Cappuccino Time: Before Vogue, There Was Filomena

Bonjour fashion lovers,

There are cappuccinos you drink lightly.

And then there are cappuccinos that accompany deeper thoughts — the ones that arrive when life reminds us where we come from.

This is one of those moments for me.

A few days ago, I said goodbye to my mother Filomena for the last time. A woman who was not only my mother, but also the first person who truly introduced me to the world of fashion.

Long before Vogue.
Long before The Fashion Lover.
Long before everything.

Filomena was a seamstress. A real one. One of those women who knew fabrics with her hands even before her eyes, who could transform a piece of cloth into something capable of making a woman feel beautiful — even more beautiful. She loved to share the words of her icon Valentino Garavani, who once said that women want to be beautiful.

I grew up surrounded by threads, scissors, measuring tapes — which I still treasure — thimbles, which I used as fake nails when I was a child, and garments slowly taking shape.

Without even realizing it, I was already learning something fundamental: that behind every dress there is always a great deal of work, patience, talent, and vision.

Maybe that is where everything truly began.

Many years later came the magazines, the runway shows, Paris, Vogue, the designers, the collections, the catwalks.

And eventually The Fashion Lover arrived — this little world that I share with you every day, and that she loved deeply.

But the truth is that my story with fashion had started long before.

It had started in a house where a woman turned fabrics into garments and, without even knowing it, was teaching her daughter what it truly means to create with style and love.

Today that world continues to live inside me.

And perhaps that is why, precisely in these difficult days, my fashion world is revealing itself to be a small lifeline, a raft in the middle of a stormy sea. A place where I can breathe again, where I can reconnect with thoughts, memories, and roots.

If The Fashion Lover exists today, if every morning I wake up with the desire to tell stories about fashion, to observe it, and to live it, I owe it also to her.

To Filomena.
The woman who taught me fashion long before fashion entered my life.

And when I think about it, every article I write still carries a thread of that world — and always will.

Always with you, in front of a cappuccino.

Always Fashion. Always Paris. Always Black. Emanuela