alain elkann interviews
Jacques Grange

Jacques Grange

THE MASTER OF ECLECTIC DESIGN. Jacques Grange is a world-famous French interior designer, renowned for his eclectic style, high-profile celebrity clientele, and classical training. Born on June 27, 1944, in France, Jacques studied at the École Boulle and the École...

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Barbara Jatta

Barbara Jatta

MANAGER OF A MASSIVE CULTURAL LEGACY. Barbara Jatta is an Italian art historian and the Director of the Vatican Museums. Appointed by Pope Francis in 2017, she made history as the first woman ever to lead the prestigious institution. A highly respected expert in the...

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Patti Smith

Patti Smith

PATTI SMITH - WORKER. Patti Smith was born in Chicago in 1946. In the 1970s the American poet, songwriter, singer, and visual artist blazed a trail for punk rock artists, especially women. Patti Smith earned herself such titles as “godmother of punk” and “punk’s poet...

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Marco Brambilla

Marco Brambilla

PIONEER OF VIDEO ART AND CULTURE. Marco Brambilla is a leading figure in contemporary video art, internationally recognised for his pioneering use of digital imaging technologies and immersive moving image installations. The Italian-born Canadian artist and film...

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Patrick Kinmonth

Patrick Kinmonth

AN INDEFINABLE PERSONALITY. Patrick Kinmonth is an Anglo-Irish opera director and designer, film maker, writer, painter, interior designer, art editor, creative director and exhibition curator. He is widely known for his many stage, costume, interior and architectural...

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Gabriella Cortese

Gabriella Cortese

AN ODE TO CRAFTSMANSHIP AND AUTHENTICITY. Gabriella Cortese made her mark on the fashion universe when she founded Antik Batik in 1992. The Antik Batik fashion house stands out for its collections of chic, bohemian clothing and accessories that emphasise craftsmanship...

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Benoist F Drut

Benoist F Drut

SEAMLESSLY BLENDING ART DECO AND CONTEMPORARY DESIGN. Benoist F. Drut is managing partner of Maison Gerard, a leading source for French Art Deco furniture, lighting and objects, and — more recently — postwar and contemporary design. Founded in 1974 by Gerardus...

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Marcantonio Brandolini d’Adda

Marcantonio Brandolini d’Adda

A CREATIVE ENTREPRENEUR. Marcantonio Brandolini d’Adda, born in 1991, is a Venetian entrepreneur and artist with diverse creative pursuits. The family business, Laguna~B, specialises in contemporary Murano glassware, and from this base Brandolini d’Adda is now...

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Piero Lissoni

Piero Lissoni

MILANESE MASTER OF CONTEMPORARY DESIGN. Piero Lissoni is a multi-award-winning-architect, designer and art director. One of the masters of contemporary design, he has an almost forty-year history in the development of projects the world over in the fields of...

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Paolo Colombo

Paolo Colombo

A PASSION FOR GREECE. Paolo Colombo is an Italian artist and poet. Born in 1949 in Turin, Italy, he lives and works in Athens, Greece. He was a curator between 1986 and 2017 in Philadelphia, in Geneva, in Istanbul, in Torino and in Athens. His works of visual poetry...

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Nathalie Droulers

Nathalie Droulers

COMBINING ARCHITECTURE AND INTERIOR DESIGN. Nathalie Droulers and her twin sister Virginie were born in Milan in 1973. Nathalie graduated in Architecture from the Polytechnic University in Milan in 1997. She worked in New York as a Creative Director in product design...

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Andrew Graham-Dixon

Andrew Graham-Dixon

LUMINARY IN ART CRITIQUE. Andrew Graham-Dixon is a leading art critic and presenter of arts television in the English-speaking world. With a long history of public service in the field of the visual arts he has won numerous awards for writing and broadcasting. His...

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Valerie Steele

Valerie Steele

TAKING FASHION SERIOUSLY. Valerie Steele is an American fashion historian and the Director and Chief Curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York City. A pioneer in the field of fashion studies, she has been instrumental in...

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Thomas Clement Salomon

Thomas Clement Salomon

REVIVIFYING ROME. Thomas Clement Salomon is the director of Rome’s Baroque Palazzo Barberini and the Galleria Corsini since January 2024. Palazzo Barberini is home to the National Gallery of Ancient Art, with a collection of paintings by Caravaggio and other...

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Jennifer Montagu

Jennifer Montagu

PIONEER OF BAROQUE SCULPTURE. Jennifer Montagu LVO CBE is a highly regarded British art historian whose emphasis is in the study of Italian Baroque sculpture. A daughter of Ewen Montagu, a British lawyer, writer and Naval intelligence officer, and granddaughter of...

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Antonio Citterio

Antonio Citterio

DAY TO DAY BRILLIANCE. ANTONIO CITTERIO is an Italian architect, furniture and industrial designer. Today his cross-disciplinary practice for architecture and interior design is known as “ACPV ARCHITECTS Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel”. The firm works internationally,...

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Francesco Billari

Francesco Billari

THE DEMOGRAPHER WHO LEADS AN INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY. Francesco Billari is Professor of Demography at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy. He became Rector in November 2022 after having held the role of Dean of the Faculty. He has worked at the University of Oxford...

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Claudio Pagliara

Claudio Pagliara

PROMOTING ITALIAN CULTURE AND BRIDGING CULTURAL DIVIDES. Claudio Pagliara is a journalist who became the Director of the Italian Cultural Institute on Park Avenue in New York in September 2025, soon after he completed his term as head of the RAI Radiotelevisione...

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Simone Verde

Simone Verde

ANTHROPOLOGY REGENERATES CULTURE. Simone Verde is a museologist and art historian who was appointed Director of the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Italy, in December 2023, replacing Eike Schmidt who moved to Capodimonte. From 2014 to 2016 Simone Verde was head of...

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Axel Rüger

Axel Rüger

THE REGENERATION OF THE FRICK. Axel Rüger is a German art historian, curator and museum director. Director of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam from 2006 to 2019, he previously worked as a curator of Dutch art at the National Gallery in London. He led the Royal Academy...

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Colin Bailey

Colin Bailey

REALISING WONDERFUL IDEAS. Colin Bailey is a British art historian and Director of the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City. He is a scholar of eighteenth and nineteenth century French art, with a specific interest in the artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. For the...

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Clémence Krzentowski

Clémence Krzentowski

VISIONARY IN DESIGN. Clémence and Didier Krzentowski founded Galerie kreo in 1999. Today Galerie kreo is located in a very beautiful building in 31 rue Dauphine in the centre of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. It is a gallery of 20th and 21st century design and they are...

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Marco Delogu

Marco Delogu

INTIMATE DIALOGUES WITH ANTONELLO DA MESSINA. Marco Delogu is an acclaimed Italian photographer, publisher, and cultural director whose work focuses on portraits of groups sharing common languages and experiences.  He served a successful four year term as the Director...

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Simone Fattal

Simone Fattal

MANIFESTATIONS OF THE VOYAGE. Simone Fattal is a Lebanese-American artist. Born in 1942 in Damascus, she was educated in Beirut and Paris, studying philosophy at the École des Lettres and the Sorbonne, as well as archaeology at the École du Louvre. Simone Fattal and...

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Ermenegildo Zegna

Ermenegildo Zegna

THE GOLDEN FLEECE OF ZEGNA. Ermenegildo “Gildo” Zegna is Chairman and CEO of the Ermenegildo Zegna Group, founded in 1910 as a textile company by his grandfather and namesake in Trivero, Italy. Under his leadership, the Group has strengthened its position in high-end...

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José de Mendonça

José de Mendonça

“EDUCATION IS THE NEW WORD FOR PEACE AND PLACES HOPE ON THE MAP OF THE PRESENT AND FUTURE.” José Tolentino de Mendonça is a theologian, university professor, and one of the most original voices in modern Portuguese. Born in the island of Madeira in 1965, today he is...

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Sean Griffiths

Sean Griffiths

MODERN ARCHITECT. Sean Griffiths is Professor of Architecture at the University of Westminster and former Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at Yale University. His current architecture and design practice Modern Architect was founded in 2014 and has worked...

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Nicholas Vreeland

Nicholas Vreeland

PHOTOGRAPHER MONK. Nicholas Vreeland, also known as Rato Khensur Thubten Lhundup, is a Tibetan Buddhist monk and the former abbot of Rato Dratsang, an important 14th-century Tibetan Buddhist monastery reestablished in India. The first and only Westerner the Dalai Lama...

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Remo Ruffini

Remo Ruffini

ALWAYS FOCUSED ON WHAT’S NEXT. Remo Ruffini is the Chairman, CEO and creative director of the luxury fashion brand Moncler. Born in Como, Italy, Ruffini started his career in America working for his father's company. In 1984 he launched New England, his own sportswear...

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Ruthie Rogers

Ruthie Rogers

EASY PEASY LEMON SQUEEZY. Ruthie Rogers, CBE is an American and British chef who owns and runs the Michelin starred Italian restaurant The River Café in Hammersmith, London. She is the widow of the Italian-born British architect Richard Rogers, Baron Rogers of...

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// FEATURED

Money Must Stay in the Family

The plot of Money Must Stay in the Family, unfolds around the family matriarch’s last will and traces the story of an upper class Jewish family from Turin, the fictional Ottolenghis. The multigenerational saga begins with the flight from Mussolini’s Racial Laws of 1938 and continues with the arrival in the Upper West Side of Manhattan and the dispersion from New York to Rome, Paris, Tuscany, South America, and Jerusalem.

// PUBLICATIONS

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