Sandra‘s Closet

TRAME: A JOURNEY INTO PUGLIA’S ARTISANAL SOUL
Masseria Torre Maizza, Season 2026

Puglia has always seduced the discerning traveller with its bone-white trulli, silver-olive light, and a pace of life that feels almost defiant in its ease. This season, Masseria Torre Maizza offers something rarer still: a way in.

Rocco Forte’s sun-bleached retreat opens its 2026 season with Trame, Italian for threads, and also, fittingly, for plots. Curated exclusively for hotel guests in partnership with a local specialist, the programme is less itinerary, more immersion: a slow unravelling of Puglia’s artisanal soul, told through textile, light, and the hands that shape them.

THE ART OF TEXTILES
At Fondazione Le Costantine in Casamassella, traditional embroidery and four-shaft wooden loom weaving have been kept alive for generations. Guests explore an original tool archive, a remarkable textile library, and walk through surrounding nature,  the very flora that has inspired the patterns for centuries.

In Francavilla Fontana, Bottega Dalmut represents the finest expression of Italian bespoke: hand-finished garments and shoes crafted from noble fabrics and leathers. A private style consultation unfolds inside a 19th-century palazzo; fittings follow in the comfort of your own suite.

Further into the Valle d’Itria, a master of Tombolo lace, historically woven into every Puglian bride’s trousseau, opens his atelier for an intimate bobbin lace workshop. Meditative, rhythmic, and quietly moving.

THE ART OF LIGHT
No experience of Puglia is complete without its luminarie: the elaborate hand-crafted light installations that have illuminated southern Italian festivals for centuries. A master craftsman opens his studio for an intimate introduction to the tradition, every element made by hand, traditional motifs reinterpreted with contemporary sensibility, resulting in light sculptures that are as much architecture as they are art.

Trame is not a tour programme. It is an argument for a different kind of travel, one measured not in landmarks visited, but in things genuinely understood. Each experience can be personalised through the Masseria’s concierge. Because the most beautiful journeys, much like the finest cloth, are always made to measure.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

LoL, Sandra

Photos: Courtesy of the Brands
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Yesterday evening, I was invited by Dior to an intimate ladies dinner at Hotel Widder in Zurich to watch live the Dior Cruise 2021 from Lecce. The way fashion shows are presented has changed due to  the current pandemic, but the excitement stays the same.

The collection was revealed with poetry and enchantment, behind closed doors in the emblematic Piazza del Duomo, in the heart of Lecce, Puglia, a region close to Maria Grazia Chiuri’s heart. Spanning fashion, traditional craftsmanship and committed contemporary art, the silhouettes appeared amid a spellbinding scenography illuminated by the mesmerizing glimmer of Luminarie, fanciful traditional light installations reinterpreted here by Marinella Senatore.

A summer landscape with Baroque architecture bathed in sunlight, Lecce is more than just a dream destination. For her cruise collection, Maria Grazia Chiuri pays homage to this land of the heart and its virtuoso craftsmanship. An enchanting ode to Italy – a country Christian Dior celebrated as early as 1947 – which has become a constant source of inspiration, a passionate creative history.

«During this period, I sought to give collective efforts a new dimension. Despite the disadvantages of distance, bringing a different perspective to our daily lives has given us strength and imagination,» says Maria Grazia Chiuri, who for this Cruise show has chosen to reconnect her creative passion with the region of Puglia, a place close to her heart. Texts by the anthropologist Ernesto De Martino dedicated to the region’s traditions – which have influenced authors including Germano Celant and Georges Didi-Huberman – led her to explore their roots. Puglia and its different energies, where magical beliefs such as Tarantism (disease or form of hysteria that appeared in Italy in the 15th to the 17th century and that was obscurely associated with the bite of the tarantula spider; victims seemingly were cured by frenzied dancing) live on, have become in this particular context a concrete form of utopia, a new reading of the world.

A true celebration of Puglia’s traditional arts and crafts, the Dior Cruise 2021 collection highlights the excellence of these priceless skills. The 90-look collection was proof how one can combine the bohemian and the haute. There were pinafore dresses, blanket-fringe skirts, and hand-knit sweaters, models wore handkerchiefs in their hair combined with flat boots. and of course there was another Book Tote. When you look closer, you will detect the embroideries and craftsmanship that went into every single outfit. The handmade natural leather corsets added this certain twist that I adore. A really beautiful collection that will hit the stores in October 2020.

LoL, Sandra

 

Photos: © Dior and © Sandra Bauknecht