Fiora, what a beautiful name it is. The origin of the name Fiora are primarily Italians and it means flower. If you try to google Fiora Gandolfi or you search something into Wikipedia, you will find tons of references to Helenio Herrera instead, an Argentine, naturalized French, football player and manager, remembered for his success with the Inter Milan team known as Grande Inter in the 1960, also known as “Il Mago” (The wizard). I love the legend around Helenio, even if I’m not someone caring about soccer, but in all honestly, I find it ridiculous that when searching on Google for Fiora Gandolfi, I mostly find only references to her husband. Even more ridiculous if we are talking about Fiora Gandoli, who did and keeps doing many interesting things in her life.
Fiora Gandolfi is a multi-talented artist, journalist, fashion designer, photographer and writer who has written and illustrated articles about fashion for newspapers and magazines in France, Spain, Argentina and Italy. She created costumes for the Carolyn Carlson Dance Group, published books on fashion and customs, and exhibited paintings, performance art, drawings, and fabric collages in galleries and museums. She is now in her eighties and lives in Venice, where she never ceases to surprise. Fiora is not new to appear on local newspaper, for displaying banners out of her balcony in Venice, which triggers a lot of discussion between the local populations. For example, the proliferation of bed and breakfasts in the historic center led her to display a banner with the eloquent slogan "House raped" thus summarizing her opinion that “The city must not be abused and humiliated in this way”, clearly against the alarming trend that is happening in Venice in recent years, where the owners of houses and buildings sell their proprieties who will then become Hotels and B&B, with the side effect that the Venetian population is slowing disappearing.
I had the pleasure of spending an entire afternoon in her house, in the ancient Venetian palace where she lives and works on her artistic projects. It has been an unforgettable experience, which I will always carry in my heart. Moving around her house, a labyrinth covered with memories, photographs, paintings, dishes, mugs, cups, clothes, trinkets, and objects of all kinds and origins, while her voice whispered 10, 100, 1000 stories, was like floating into a fantastic tale, a dream, from which I didn't want to wake up to keep absorbing all her tales forever.
