I moved to Italy for Love...

I moved to Italy for Love

... love of Fashion, Food and Italian Men. Or in my case A man, and an Albanian man at that.

I discovered Italy 3 years ago at the end of my marriage. An intensely religious Jewish background, my husbands family sent us here as a last ditch effort to keep our marriage intact.

Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love describes Rome's word as "sex", and although I will later change my mind - this couldnt be further from the word I could describe Rome on that last trip I would ever take with the man whom I vowed 'forever'.

"Despair" seeped in my blood like a plague and threatened to interrupt my holiday plans. But like any stubborn Aries, I put my head up high, and pulled my socks up higher and sauntered through the Vatican, Berghese and Valentino Galleries, husband luke warm on my heels.

We separated 3 months later.

Looking back (at the photos) I have no regrets. In fact it was the best move Ive made. You see I had married a professional surfer and my fashion sense had consequently been severely damaged. It didnt take me long to burn my Billabong wardrobe and squeeze into a pair of my sisters jeans. Its a great thing being a twin and being able to share. I guess I was lucky to have her closet to snoop through. Nothing to brag about though. She had been living in London for 2 years and so thought Sweat shirts and hoop earrings with Victoria Beckham jeans was suitable attire.

A quick escape from my marriage meant a mere couple of suitcases full of clothes, 2 states and a new city.

It was quite a cultural shock moving to Melbourne from the Gold Coast. I had just established myself as a Fashion Designer making wedding dresses and starting from scratch proved to be alot more difficult than it should have. I began teaching Fashion Illustration part time at Thread Den (www.threadden.com.au) and managed Menswear stores full time in the city. For 2 years it felt like I was banging my head against a wall wearing earplugs. My creativity was being completely sucked out of me by the retail job and my design and sewing projects were becoming few and far in between. It didnt help that my friends and family were insisting that I was wasting my life and mishandling my talent, so I decided I needed a change of scene.

I set my google maps to Paris.

Where is a better setting to be re-born as a Fashion Designer than the birthplace of Fashion itself?

June marked D day, so armed with a work visa, travel pack (containing my cutest summer dresses, lipstick and contrasting nail polish) and a couple of girlfriends, we headed for Paris...

... on route Italy ;)

The Man I Was Taught to Fear

There are people we grieve twice in a lifetime. Once for who they were. And once for who we were never allowed to know. My father is one of them. When I was a child, my mother told me he was a paedophile. She didn’t whisper it. She didn’t hesitate. She said it plainly, as fact. As warning. As control. When we misbehaved, she would drop us at the greyhound station and force us to spend sleepless weekends with him. I remember the noise of the station. The way my stomach would knot. The terror that would sit in my chest at night when the lights went out. I was absolutely terrified to sleep. He was a workaholic. Twelve-hour days. Long hours. Absence disguised as provision. He would leave cash on the bench, stockpiles of food in the fridge, and the television on - a wild luxury I couldn’t enjoy because fear had already moved in. At home with my mother, we weren’t allowed a TV at all. Looking back now, my father was unemotional, but never unkind. He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t offer hims...

Versions, and “Versions”

I’ve already written about The Wiiyaan as a journalist. That piece lives in the Tweed Weekly . It’s careful, respectful, measured. It honours Bundjalung origin story, place, and the quiet authority of listening. It was written for a broad audience, many of whom - like me - come from settler families, carrying our own histories alongside the land we now call home. But after filing that story, I knew I wasn’t done. Some stories ask something back from you. This one did. So this is the version that doesn’t fit in a newspaper column. This is the version that explains why that exhibition cracked something open in me - why listening to Kyle Slabb speak about holding one version of Country, with care and restraint, felt like a mirror I wasn’t expecting. Kyle spoke about perspective. About how this telling is not the story, but a story - shaped by lineage, responsibility and law. He was clear, careful, and deeply respectful of other versions held...

The Painter on the hill

I went to meet Scott McDougall deliberately underprepared. This is not how journalists are usually meant to begin. We are supposed to research, cross-check, read the biography, study the exhibition history, arrive with neat questions and enough knowledge to sound vaguely authoritative. But Scott had been recommended to me by artist Hobie Porter, who told me he was someone I might find interesting. That was enough. I did not want to arrive with the internet’s version of him already sitting between us. I wanted to meet the man, see the work, stand in the room where it happened and absorb it without the corruption of other people’s opinions. I am not an art writer. Not really. But I am an artist at heart. A fashion designer by training. A lover of light, texture, form, fabric, structure, composition and the controlled drama of a perfectly judged line. Becoming a journalist has opened a new lens. It has also made me realise how often I underestimate people. My general disappointment in hum...

Rada Priya

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