Buongiorno!

I am in the press room preparing my remarks for the international press conference. Presenting the ANCI Creativity Award with Vito which I am very proud to do.

Yesterday was a whirl! I woke up a bit late due to an extra late night of enjoying Italian vino and headed into the show. Checked in on email and met up with the wonderful Fabbiana who briefed me on today’s doings, grabbed a coffee and caught up with Fabio — FYI — ANCI has launched their new website which is quite visual and packed with info — you must check it out. I think they are going to post some of the videos I did with designers on the site as well about working in Italy so will let you know when those are up. We caught up about all things footwear and I asked Fabio why everything in Italy was always so pretty and cute when they delivered us some gorgeous little sandwiches with our cappucinos. He explained that there wasn’t a lot of room, and so compact cuteness is the order of things! Ahh, Italia!

Caught up with Matteo from renowned shoe school Ars Sutoria and we had a good laugh which is piu importante to start your day!

Caught up on some emails and headed down to the show floor to stop by one of my faves, Artioli. Andrea and I chatted about how we love Obama and keeping positive throughout these kind of intense economic times. When my eyes started to get big looking at the extremely amazing cover of Vogue Pelle featuring intricate shoeboxes and bejewelled stilettos, Andrea very kindly gave me the issue which I promptly devoured. Checked out the Artiloli women’s collection which is expanding nicely and then the custom-made Artiloi shoe travelling wardrobe — it holds 12 pairs of men’s or 24 pairs of women’s! Hello. A picture of it in this entry.

Next it was over to Lorenzo Banfi which got bought by Sutor S.P.A. and just had one of our faves Max Kibardin design the new collection for women — a stunning infusion of new ideas in classic Italian forms with superb production. Meow! They also own a cool men’s line, Sutor Mantellasi.

Next up, I circled back around to the International Designers collections for a coffee and cannoli, before heading back in pouring rain and bad traffic to the hotel to get ready for the gala.

Had about an hour to get ready, and spent 45 minutes on the phone with Kiri from Forbes.com who is doing a big article on why women love high heels for Forbes Women a new publication that is online and in print from Forbes. We talked about the quadruple stilettos at gianmarco, as well as catherine de medici and how to walk in stilettos. You know the answer — walking in Stilettos is just like Pilates.

Back out in the rain in my Valentino sweetheart cutout platform patent stilettos and vintage bronze metallic dress to the gala, where I chatted with Vito, and then was introduced to the man who makes Manolo Blahnik shoes (gulp!!!). Caught up with Andrea who gave me a list of all the best Italian restaurants in LA, and Fabio Carmelo and his beautiful wife, and a journalist from India reporting on shoe trends. The gala is held at Studio 90 which is wayy on the outskirts of town — it used to be an old airplane hangar and now is a huge TV production facility. Le Chic was the featured musical act and after three glasses of vino, I was on the dance floor taking snaps and kicking it for a few minutes. Unfortunately, I started craving sweets, and since they had cleared all the dolci away, we headed back out into the rain on a quest for gelato. Zoomed by the train station, a super fab example of fascist architecture, and then checked out the new site of FashionCity where they are starting to build a green complex that will house 107,000 square feet of showrooms, as well as a museum and fashion school, in an old derelict part of the city. Very, very innovative if you ask me. We got to gelatomarghera and it was CLOSED. molto triste. FORTUNATELY, my hotel has excellent gelato, which I sampled when I got back while watching a really bad Alec Baldwin TV movie.