MILAN ROUGE

摘要

LISA CORTI GREETS US IN HER APARTMENT IN the bustling neighborhood of Porta Venezia, in Milan, with a contagious smile and a cup of ginger tea. She moved here almost three years ago, at the age of 78, after the owners of her previous flat announced that they needed it back. "It was an unexpected surprise," Corti recalls. Undaunted, she embraced the change with the same driven curiosity that propelled her from the village in Eritrea where she grew up all the way to Milan, where she established herself as one of Italy's most iconic designers of textiles and home accessories. She was born in Keren, northwest of Asmara, to Italian parents who had immigrated to Eastern Africa to open an emporium. "Imagine a village immersed in citrus groves and mango fields on the pristine shores of the Anseba River, surrounded by granite mountains on all sides," she recalls. "It felt like living in an enchanted garden." It was in the market stalls of her hometown that Corti's mother introduced her as a child to the alchemy of transforming cottons and silks into ravishing clothes.