← The Grand Tourist with Dan Rubinstein
The Grand Tourist with Dan Rubinstein
Martina Mondadori: Cabana Magazine’s High Priestess of Design
00:52:37
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- [00:00]
Martina Mondadori
It's always interiors with a soul. But we're probably less into Italian baroque palazzi and more into the little finca in Spain or Scandinavia or American studio artist. It's things evolve, your aesthetic evolves. But always looking for the soul in a place.
- [00:19]
Dan Rubenstein
Hi, I'm Dan Rubenstein and this is the Grand Tourist. I've been a design journalist for more than 20 years and this is my personalized guided tour through the worlds of fashion, art, architecture, food and travel. All the elements of a well lived life. About 10 years ago, a friend of mine, an Italian girl living in New York, told me about a biannual magazine that was a smash success. It was a book about interiors, but instead of chasing all of the usual suspects, it had a very particular point of view. Independent design titles like this come along every once in a decade or so and strike a chord with the culture at large. Like the Spanish magazine Abartimento, the modernist loving Dwelling or the now legendary Nest. The new magazine was called Cabana and with its nostalgic eye on traditional Italian interiors, think richly decorated ones, rustic travel getaways and innovative covers covered with real fabric. It heralded an era of design culture that preferred to look backwards in time, rather forwards into some sort of futuristic utopia. In other words. In the pages of Cabana, Jeff Koons was out and neoclassical sculpture was in. And it was all just in time for the newly imported important world of Instagram to devour it all. And the person behind this new must read magazine is my guest Today editor and founder, Martina Mondadori. Not only does Martina hail from a legendary Italian publishing family, she's been able to center much of her Cabana universe around her parents opulent apartment in Milan, which we'll get to by the late designer Renzo Morgano. Not only has the magazine been a success, but it's spurred a booming business in products too. Tabletops, small furniture, accessories and more. And Cabana recently opened a physical boutique in Milan and last month released the book Cabana the Anniversary Edition published by Vendome Press, marking the brand's 10th anniversary. I caught up with the always stylish Martina from where else? Milano, to chat about her upbringing in an important Italian family, how the first issue of the magazine came to be, her expansion into the world of products and much more.
- [02:30]
Unknown
So much of the world of Cabana begins where your own story begins, in Milan and the home you grew up in and the world you were surrounded by. I'm just wondering on a very basic.
- [02:41]
Dan Rubenstein
Level, like what are your. I'm curious, like what are your earliest.
- [02:44]
Unknown
Memories of life in Milan as a young girl?
- [02:47]
Martina Mondadori
A lot of my early memories are in the apartment, my mother's apartment, decorated by Mon Giardino, that has inspired Cabana. That's my childhood home. And when I say that nothing has changed, nothing has changed. And I guess as a little girl, it was a bit unusual. I was an only child for my mom and there was a lot of these sort of entertaining space and she would entertain quite a lot. So there was always sort of voices of her friends. But I think it made it a very lively house to grow up in. And Milan at the time, her apartment is in the very heart of the city. And right now, we can get to that later. But it has changed a lot. Not very much in its features, architectural features, but very much as the kind of demographics and the shops, et cetera. But at the time, it was very much village life. Milan still now is not a big city, as opposed to more international capitals or cities around Europe or the US but even within Italy, it's not a big city. And at the time, you know, around the corner you would have, you know, a fishmonger and two fantastic toy shops and then a bookshop and sort of, you know, the butcher. And this really made it feel like village life. My school was like a five minute walk away. And those are my memories. A very cozy life.
- [04:21]
Unknown
Were your parents, like, strict or was.
- [04:24]
Martina Mondadori
It, you know, so my parents divorced when I was really young. I don't even remember them together, being together. So my mother, being the single parent at home, had to be the strict one. My father instead was. Always had an incredible sense of humor and, you know, made. We had a very special relationship. And they both, I have to say, as divorced parents, neither of them ever had a bad word to say about the other parent. So. And my father was really the, you know, was very sweet, very funny, very engaging. And my mom was the one, you know, setting the rules, being sure that my school life was in place and she would be the one choosing the schools, obviously, because she was there the whole time. She knew my friends better than my dad did. So my dad, my mom was strict, but she also had a great sense of humor.
- [05:27]
Unknown
And tell me about your father in the world of publishing and how that maybe influenced your future endeavors and in publishing and everything like that, because I know you studied philosophy in school and tell me about, like, you know, your early kind of career aspirations and how maybe your dad was sort of influential.
- [05:46]
Martina Mondadori
My dad was never pushy in any way. You know, he would not be the kind of father who would say, you know, you need to study business, or why don't you go to do art school or whatever. He was very much. Even with my half brothers, he was like, you choose your path. It's important to be passionate about what you're doing and to be focused. So very early on in my sort of school career, I figured out that maybe maths wasn't really my thing, and I was much more into sort of visual stuff and history, humanities in general. And so there's a sort of choice you have to do at school here in Italy when you're 13, you either go a scientific path, sort of what today would be called stems, or humanities, like sort of classics. And I went for the classics. And so after that, sort of at the end of high school, you know, you've done so five years of ancient Greek, Latin, history, of art history. And really, my father, the only thing he pushed for was university college in the US and the one thing he really transmitted me is this love for American culture. And I think everything I've done with Cabana in America being super grateful for how all the, you know, Americans have welcomed Cabana. But my love for America, I love, you know, traveling, coming and, you know, hosting things there. And my kids now have a very sort of strong, you know, passion for American culture and everything. And I think that definitely comes from him. Now, I didn't feel like going to the US because he, you know, he discovered his cancer when I was 16, and we knew it would not have lasted forever. So I felt like, you know, I want to be closer to home. And he had done philosophy, he had read philosophy in the same university here in Milan. And when I said to him, listen, this is what I want to do, he said, really? Like me? And I said, well, yes. And he said. He came back to me two days later with a list of professors of, you know, I could not have sort of followed courses with. And I said, why is that? Why? You know, you've always been so liberal. Why all of a sudden? He said, because these are mondadori authors, and I don't want you to be, you know, favored in any way or, you know, disadvantaged because of so. And he, you know, I kind of lived his publishing career and his people, the authors, the way he, you know, worked very closely. He was someone who kept his kids very much informed of his work life. You know, we would probably be there for a Sunday lunch and he would have a friend or two who, in fact, were also authors or foreign publishers and in the last period of his life, he became. He used to say that he switched from being a book publisher to being an exhibition publisher, which was not entirely true because he was still doing books. But that meant that he. What he started doing, and I'm sure had he lived more, he would have done much more, was bring great exhibitions to Italy. And amongst these he brought the Hermitage works of art, the Pushkin from Russia, the Whitney from New York. And, you know, and through that I got to meet museum directors and get to know that world a bit. And it was a very. It was a very sort of eclectically cultural world. He loved ancient art, he loved contemporary art. So I remember being with him in New York and visiting Julian Schnabel's studio. He was a very curious person and he liked to surround himself with interesting people.
- [09:56]
Unknown
And tell me a little bit about the apartment. And so when was it first commissioned and built and all of that?
- [10:09]
Martina Mondadori
So it was done in 1978. I'm born in 1981. My parents had been married for a while. They were a young couple. They met each other, they were both 17. They got married sort of six, seven years, six or eight years later. They lived in Verona for the first part of their marriage. And Mongiardino did that apartment too. But it was, you know, they were on a super low budget for the house in Verona and he would do those things. He was very fond of my mom because his, I think, second client in history, in his history of decorating had been my grandparents who he met through the Brandolinis, because my grandparents had a place, bought a place in the countryside near Venice, which is where my mom grew up. And they asked Mon Giardino to decorate it. And that house is still. My grandmother isn't there anymore, but my aunt lives there and my uncle. It's a family home and it's very much early mo, very simple, very pared down. So when it came to moving, when they moved to Milan because of my dad's job, they found this apartment. And the obvious choice was Montiardino. He was like the family decorator. And I think I remember, I mean, this, what my mom told me is they had a conversation wherein said, okay, now this is your grown up house. You know, I think Paola, my mom, I think you're, you're ready for this. And it's Milan, you know, your husband is coming here as a publisher and you know, you'll probably do lots of entertaining. And so he asked her, he said, you know, is there anything you'd like? Any Colors, any era. Inspiration. She said, well, you know, I love red, blue and green. I'd love the house to have that. And I love Indian textiles. And he came back sort of two weeks later with his plan for the house. And he used to do these sort of mock up rooms that were done by his studio that were incredible because they were like 3D models where you would bring up the sides of a room. And she saw the plan for the living room, which was, I mean, on paper, black. The house, the apartment has this. It's a beautiful scagiola inspired motif, but it's, you know, the walls are black. And she was 31 and she, she said to me, I had a heart attack. I had two weeks of sleepless nights. I didn't know how to tell them that I felt uncomfortable with it. And then I think that was Montadino. He was very good at walking his clients through his ideas. And, you know, he was also like a father figure to her. And she decided to just, you know, go with it and trust him. And that's how they did it. And then I also believe, and this is something that Roberto Peregalli, his sort of pupil told me, that because of his close friendship with my mom, probably Monciardino felt very free to express himself in that apartment. And Peregalli thinks that that was kind of like a workshop for him. So he did the faux marquetry in the hall, the scagliola and the faux marbles in the living room, sort of Persian textiles in the studio, India and Far east in the dining room. There was a bit of everything, all the worlds he loved brought together in this apartment. And that's how it came together. And I think it was a very different apartment for a young couple in Milan. Those were the years. It was 1978, 79. Those were the years where you would have, you know, the 70s were a very strong thing in design in Italy. And very. A lot of their friends had kind of Caccia Dominioni homes and everything was very modern. And even on my father's side, my grandmother was very much sort of cacia Dominion y gardella. And they had this thing and they just went for it. And my mother embraced it fully and. And I think she very much felt at home from the very beginning. And she started entertaining a lot. The beginning for my father and his sort of literary world. And then when they split, you know, it was her friends and Mongerdina would come once a week and bring his clients.
- [14:42]
Unknown
And did people kind of, you know, because it was a time of modern and very glam and sort of sexy sort of interiors. Did they get any. Were people kind of like, why are you doing this? As a young couple living in this sort of grand.
- [14:56]
Martina Mondadori
Yes, yes, yes. Especially I think on my father's family side. Yeah. And I think. But, you know, my mother was a very self confident person in that respect. I think she loved Mon Giardino. Those were a bit of like, you know, the golden years. He had, he had probably just finished doing, you know, Rothschild in Paris. And he was, you know, a few years later he would have done Gianni Versace's house a few blocks away from my mom's apartment. And very much so he used again my mom's apartment to show potential clients what he would do. And so my mom had fun, you know, having Gianni Versace for lunch or Lee Ratsville or, you know, Nureyev as well. He liked to bring people there and show them what he did.
- [15:51]
Unknown
And, you know, did you, after school, what was your first sort of jobs.
- [15:56]
Dan Rubenstein
Out of school like?
- [15:57]
Unknown
Did you, did you ever kind of consider doing anything more creative? How did that kind of lead into your early career?
- [16:03]
Martina Mondadori
I, my first, so my first internship, I actually thought of going to New York and my first job internship was at Random House at Doubleday. I thought at the beginning I would do book publishing. My dad had just died and maybe I thought this is those things. You think this is what he would have wanted. It was a great experience. Those were the years when they had just published the Da Vinci Code. And so they had huge budgets, marketing budgets, which for the book publishing world was unheard of. I remember Doubleday was one of the first publishing houses to actually establish a marketing department. And it was great fun. And I stayed there for six months or five months, I can't remember. And then they said, well, listen, we'd love to offer you a job. We'll sponsor your visa. So I went back to Italy to start all the visa papers. And in those three months, four, I met my then husband. And so my plans changed and I married. We married. I was very young. I had two kids, boys, and then a third much later. In the meantime I moved to London and when I was living in Milan, I started working for another publishing house. But that was a. So as a young married girl, that was a publishing house called Elekta, so more sort of visual arts, like Phyton. And that really triggered my passion for, you know, for more as sort of, you know, visual publishing and, you know, communicating through images, I guess. And that, that was an incredible experience because it was like. And I'm sure it informed a lot of my work at Cabana. You know, I met. I met also authors and, you know, learned. I worked in lots of different departments. I learned to layout and, you know, printing, all of, all of the steps of publishing. But I had never actually worked in magazines before. And what happened was I had contributed and sort of been part of this small team that really became like a creative hub doing TAR magazine as a sort of a sidekick.
- [18:31]
Unknown
Tell people what TAR was because it's kind of this.
- [18:35]
Dan Rubenstein
It was a very pivotal.
- [18:36]
Martina Mondadori
It was like a contemporary. It was a contemporary. It was like, you know, it was the time when independent contemporary art magazines started to come out. And a friend in Milan, it was really printed by these. Printed sort of a printing company in Verona. And the family behind it thought, you know, as a marketing tool, let's do this magazine. And I think. I can't remember who they had hired initially to do it, but then they asked a good friend of mine, Francisco Bonami, who's an art curator, an art. Contemporary art curator, to edit it. And it would only come out twice a year. And so we put together this fun team in Milan and part of that team then was the initial team at Cabana, and two of those people are still with me today. So it was a very kind of. It was like an experiment. Yeah. And it was. But it was much more contemporary art and fashion. It was like, you know, the cool. The cool things.
- [19:38]
Dan Rubenstein
Yeah, absolutely.
- [19:39]
Unknown
It was very cool. And Cabana itself launched in 2014. So tell me about your sort of the years leading up to that. Like, where were you at the time and how did that.
- [19:49]
Martina Mondadori
Yeah, so I original idea, I moved to London. My. My ex husband was moving there for work and I had to. These two young boys who were three and one. So right back then I was like, you know, I had. Yeah, I was contributing to tar, but really I was like, you know, when I moved to London, I stopped doing that and I focus on the kids and I'm a very enthusiastic person. So new things excite me. But at the same time, then when you're there in London, can be. Can be difficult. You know, it's. It's not, it's. It's a much bigger city. And I guess I started a feeling slightly homesick for Italy. The culture, my. My childhood home, but in a very subtle way. And I think. And in the meantime, I was discovering my new adoptive country and, you know, visiting stately homes and just rediscovering how Passionate I was about interiors. And I remember when I did my London home, visiting, you know, for obvious reasons, to find fabrics, but visiting the Chelsea Design center quite often. And even when I'd finished the house, I would just go there and dive into all these different fabrics and patterns and come home and do mood boards. And do mood boards with my mom's home and new, you know, and stately homes in England. And I guess through, probably through my fourth or fifth mood board, I thought, maybe there's a book here. So I started putting together ideas of a book in the meantime, you know, the year those were, 2013, was a year when the Venice Biennale was very much. It was curated by Massimiliano Gioni, and the theme was memory. And there was this big exhibition at Palazzo Grassi by Rudolf Stingel. And it was. The art direction had been done by Christoph Rado, who was the art director at TAR and now of Cabana. And I remember walking into that space and thinking, and all the walls were covered in killeens. And I thought, this is mon giardino. It's not contemporary art, you know, this is. It makes mon giardino feel very sexy again. And meanwhile, again, you know, also the salone week in 2013, I had discovered the modestudio, which felt very, very new compared to all the rest because they suddenly were focusing on the atmosphere and on the objects, and it was about the rooms and the emotional attachment you have to the rooms rather than the functionality of design. And I suddenly thought, listen, this is all. This is. This is all that I. I love. This is all I'm passionate about. This is my language. This is my dress. And so I reached out to Christoph again, and the team, they. Meanwhile, TAR had closed. And we then thought, okay, rather than a book, why not try a magazine again? And this time, let's make it not really about interiors, but using interiors the same way people were using contemporary art. And the only reason it was like, it was disruptive for two reasons. The first reason being printing. Deciding to print, you know, and the second reason was deciding to really embrace this kind of timeless interiors that at the time felt probably like old or boring, and embrace decorative.
- [23:26]
Dan Rubenstein
Before we return to the program, a.
- [23:28]
Unknown
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- [23:30]
Dan Rubenstein
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- [25:16]
Unknown
And do you think that maybe, like, because you were, you had to intentionally, you know, have the nanny and do all of the stuff that maybe you had to kind of like have your culture and your home life and the way that you brought up and the apartment and everything in your head sort of in a way that maybe someone who was just living in Milan normally would not have.
- [25:33]
Martina Mondadori
For sure. For sure. Yeah, for sure. And yeah, it's like, probably like people living in, you know, it's like the exile, people in exile in history start feeling much more passionate about, you know, about their home country. It's like. But it's, you know, also the other interesting thing is London is one of those cities where the eccentricity is, you know, across the board. And the people I would meet in London, whether English people, especially English people, but even, you know, the international crowd, the way they would talk about my country, about Italy and the places they were passionate about for a holiday were not the same that Italians were running to, you know, so suddenly you'd see, you know, the people, probably people in my world of cabana decorators or, you know, design aficionados, you know, Go crazy. Formanto, Vapar, Maleche, and all these towns that are, you know, the real texture of my country. Italians tend to run to the mountains and the beach. You know, it's a different. And I'm very grateful for, you know, everything I've, you know, learned and lived in London.
- [26:45]
Unknown
It's kind of like through a tourist's eyes almost, in a sense, to see your own culture from that reverse lens, I guess.
- [26:51]
Martina Mondadori
Completely. Completely.
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Unknown
And why the title Cabana?
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Martina Mondadori
As I said, it was not about doing another interiors magazine. It was more about looking at the intimate side of interiors, details in the rooms, layered interiors. And so we kept saying it's about coziness. And Christoph, being Austrian, used the German word gemutlich. And I guess. So when it came to finding a name, we wanted to think of a place that would embody that feeling. And so the idea came from actually my good friend Stephane Jansson, the fashion designer. When I was talking to him, he was one of the first few people I talked to about this idea. He came on board quite early. Also having Umberto as a husband. Umberto Pasi helps. So he brought all that world. And he was showing me on his phone pictures of what he called or called in Morocco, chabulas, which are like these cabanas, like, you know, huts, straw huts in the middle of the countryside. And he kept saying, you know, they're like cabans, Cabans, cabans. And, you know, that evening I went home and I thought, cabana, you know, that's. And that was it.
- [28:09]
Unknown
And what was it like putting together that first issue? I mean, I know you. There's a lot of.
- [28:13]
Martina Mondadori
Well, it was. It was great fun. I'll tell you why. Because. So I was in London, the team was in Milan, the printing happened in Milan. And so we had close to zero budget. I mean, the money was coming in from the advertising and. And I. And so we thought of photographing a lot of Milanese homes that we knew so we had access to and that hadn't been shot, really, you know, but my point was, maybe in that house, those two rooms are worth shooting, that cafe or that aperitivo place. And I compiled a list with Christoph as well, of all these places. And we thought, okay, let's blend it into a portfolio. It doesn't need to be the traditional. We were very free. You know, it was like nobody would ask us, you know, why, how, or, you know, and it could have been a hit or miss. We were launching for Salone, so we had a sponsor for an event during Salone and so I called a very, very young photographer at the time, Guido Taroni, who had I recently met and he, I remember he had lunch and he immediately understood what I was talking about. We're like speaking the same language. And he also added to that list of places in the following three weeks he shot it all. And that's how it started really.
- [29:33]
Unknown
And it's been 10 years since the launch and sort of in that time I'm wondering if there was any kind of feature or sort of like editorial moment in the early days where you kind of knew that it was going to work. Was there kind of something where you get it back and you see it and you see it working. You're like, okay, this is working. And this idea was executable personally on.
- [29:55]
Martina Mondadori
A personal level, the moment I had the first issue on my hands, I thought, I like this, you know, I like this. I believe in this, but truly believe in this. And immediately I thought this can become lots of different things. And. But I guess really the, well that I think editorially the turning point was when it was held by Instagram. You know, think Instagram was really starting at that time. We didn't start immediately on Instagram, I wasn't on Instagram, but I think we started after issue two probably. And that helped tremendously to build a community of like minded people around the magazine. The algorithm was very different, as we know. And it was really a, you know, a tool to scout talents, to find like minded people. And I guess the kind of aesthetic we had was perfect for Instagram. And so people started posting, tagging and, and that just, you know, brought us to the next, to the next level. It started help, you know, it helped with the advertising and, and then shortly after I had this idea of branching out into sort of product offerings, a retail experience. We didn't have the resources to build our own website and so we reached out to first dibs and they believed in us. And that helped open the American market and the American audience for the magazine. And then that started rolling. You know, it started. It was a fairly easy way to test product because the hard they were providing, you know, all the technicalities, the platform, the technology, and we were providing the content. So the, you know, the items, which at the time were things I would find on travels or at flea markets in England where I would go relentlessly and. But what it did, it really brought cabana out in America, but also as a sort of, you know, shopping destination. We would pop up twice a year when the magazine would come out and I Remember this big moment, which was one of our early cover partners for the magazine was Gucci. At a time when Alessandro Michele had just come on board. He had been there for a year. I had been following his Instagram thinking, gosh, this is so aligned with us and I'd love to meet him. And at some point, the PR gets in touch with Cabana office saying, you know, Alessandro doesn't have issue one. He uses it for his mood boards. And by the way, we'd love to get together and think about stuff we could do. And when we started talking about the COVID partner and meeting with Alessandro, I remember it was meant to be just an editorial project. And I looked at him and I said, listen, your show three months ago, there were these beautiful chairs and screens. What happened to those? Where are they? And he said, well, I think they're in some warehouse, you know, Gucci warehouse. And I said, do you think for our next pop up on for Zibs we could have a few of those? And he got super excited because he's so passionate about interiors. And he reupholstered five chairs, each one with a different embroidery. So they were effectively one of a kind pieces. And it just, you know, obviously for sibs was like, we need to give a sort of, you know, preview pre order window to our top customers. And obviously those six chairs didn't make the actual sale. They went sold out within a few hours. And that was another big moment for us.
- [33:52]
Unknown
And Miguel Flores Viana has been sort of a big part of the magazine with his eye. And I'm curious how the two of you met.
- [33:59]
Martina Mondadori
We met at a wedding and we were introduced by a mutual friend who's also part of this world, who is Idarica Gazzo, who does Arjumann's World, the fabrics. And she has an amazing eye and completely, you know, she's been a mentor also for me and passionate about, you know, the Cabana world. And at this wedding, at the party, I remember she came to fetch me and she said, listen, I need you to meet someone. I just had a flare. You need to meet this friend of mine. And she introduced me to Miguel and Miguel came to see me at home in London the following week and we started talking. And the first thing we did together was a portfolio in Lisbon, which I still remember. We went together, we shot different things in Lisbon. And that's where the bond happened.
- [34:54]
Unknown
And the fabric covers are such a big part now of the identity of Cabana. How did that start? Was it from the beginning?
- [35:02]
Martina Mondadori
It was from the beginning, the First, I mean, it was Christophe's idea, genius idea. And then we needed to find the fabrics. And so we reached out to Pierre Frey, the young Pierre, a very famous, very famous French brand. And they believed in us. Immediately they were like, listen, we can't give you the exact same cover, the exact same fabric for the yardage you need, but we'll just tap into the archive and give you different ones, which started this, you know, great thing about having different covers for different prints for the same issue, which turn it a bit into a collectible item.
- [35:46]
Unknown
And how did that. Did some printer say that you were crazy for doing that?
- [35:51]
Martina Mondadori
I mean, yes, but again, you know, it was Nava printers who are amazing. And they weren't scared, you know, they. They said, we can do it. And they thought it was also great advertising for them. We used lots of different papers inside. Listen, it was fun. It is fun.
- [36:14]
Dan Rubenstein
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- [37:42]
Unknown
And a certain point there was a. A shift and the products started. You started making your own products. And I think perhaps it was when I had done a story on you and the magazine for departures years ago and like, when did you decide, I need to start making my own glassware and napkins?
- [37:59]
Martina Mondadori
So that happened. So first dibs and our top customer for Those first dibs pop ups was Lauren Santo Domingo. She would want everything in a sort of, you know, with pre order. And she already had Moda Brandi. And one day she reached out to me and she said, I want to start home on Moda and I want to do it with cabana. But this means that you need to get organized with production and volumes. We need a proper collection. And I guess we were ready for that. We, you know, and we put together artisans and suppliers and that was one of the most fun periods of the cabana sort of life for me because I went to visit each and every single one of them around Tuscany, Puglia, you know, Morocco, one in Portugal, Murano for glass. And we put together this first tabletop collection. So it was a whole table. And the idea, the idea behind it, and still today with Casa Cabana, the collections is, you know, it's one collection. And you should have fun with the table and the accessories the same way you have fun with fashion. You know, it's like rather than the bag, the tablecloth and rather than the shoes. So. And at the time there wasn't much out there. It was like, you know, obviously our first customers were the Upper east side in New York, because that was Moda's audience. And they had, you know, Hermes Home or Dior Home or, you know, a few French brands. But it was, it was very formal. You know, it was always the same thing. And I think we brought, you know, we introduce E cats on the tablecloths and paisley and flowers and mix it with. And as I say, always, you know, mix it with vintage and mix it with. And it doesn't all have to match. Then sometimes you can be less formal, more formal. You can, you can, you know, you can play with it.
- [40:06]
Dan Rubenstein
Was there a sort of a product that was sort of like really a bestseller or that did really well that.
- [40:11]
Unknown
You thought this needs to become a bigger part of what we do.
- [40:15]
Martina Mondadori
It's still our best seller, which is the Ginori plates, the floral plates we designed and Ginori produced. And nowadays it's a huge. It's a big family of products. You have six different colors and all the shapes, et cetera. But at the time it was a capsule. But it did so well on the trunk show on Moda. And then we launched our website, cabanamagazine.com in 2018. Finally, there was also a destination to find the magazine. We ship worldwide and it's the way you subscribe to the magazine as well. And then plus all the E commerce and that today is the fastest growing side of our business. So it's a huge part of it. We launch two big collections a year. We anchor these collections to an editorial theme which is also part of the magazine. And so what's coming up now, it's a collection inspired by the Silk Road, which is, I think we'll have as a theme quite a big moment in this fall because there will be a big exhibition at the British Museum in London on the Silk Road. And what we did on the magazine, we'll have this beautiful portfolio which Miguel shot in Uzbekistan. And all of this inspired the collection we're launching. So it's, you know, and last year we did, around this time of year, we launched a collection in collaboration with the Benaki Museum in Athens and part of the proceeds went to the museum. So we work with different stories and then translate those into an inspiration for tabletop and home accessories.
- [42:05]
Unknown
And now you have a boutique also in Milan, like a physical store. That's a big step. And where is it in Milan and tell people about it.
- [42:12]
Martina Mondadori
So our first cabana store, retail store is in Milan. It's right off Via Montana Polone, which is the equivalent of Madison Avenue, New York. And it's next door to Bice, which is one of Milan's historical restaurants with great Tuscan food. And it's a small store, but it's like a little cabinet of curiosities where we have all our collections, a bit of lifestyle accessories and also what I call offline pieces, especially vintage pieces. So things you would only find at the store and not online. What it's been an incredibly exciting adventure to open a store. I just love being a shopkeeper. I try to go as much as possible.
- [43:06]
Unknown
And so with the store, is there anything that surprised you?
- [43:10]
Dan Rubenstein
Once you have a physical store, there's.
- [43:11]
Unknown
Something different, something organic and obviously you're selling unique piece offline that only exists there. Has anything surprised you now that you've kind of been able to meet people face to face?
- [43:22]
Martina Mondadori
Yes. First of all that you know, how they know the brand. Like obviously some people just walk in, they don't know anything about Cabana. Some other people walk in and they know the product, some other people know the magazine, don't know about the product and it's a very eclectic, you know, landscape. But what, what's also incredible is how, you know, no matter how much attention you put in photographing something for the E commerce and this is obviously true about, you know, clothes, I'm sure, but you know, with clothes you can show things and it's getting. You know, the technology is getting. It's getting better and better as you have short videos on websites, you know, and you can see the flow on someone's body, but with objects, it's slightly different. And so to see people's love of actual touch and feel has been incredible. And, you know, also the bestseller so far is a, you know, what we call the Majorelle bag, which is a bag that is made by artisans in Morocco that was initially done by Yves St. Laurent, and that was, you know, it's sold exclusively at the St. Laurent Museum at the Majorelle foundation in Marrakech. And a year ago, we started selling it online, and it did super well. And then we just brought it at the store thinking, let's keep it here. You know, who knows? So many girls walk in, and it's the perfect gift. It's probably like a reminder of Marrakech, of St. Laurent. So it's. It's very much this spirit of discovery, I think.
- [45:11]
Unknown
And, you know, sort of, I would say, daily Italian life and culture that.
- [45:15]
Dan Rubenstein
You'Re sort of describing.
- [45:17]
Unknown
This sort of experience, you know, has been so popular lately in American culture. And you've mentioned how cabana has really sort of struck a nerve with that sort of Upper east side clientele and the sort of, like, American wealth. And when you're talking to Americans or Brits that are huge cabana fans, you know, what do you think is their number one misconception of this sort of, like, Italian esprezzatura? Like some. Some kind of like.
- [45:45]
Martina Mondadori
I think that Italy is not this postcard that, you know, the real Italian experience is not the aperitivo in the Instagrammable place. The real Italian experience is you turn the corner and you go where the locals are, you know, and the food, there's no better food than, you know, a panino at the bar or literally a panino on the highway, you know, on the motorway, on the auto grill. But that's where the essence is. You know, don't forget the best coffees are from those coffees machines that have been working a lot. So if you go on the, you know, on the coffee shops on the motorway, they've been used so much, even if you go there at 9:00am because, you know, drivers have been going on all night, that the coffee will be delicious and, you know, the gelato that. I mean, obviously these are cliches, but the pizza. But I would say don't ask your concierge at the hotel, but ask a local on the street where to go and what to do you know, I think the first ones to own this cliche of Italian lifestyle is probably Dolce Gabbana. And that's, you know, it was true when they did it, but it was like it's become a cliche, you know, to go to the south of Italy and imagine, you know, the pretty girl with, you know, a huge basket of lemons. You know, I mean, it's.
- [47:16]
Unknown
And, you know, now that you're celebrating the 10th year of the magazine and of the business, what does the next 10 years look like?
- [47:26]
Martina Mondadori
Well, I think, you know, the magazine will, I hope, continue to. And where we've evolved, you know, we've evolved in. In the aesthetic. I. At some point, I remember I wrote an editor's letter four or five issues ago, and I said, this is the issue that celebrates going from Montino to Cy Twombly. But it's. It's like, it's. It's always in tears with a soul. But we're probably less into Italian baroque palazzi and more into the little finca in, you know, Spain or the hut, you know, somewhere else, or Scandinavia or American studio artist. It's. Things evolve, your aesthetic evolves, but always looking for the soul in a place. And then as a business, I think, you know, the. The shop is just the first one. And obviously the retail landscape is very hard to navigate. I think I'm a strong believer in one step at a time. And it's very important to know where your customer is and where you can intercept that customer. So what might be true for others maybe isn't the same for you, and so don't follow a formula, but follow your. I mean, been following my gut instinct and also like hearing advisors, as in people I trust and their point of views. And I think it's trying to be. To innovate and disrupt as much as possible. But for sure, the sort of expansion of the retail side of the business and possibly also home fragrance line one day, but it's sort of building the brand more and more.
- [49:11]
Unknown
And, you know, you've got this amazing book coming out that sort of celebrates the 10th anniversary. It'll be out somewhere around the time that this episode airs. And tell me about when you kind.
- [49:23]
Dan Rubenstein
Of looked at it all together.
- [49:25]
Unknown
I mean, you know, what which is always for any editor is a really painful thing to do is to kind of like kill your darlings. And you want it to be a thousand pages, but you can't make it. Was there anything. Now that you've looked at it all together, you know, what was that experience, like, was there anything that, you know, you were like, oh, this has to be in. Or, you know, yes.
- [49:44]
Martina Mondadori
And I kept changing my mind, and I just couldn't believe that I had to keep editing. I was like, you know, Barbara, who's our editorial director, has been with me literally from day zero. And she was like, we need to cut two more stories. I'm like, two more. This can't be. I can't kill this baby. You know, please, can I have, you know, one of these? But it's a great exercise, I think, for everyone. You know, you kind of get to the core of it. And I think for this book in particular, which we call the Kiban, the anniversary edition, because we had a first ontology when the 10th issue came out. And this feels like it's the best of these last 10 years, but it's very much a spirit of discovery. There's a lot of distant places portfolio and distant places and cultures and. And I think Cabana comes out really very much as that, as discovery and eccentricity. And I'm very, very, very grateful to Dida Blair. She wrote the foreword. The moment I asked her, you know, she had an enthusiastic yes. And, you know, for me, I must say, having lunch at her place in New York is one of the most incredible experiences I've ever had. And there's like.
- [51:00]
Unknown
It's one thing I could say I've actually done. She was a guest on the podcast, and I had lunch, and it was, to me, and I'm sure you probably felt this the same way, even though you're the consummate entertainer. It was very. An intimidating experience, I will say, to.
- [51:14]
Martina Mondadori
Have lunch with Justin, it's like the details of everything. I mean, it's unbelievable. And she's seen it all. She knows. She knows so many people. I remember I was, you know, talking to her, and obviously you would imagine decorators or. But gosh, she has all this community of scientists and PhDs and, you know, David Remnick, and I mean, it's so vast that. But. So I'm very grateful to have her, as, you know, write my foreword to that book.
- [51:49]
Unknown
That's incredible. And I was wondering if you could describe the world of Cabana in three words. What would those three words be?
- [51:57]
Martina Mondadori
Spirit of discovery.
- [52:01]
Dan Rubenstein
Thank you to my guest, Martina, as well as to Kareem Rashad for making this episode happen. The editor of the Grand Tourist is Stan Hall. To keep this going, don't forget to visit our website and sign up for our newsletter. The Grand Tourist curator@thegrandtourist.net and follow me on Instagram Ann Rubenstein. And don't forget to follow the Grand Tourist on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you like to listen. And leave us a rating or comment. Every little bit helps. Ciao ciao.