Safe travel and happy 2021.
1 January 2021
“Ithaca gave you the beautiful journey / Without her you would not set off / He has nothing more to give you. / And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you / Reduce so wise, so experienced, / you will have understood what an Ithaca means. “
(from Itaca by C. Kavafis)
We can define 2020 as a journey, not beautiful for everyone, which is partly not over yet, towards a new normal. Following the news on the vaccine, it shouldn’t be much longer to return to the old habits, and in the meantime we too, like Ulysses, feel “veterans” – we hope in turn wiser and more experienced, and able to understand when appreciable were those gestures and freedoms that we would not have looked at with the same eyes before.
The journey, quoting Corna Pellegrini as a comment on Sigmund Freud’s Discomfort of Civilization (1980), is “a moment of life outside of everyday life, but it can also be precious for understanding and regaining possession of everyday life […]. Of course, for many traveling is an antidote to anxiety, a medicine against the evils of urban life and the harshness of an extremely competitive society. It is also (or can be) an enrichment to the knowledge of even distant realities […]. Possible encounters (in this sense) if lived with a meditative spirit, and not as a pure consumer emotion, develop a new sensitivity in judging oneself and the external environment. “
We talk about the journey intended as a holiday, which is undertaken to discover new worlds, but these words are well suited to describe the last months we have lived. 2020 may have given us new eyes with which to look at what surrounds us, the projects that now need more time and deadlines that depend partly on us, but not only, and to which we must adapt. Even Ulysses, when he left to return home, did not know how long the journey would last, surely he did not expect to take ten years to reach his destination, but in the end, between fate, luck, magic and intelligence, unexpected events and detours and adaptability, he found his way home.
At the beginning of the year each of us elaborates our own resolutions. At Federico Serrani, bags with purpose, we present ourselves to 2021 with a new collection, inspired by Ulysses and his drifts, demanding and full of challenges, but concluded with the conquest of the goal. We hope that it is also a good omen for our journey, the one we started a few years ago and which we carry on with great passion, facing every stage of our project like the king of Ithaca.
I wish you new challenges and new ports, new travel companions and friends of all time, curiosity and open eyes. May 2021 be the Ithaca we deserve, appreciated as we are capable to do. Stefania
