Instagram account back then, I always check people out before giving them my adress, just to make sure I can trust them you know.

Yes, because in fact you invited me to come try the pants at your apartment.

Yes. Super spontaneously, quoi.

Yes, and it was far from me, and all… Do you usually invite people over like this?

Yes, I think on that day you came, I also had two other appointments planned, a girl for a shooting, and another person or someone else, now I can’t remember. But yes, it happens, ever since starting Wuna, to give my address and have people come over, randomly, people I don’t know. It’s just much simpler.

Yes. I remember I just wanted to buy one pair of pants, you have them in blue and in green, I ended up buying both.

Yes, I remember what happened, I think you were hesitating between two sizes and ended up getting the two sizes because you liked the two “different looks”.

I remember that when I walked into your apartment, I was just struck by ALL of it. No details fades in the background. The bathroom, your nighstand, your books, your desks. I wanted to take photos of all of it, but then thought, no, I’m not going to do that, it’s her personal space, it’s too intimate.

Yes, like, what the hell is the wrong with this girl.

I was just obsessed with your apartment, and how much it felt like your aesthetic. Wuna’s aesthetic. Do you think about your home the same way you think about Wuna?

Totally! I see this continous line between myself, my home, the music I listen to, the things I eat, the places I hang out, even my way of talking and thinking, you see? There’s a common thread, all of this, everything is the same. Wuna, my apartment, the way I decorate it, how I dress. This happens to me all the time, I’ll be wearing something that isn’t Wuna and people will ask me if still is. Wuna is so much a part of me that even when I’m wearing vintage it looks like Wuna.

For me Wuna is colour, feminine, it’s strong but also soft. For most of my life, I’ve dressed in black, white and neutrals, when I found Wuna, it came at a time when I was trying to step outside those visual codes a little.

So you already had in mind that you wanted to start wearing more color?

Yes, but like in a soft way. And Wuna fit perfectly. Have you always dressed like this?

I think color has always been very strong in my wardrobe. I always drew, and when I look at my drawings from when I was child, I realize color has always been there. Also in the details, I would add accessories like hair clips. I always loved colour. Then of course, I think I got caught up in this sort of game where color is objectively a part of my personality. When I worked for a fashion brand, the creative director noticed I had something going on with color, all the teams did. I got a lot of comments about it, about how I style color combinations. After hearing so many remarks about it, it just got like a game you know? I could still go out wearing just grey, white and black without even realizing it. Sometimes I’d be super colorful, and other times not at all. But once I realized that people liked it, and that they had noticed I had this thing with color, I started paying more attention to it. And I guess it just became part of me.

Going back to your apartment, because I really love, how do you chose the item that will enter your home, and that will inhabit it? And where do you find your items?

Mostly from my travels. I shop for a lot of objects when I travel, I spend a lot of time on it, because I tell myself that once that object will be at home I’ll always think about the trip. For books, when you look at my library, all of them are colourful and beautiful. Which doesn’t mean to say that I buy a book because of how aesthetically it will look placed on my bookshelf, but when I’m in a bookstore, and I’m surrounded by hundreds of thousands of books, I see which covers draw me in.

Have you bought books just for their covers?

Never, ever, ever. If I find the cover wonderful but the topic bland, I’m just going to be frustrated. A book can be beautiful but if I won’t be reading it, it’s going to be useless. All the books I own are gorgeous but also interesting, and I’ve read them all.

What genre do you like?

I am curious about so many topics. Cooking, I love cookbooks and recipes. And feminism. I think 80% of the books I own are about feminism. And speaking about color, look at this book I brought with me today. She takes it out from her purse, it’s purple. Purple has long been associated with the feminist movement.

Do you always go out with a book?

Most times.

Do you read every day?

No, it depends. You need to have the time and the right headspace to read and really appreciate it. The first thing I did this morning instead of scrolling my Instagram feed was reading for 40 minutes.

It’s a good habit to have.

Yes.

I wish I read more lately. But I got a membership at the American Library in Paris yesterday, it’s in the 7th. There’s so much stuff and it’s so fun to borrow books. But I need to find a reading routine again, I’m on my phone too much.

But never force yourself to read, otherwise it’ll put you off reading. I think what really helps is picking actually good books. Sometimes I start books and after twenty pages I get bored and disinterested. It’s good to know when to give up on a book.

Where do you buy your books in Paris?

Three places. Librarie Sans Titre, in the 11th, Avenue Parmentier. Mainly there. For feminist essays I love Violette and Co., also in the 11th. And another one, just close to my place, Le Monte en L’Air. And you can read your book with a coffee, it’s so cute.

I also really like Yvon Lambert, in the Marais. O.f.r, but I’m annoyed about the Instagram hype.

When’s the first time you realized you wanted to create something? I’m asking this question also in relation to my project, Palomita Office. I have been wanting to create something for a while now. Remember I too wanted to launch a fashion brand, with a friend? I asked you for tips.

Yes, of course. So cool.

Maybe in the future. I’ll focus on Palomita Office for now.

After my experience at the fashion house, something clicked for me. I thought, Diane, you’re going to have to make fashion your career, because working in fashion is where you’ll be able to thrive the most personally. I’d figured out that really had to be at the center of my life if I wanted to feel truly fulfilled. And for years I knew I wanted to create my business. So there I had it, my business was going to be my fashion brand.

And I remember precisely when it clicked for me: I was talking to my best friend over a glass of wine here in Paris. She was like, okay, make your brand. I was like, no, this is way too complicated. But then, talking to her I realized it actually wasn’t that hard. That if I was determined enough, I could do it.

I spent the whole night after that dinner drawing in bed, in the dark, with just a little light on, trying to see what would come out of my head. There’s the idea, and then there’s the actual practice of it. And I had so many ideas coming to me. I absolutely loved drawing.

Do you have one or multiple notebooks?

One at a time. For drawings, measurements, information for pop-ups. I just started my second one.

And your iPad?

Yes, I use it to digitize my designs. But the first draft is always on paper.

Are there trusted people you show the drafts of your designs to?

I show my friends, yes, I have no problem with that. I’ve always been told that I should share my personal life on Instagram too, what I do in my day-to-day life. And I’ve also been told that I should show my Wuna notebook on Instagram, but I don’t really want to do that. I’m a bit worried that some of my ideas might get stolen. But otherwise, yes, I’d be happy to show you my notebook! I just don’t have it with me right now.

When we met, I don’t think you had the Instagram account you have now.

Right, I had a mini Instagram account, I didn’t want to be on Instagram. I have a “bigger” Instagram account now but it’s still private.

Meanwhile I tell her I am loving the grilled melted cheese on the bagel.

I fell into the Instagram trap like everyone else, spending hours on it, posting things and waiting for likes and all of that. And eventually I just got tired of it. I kept only one really private account, and I managed to completely free myself from that dependence on Instagram, and also from caring about other people’s lives, comparing myself, all of that.

I actually think it’s really nice now, and I don’t want to go backwards, back to watching everyone else’s lives and caring about likes. That’s why I spam!

I think we’re very similar in that way. Sometimes I’ll wake up or be about to go to sleep and suddenly I’m like, fuck it, I’m posting seven completely unrelated things from my archives from five years ago lol.

Yes, and you just don’t care if you have 1, 4 or 10 likes.

I think more and more people are having this unstructured, unfiltered approach to posting.

Yes and I find this so cool! And so cool you’re like this because I don’t feel alone in it.

A year ago I think I would care about every single thing I would post. Because this was image. Eventually I don’t care and I think no one really does.

You don’t care, in the same way that nobody else really cares. It’s not like I spend my time watching people’s stories, I mean! I saw a friend recently and she was like, “Yeah, I was in Montreal,” or wherever, and I was like, “Really?” And she goes, “Yeah, didn’t you see my stories?” And I was just like, “No haha.”

We take a break and gossip about a man we know.

I think you know Paris better than I do, and also some neighbourhoods I know nothing of. Like yours. What do you love about the 20th?

What I like about the 20th is that it’s a lively, working-class neighbourhood, but also a very calm one. It’s a bit of a paradox, lively and calm at the same time, but that’s exactly what it is: so much peace and so much life. I love the atmosphere, the vibe.

Do you spend a lot of time in the 20th?

Yes, and around it, so 11th, 10th, 19th. I spend 95% of my time in these areas!

The place in your neighbourhood you’ll go the most in your week? For me it’s this café called Café du Clown, in the Marché Saint Germain because I love the people who work there.

Canal Saint-Martin. I go there and just sit for a while. I write, I read, I draw. I’ll go there to get an ice cream with a friend, or stop by my favourite café, Ten Belles. I also love Dreamin’ Man, Rue Amelot.

What’s your coffee order?

Uhm. Iced latte cow-milk, and a scone. It’s not my favourite pastry but it’s something that I adore. But I adore so many things.

Like natural wine. Where do you like yours?

Buttes Snack Bar in the 19th. But there are so many good ones around. I love to pair my wine with tarama.

You also worked in a gallery.

Yes!

How do you feel about art?

I adore art, I wish I was an artist, like a painter, sculpture, ceramicist. Somehow as a designer I am, but I don’t have this thing of like “no-limits”, creativity that can flow everywhere. With a pencil and a piece of paper, you can draw whatever you want. But a garment has to be worn, so you have the constraint of practicality, of what is actually possible to make. It’s the same with ceramics: you can make whatever you want out of it.

My favourite art form, though, is cinema.

I should bring you to the cinemas in the 5th / 6th. What’s the film you go back to?

I wouldn’t know, but the last film I saw at the cinema was Sur la route d’Omaha and I loved it. Now I just started this show on FranceTV called Chair tendre, I love it, before bed. And I usually don’t watch shows before going to sleep.

Ok, final part of the interview. Rapid fire questions.

Cool.

Blue or pink?

Pink.

The blue pants or the green pants?

The green ones. It’s my favourite green ever.

I love the blue ones.

I called them Caribbean Blue.

Adore. Minimal or maximal?

Maximal.

Vintage or new?
Vintage.

Heels or flats?

Heels although I mostly wear flats.

Coffee or wine?

Ah.. Coffee.

Folderol ou Isotope?

Folderol.

20th or Marais?

20th.

Paris or Marseille?

Paris.

Sea or mountain?
The sea.

Summer or winter?

Summer.

Diner for two or dinner for ten?

For two.

Your favourite word in French?

Amour.

Diane takes a turn at asking me questions here.

I have only met MÁS ALLÁ twice, both times at night.

So, inevitably, most of what I know about him comes in fragments. A conversation about America. A saxophone. Poems. Photographs. Places he has passed through. Things he posts and then disappears from. The strange intimacy of observing someone’s taste before really knowing their life.

MÁS ALLÁ is a poet, a musician, a model, and probably a few other things that resist being reduced to a title. There is something raw about the way he presents himself and, from what I have seen, something equally direct about the way he speaks.

He is Chilean, Irish. He is from New York, but for the past few years, home seems to have been something much more fluid. Since 2023, he has moved every few months, living between New York, Paris, London, Berlin and Mexico City, with periods in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Bulgaria and Italy, among many other places.

I wanted to understand what connects all these fragments. What he notices. What he listens to. What he reads. What beauty means to someone who is surrounded by it professionally but also seems interested in its stranger forms. What happens to a place after you leave it. What makes someone write a poem rather than simply have a thought.

You seem to exist across several different worlds: poetry, music, modelling, travel. I’m always suspicious of reducing someone to what they “do.” If you had to introduce yourself without mentioning your work, where you live, or where you’re from, what would you say?

me llaman MÁS ALLÁ

no soy de aquí, no soy de allá

i do mostly what i think is right. i live everywhere i go. i was born in New York, hecho en Chile. i hope one day to be nothing.

I generally avoid cookie-cutter introductions when i meet people. I often end up in conversations where I know about how they’re traumatized before I know a name. I’ve always been like this.

The first time we spoke, I remember you talking about your relationship with America. It stayed with me because belonging to a place is rarely as simple as being “from” it. What does America mean to you now?

The United States of America is an idea. The bastard child of the world. In many ways, “I am America.” The son of new and old immigrants, 1st and 3rd generation, and three generations of single mothers. Chileno and Irish, the blood of colonizers, natives, radicals, refugees: diaspora and conquest. My mother raised me as a citizen of the world. I feel a sense of responsibility to redefine what it means to be American, domestically and internationally. Even if the American dream was a lie. Even if the hand that wrote “all men are created equal” punished slaves… I think there’s a twisted beauty in that irony. I see the essence of being American as that capacity to dream even if it’s seen as delusion. I’m relentlessly optimistic. I won’t wash my hands and act like it’s not up to us (the next generation) to hold ourselves and the government accountable. It’s so easy to give up or deflect blame; almost nothing worthwhile is easy.

What feels American about you? What doesn’t? And where does Chile exist in you?

Es mi sangre. I was raised without my father, then reconnected with him and my culture. Aprendiendo español por mí mismo, con mis amigos, viajes, libros, y la música. I’ve learned I’m very much my father’s son and extremely chileno, even though growing up it was tough feeling a disconnect from that side of me. I see this in a lot of American Latinos who grow up with a similar hole in their chest. I noticed, learning most of my Spanish in Mexico and Spain, that it can be an uphill battle learning in America. There’s a different trauma associated with race in America. If you’re not a native speaker, trying to practice in public can feel like una guerra. It isolates a lot of mixed people, and I think it’s tragic — something I want to contribute to healing just by being un shameless mezcla de todo. I’m chileno (español y nativo), I’m Irish, I’m American, pero en realidad no soy ninguna de estas cosas. These labels drive division. I think we need to identify less with nations and more with the cosmos. Todo es una máscara. We’re all dirt and stardust.

I know that you write poetry, but I’m more interested in what makes someone need poetry. When did you realise that writing could do something for you that speaking couldn’t?

hahahah i’m chileno and Irish (my explanation). it’s just something i’ve loved and done since i was a kid. poetry is the ashtray of my life. I don’t think about it like that. Speaking is one of the worst forms of communication. I recently discovered Ludwig Wittgenstein, who ironically went in depth on this. Ancient Buddhists and Hindus were way ahead of him, though.

What usually comes first: an image, a sentence, a person, a feeling?

i’m not creating anything when i write. It feels more like reporting what i’ve experienced. I’m not thinking or imagining; it’s just fragments of my story through the lens of my senses.

Do you write when you are happy?

yes and no. i try to always write. when i try to write, it doesn’t work as well as when i just write.

Do you edit obsessively or protect the first instinct?

i edit a tiny bit as I’m writing, but it’s a stream of consciousness. I read it out loud as I write. I love the purity of the moment. It feels like editing too much would disturb that. I am soon collecting these journals/poems and scanning/typing them out for a book, but I think a lot of my poems are meant to be read aloud in my voice. I’ve been more focused on music, and I’ve been recording more poetry over music. I’m in love with how they sound. I’m also doing a bit of writing (hopefully) for a photo book I’ve been working on with a great photographer for the last 2 years.

Then there is the saxophone, which feels almost like the opposite of writing. A poem can be revised forever. A note disappears the second you play it. What does the saxophone let you express that language doesn’t?

I recently said, improvising over a track (as I was crying), “that’s why i play saxophone… so you f**king listen to me.” lol it’s a lil dramatized but I think in some ways I’m still a fetus, a baby learning to walk and talk. I think I make music because my mom used to sing to me as I would have many nightmares. Music is a more universal and accessible language. In many ways, all these words seem to just lead to more confusion. There is a more honest and pure connection that gets lost in words. People generally don’t take time to listen to the lyrics’ meaning even when they have them memorized. I think of “In Bloom” by Nirvana. With saxophone, I can communicate with any musician (or person, really) even if we don’t speak the same language.

If you could play with any musician, living or dead, who would it be?

Mdou Moctar for sure… Burial too… Maya Angelou over techno. I want to meet Alejandro Jodorowsky and record a conversation.

And give me one track where the saxophone is absolutely perfect.

Most of John Coltrane, in my opinion, but who am I to say anything isn’t perfect from any artist? It’s all perfect. (“In a Sentimental Mood” hypnotized me as a kid, though, and A Love Supreme.) He’s really inspiring in many ways…devotion, music as an offering. He died in the hospital I was born in.

A record for walking alone at night?

depends on what street you walk, the outfit, where you’re going, where you came from.

A record for falling in love?

oof, so many. depends on the type of person. I think each person i’ve loved has their own song that i don’t want to share with the internet.

A record for having your heart broken?

“Better Off Alone” by Alice Deejay, for sure.

You model, you write, you make music. In different ways, all three worlds have strange relationships with beauty. What do you find beautiful that other people might not?

decay and garbage. i stare at garbage and photograph it on film. I think tragedy is also very beautiful, but i really don’t think i’m alone on this.

What makes someone sexy to you?

there aren’t certain things. I find different things sexy in all the people i’ve been with. many times they conflict. authenticity but performance can be sexy too, if it’s actually entertaining. sexy is not always attractive.

What instantly destroys attraction?

A bad voice. Lying to yourself or others. Being two-faced or mean to people you can’t get anything from. Poor character.

And do you think taste can make someone more attractive?

yes, very much so.

Both times I have met you, it has been at night, so perhaps unfairly, I associate you with it.

that’s a shame

Who are you at 3 a.m. that you aren’t at 3 p.m.?

these days i’m asleep at 3 a.m. when i’m out that late, i’m dancing or i’m in the studio, and i’m on a mission of liberation or exorcism.

Why do you think certain conversations can only happen at night?

because we’re more relaxed and less guarded.

What makes a party actually good?

the music and the air of freedom. I’m very interested in this, and in how to curate and cultivate a “good party.” It’s our modern ritual and I think more important than ever. I think a lot of parties suck because people get self-conscious and/or want to escape with alcohol and other drugs. It’s not like drugs haven’t had their role in ritual throughout time, but I think many parties have poor incentives/intentions.

Do you think nightlife creates intimacy, or just the illusion of it?

It can go either way. Intimacy is a sense of closeness and connection. Nightlife can encourage that in a way other venues of life generally don’t (I think some real techno dance floors, hardcore shows, or jazz/cocktail bars), but it can also be very alienating.

What song should always be played ridiculously late?

i don’t believe in always.

And when do you know it is time to go home?

i’ve been getting a lot better at this. after you’ve had fun, before you’re really tired. Probably 2nd location if it’s really giving.

You lived in Montreuil, which gives you a slightly different relationship to Paris than someone living inside its postcard version. What did Paris look like from Montreuil?

Everything i loved about Paris, but better. I don’t really draw a line. To me, I was living in Paris when I was there. I lived in the 10th most of my time before, which was great too. Paris is small; a 25-minute bike ride out of the center is still Paris to me. I just had a lot more room, a better apartment, and better/cheaper groceries. I almost want to gatekeep Montreuil, but I want to start a studio and open-air venue out there. It was more isolating living in Flatbush, NYC, for me, but that was during COVID.

What did you love about living there?

There’s a fire culture of music and art; less posh and fewer weird looks. I had a lot of space.

What irritated you?

I believe places and cities are like different color palettes. How I feel about the city tells me nothing about the city, just a reflection of how I feel about myself.

Where did you go when you wanted to disappear?

The studio, Normandy, then Vani, Georgia.

Where did you go when you wanted to see people?

Outside, anywhere.

Your favourite bar?

Le Serpent à Plumes

Your favourite place to hear music?

my studio

Favourite cheap meal?

MASTER POULET MÁSTA POULET i wish it was everywhere. People like to talk down on the poulet roti but what fast food can match 7€ entire chicken?

I am seeing fragments of your trip through Georgia, and it seems like one of those places that’s becoming more than simply a destination for you. Why Georgia?

I wanted to go to nature to focus. I feel like these “random” places I go are just my path and they “find me.” I end up doing more in-depth research on the history of the land and always find a deeply poetic connection to my current situation and journey in hindsight. I could talk for hours about this, but… It was an easy flight from the south of France, where I was; the nature was beautiful, and the place I’m staying has deep mythological significance. It was the town with an ancient name lost in time. The setting of Jason and the Argonauts.

What surprised you there?

How many creations I’ve made in the last two years. And my first marshrutka was hilarious, I was expecting a bus station.

Was there a moment when you realised the trip was changing something in you?

Instantly, but I’ve had some prophetic dreams / nightmares the space and focus has been really wonderful.

What did you listen to while you were there?

I listen to much less music, almost none beyond the music i’m working on. I listen to birds, cicadas, stray dogs fighting, cows, chickens.

What did you read?

The Yoga Sutras by Patañjali. i’ve been doing an intense teacher training (3+ hours a day).

You post dogs enough for me to suspect this deserves investigation. Why dogs?

I love the purity in animals. I have many dog-like qualities. No reason in particular. I’ve been really “bad” about posting; there are so many amazing photos/videos/stories that I haven’t posted. I want to shift my audience to more of my music and art, to be honest. I see my body as an extension of my art, but it has distracted away from other sides of me. Social media has consumed almost zero of my mental bandwidth.

Do you always notice animals when you travel?

yes i’m particularly drawn to the different sounds of birds.

Do you think tenderness comes naturally to you?

Yes, i’m hopeless and romantic, but vulnerability is strength.

What makes you soft immediately?

the pain of others, and children.

I don’t think you can ask someone about poetry, music, cities and beauty and then politely avoid love. That would be cowardly. What does being in love feel like to you?

words do it no justice

Do you fall in love with people slowly or all at once?

i think usually it’s before i recognize it.

What makes you stay interested in someone?

a genuine connection, when we’re evolving together.

What scares you more: being abandoned or feeling trapped?

being trapped, for sure. almost to a delusional degree.

Palomita Office needs evidence. Human beings claim to have personalities and then their bedside tables expose everything. What is currently on your bedside table?

just my interface and a white lace cloth from the family i’m staying with.

What is the oldest object you own?

Selmer Mark VI from the 1950s.

Something you carry everywhere?

Selmer Mark VI from the 1950s :) mi arma. right now, the red book to write in.

An object from Chile?

mi corazón

An object from America?

mi orgullo

Something you kept from Paris?

I have a straight razor not yet sharp enough to shave with. I tried three times. I left a lot of things there. I came to Georgia with my studio, my saxophone, my guitar (which is a whole other story), and too many clothes. I tried not to buy things in Paris. I learned my lesson (kinda) two years ago when I ended up donating literally 70 lbs of clothes.

— your bedside table, exactly as it is
— your bathroom shelf / bathroom objects
— the inside of your fridge
— your favourite piece of furniture at home
— your least favourite piece of furniture
— the chair you use the most
— the thing currently on your floor that shouldn’t be there
— what’s next to your bed
— your toothbrush / bathroom sink area
— the object you touch first when you wake up
— something you use every single day
— something you own but never use
— something broken that you still haven’t thrown away
— the oldest thing in your home
— the newest thing in your home

these are if you have a significant other <3
— something you bought because of the other person
— something the other person hates
— something you hate but the other person loves
— an object you argue about
— something you both use
— something only one of you is allowed to use
— your side of the wardrobe

otherwise, we continue
— the messiest drawer you have
— the most organised drawer you have
— what’s currently in your bag
— your keys
— your shoes by the door
— the last thing you bought
— the last thing you regretted buying
— the ugliest thing you own
— something you think is beautiful that probably isn’t
— something you would steal from the other person
— something that immediately makes you think of them
— something in the house you don’t remember buying
— an object that has moved homes with you
— something you would take if you moved tomorrow
— the corner of the house you spend the most time in
— what’s currently charging
— what’s currently on the kitchen counter
— what’s in your shower
— the contents of your medicine cabinet
— your laundry situation right now
— your favourite mug / glass / plate
— the food you always have at home
— something expired
— whatever is currently on top of the fridge
— your nightstand drawer
— the last receipt you kept
— something completely boring you weirdly love

merci