The Stanza's Salone diary
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Hello everyone and happy Friday,
Today’s letter is fun, light, and sans paywall. It’s my birthday very soon and I’m in a good mood.
It’s also a long post with many photos from the week, and may be truncated in your email. You can view in its entirety on the Substack app or on a browser.
This weekend would be a good time to catch up on recent previous letters:
Would you bet on the “itinerary play”? The American Mayfair, European pied-à-terres, and a new hospitality business strategy
Not everyone can nor should do luxury hospitality. Saying what everyone is thinking but won’t say out loud. (Removed paywall on this one for now)
Is there still a case for lifestyle hotels? Playing devil’s advocate
No new listings this week.
Current listings:
For sale: Beachfront 5-Star Boutique Hotel in Mykonos
For sale: Fully-entitled hospitality site in West Hollywood (~45,000 SF)
For all live listings & inquiries (hotels for sale, investment opportunities, open job roles), click here.
Advertise with The Stanza Classifieds: via classifieds@thestanzamedia.com.
Design week is always a treat - Milan lights up to welcome those in the creative industries who have traveled far and wide to participate in what I call the “Coachella for adults”. It’s an intense week full of exhibitions, cocktail parties, dinners, and meet ups with friends and industry colleagues you rarely see. Here’s what I got up to this week:
Sunday
18:35
Arrived at the cocktail opening of Laila Gohar x Arket installation, which was a carnival style carousel with giant fruits and vegetables instead of ponies. Unfortunately, the entire carousel was occupied by those taking selfies so I couldn’t get a good photo.
19:17
Arrived at DIMOREGALLERY, the studio space of the very chic Milanese design firm Dimore Studio. They’ve done some cool hospitality projects, such as Trattoria del Ciumbia (a favorite in Milan), and La Dolce Vita Orient Express trains.
19:45
Made my way over to David Prior’s Spaghettata, his annual Salone party at his Milan home / office. I arrived just in time to catch the beautiful sunset. Met Dave Barry, whom mutual friends have insisted I meet. Dave is a real estate developer in NY and has also worked on cool hotel projects such as Chiltern Firehouse. He also has a fun podcast with Mike Novogratz called Business Untitled.
21:00
My husband picks up me, Jeff Klein, and his husband John for a double date at Casa Cipriani. It’s been a while since I laughed that hard. We ordered cacio e pepe, carpaccio, and filet.
Monday
11:40
The St. Moritz tourism board graciously invited me for a tour of Villa Pestarini. Villa Pestarini is a private home designed by Italian architect Franco Albini. The house was decorated with furniture and objects made by Alcova’s curation of excellent artisans.
13:02
After the tour, we were ushered to The Wilde, where we had an intimate al fresco seafood lunch.
15:23
Headed home for a bit to catch up on some emails and recharge my social battery.
18:27
Met up with Jules Perowne, the only hotel publicist who has my number, and Dave Barry for an aperitivo at the very chic Bulgari Hotel garden. I love nerding out about hospitality with fellow geeks!
20:13
Arrived at the T Mag party at beautiful Villa Necchi, which was dedicated to the end of Hanya Yanagihara’s tenure as Editor-in-Chief. Met up with Andrea Franchini, Global Brand Director at Edition and W Hotels, and his lovely partner Cian O’Connor who write a great Substack ( Skin Sanctuary by Cian Connor, where he reviews spas at luxury hotels). The Lake Como Edition curated the cocktail bar, but didn’t have any water! Ran into plenty of familiar faces from NY and London, which is always wonderful. Said hi to the coolest Gen X person I know, Marie-Louise Scio. Ended my night at the party discussing peptides with The Stanza podcast alum Dr. Jonathan Leary.
Tuesday
9:35
Met up with some friends from Milan at the Cromo Tea pop-up on the roof of Torre Velasca, which will become a new members club called Madison House. It’ll be operated by Dubai-based Sunset Hospitality Group.
11:14
Visited the beautiful Nilufar Depot, which always has one of the best curations of furniture. This year, the theme was “Grand Hotel”, although nothing about the exhibition gave me “hotel vibes” other than the faux front desk reception desk.
12:27
Went back home to work on the next podcast episode, which I can’t wait to share with you all.
18:23
Arrive at Sant Ambroeus to celebrate the group’s 90th anniversary. There was a beautiful table full of all their best pastry treats, along with pastry chefs decorating giant princess cakes. Said hi to Cosimo Gherardini, Alireza Niroomand, Ana Mari Rovirosa at Sant Ambroeus, and ran into more familiar faces.
19:13
Finally get to the Artemest cocktail, which has consistently been one of my top 3 activations during Salone every year. Artemest is a platform curating beautiful furniture. Every year they decorate an apartment to showcase their curation of artisans. The dining room by Rockwell Group was particularly memorable.
20:04
My friends and I popped into the Flamingo Estate x Kohler event. I was today year’s old to learn that Kohler has apparently invested in Flamingo Estate. The event itself was more of a social event and not a true exhibition.
20:23
We walked over to the RH event, which is the talk of the town. It was chaos outside, with paparazzi swarming any blacked out van that emptied out any sort of recognizable person at the entrance. RH was very generous with the catering and none of it was done with negative intentions. It was just shocking given that the Milanese aren’t used to this level of spectacle. Some of the words eventgoers used to describe the event were: “disgraceful”, “ridiculous”, “ tacky”, and “savage”. Rumor says that RH spent $1.5M on catering alone, which included Vesper Martinis, Petrossian Caviar, a recreation of Bar Basso, Sant Ambroeus and more. See the invite below. I’m just wondering why they chose Hugel to DJ the party, and why they chose Margot Robbie and Zoe Saldana to make appearances given they have no obvious connection to Italy, luxury furniture, or the design world. Regardless of what people think of RH, the event was certainly a very American way to make an entrance into Milan, a city that leans towards discretion and understated elegance. One interesting comment I kept hearing was that RH furniture is too large for Milanese apartments. After all, the elevators here are tiny and moving typically requires crane lifting furniture from the street into narrow terrace windows. The restaurant may do fine, but I doubt the Milanese would buy RH furniture when they have the world’s best craftsmen in their backyard. After all, Milan is the design capital of the world.
21:30
Dinner at Rost with friends from NY and Milan. If you haven’t been yet, I highly recommend.
Wednesday
18:35
Stopped by The Thinking Traveller cocktail party at the beautiful home of the owners of Rocca delle Tre Contrade in Sicily. The Thinking Traveller is a villa rental platform operating in Italy, Greece, and France. There were Sicilian nonne making arancini from scratch in the kitchen, which is a great idea for a dinner party at home.
20:01
Met up with a friend at Nino, another great Milan restaurant that recently opened. Diego Rossi of Trippa fame opened Nino, a 1970’s osteria serving creative twists on the classics. Highly recommend.
22:34
Organized friends from various phases of my life to gather for the Silencio at Ronin pop up. Local celeb Simone de Kunovich DJ’d and it was a full house. Discussed peptides with a new friend from NY.
Thursday
Shot some fun content for the podcast on this day, which deviates from my usual interview format.
Friday
12:49
Caught the end of Giampiero Tagliaferri’s exhibition at his design studio in Brera: “Materials at Edge”. Art curator Truls Blaasmo and gallerist Chiara Rusconi collaborated on the art pairing. I first met Giampiero in Naples last summer and am excited to see that he’s having momentum in the design world.
That was my 2026 Salone! Back to regular programming next Friday. Have a great weekend!