We landed in Milan on a Thursday, picked up two cars, and drove ninety minutes north to a villa in Tremezzo that we’d rented blind, on the recommendation of a friend of a friend who didn’t answer when we asked her to confirm we had the right address. She did. It was the right address. It was, in fact, a better address than we’d been led to believe, with its own dock, a single crooked olive tree, and a housekeeper named Giulia who pretended not to speak English and clearly did.
The plan, if you can call it that, was to stay for three days and photograph the collection on whichever of our friends happened to be awake. There was no call sheet. There was a case of Franciacorta in the kitchen, a case of Chinotto on the terrace, and a general agreement that nobody would set an alarm.
Day one — Tremezzo
By Friday afternoon we were on the lake. Someone had organised three boats, which is two more than required and one fewer than ideal. The Riviera Crewneck was worn over a swimsuit, belted, with a pair of rubber-soled espadrilles that were almost certainly the wrong choice, which made them the right choice. Nobody photographed anything until six, when the light goes that particular Como gold that makes even a badly composed frame look considered.
Day two — Bellagio, reluctantly
We crossed the lake at ten the next morning to walk around Bellagio, which is a town that is beautiful in the way a postcard is beautiful: accurately and without much suspense. We ate a bad lunch at a good restaurant and a good lunch at a worse one. The Riviera Crewneck, in ecru, was photographed against a fifteenth-century stone wall and it looked, in that frame, like it had been there longer than the wall.
By three we were back at the villa. By four we were in the water. By seven, dinner had quietly started without anyone calling it dinner, which is how the good ones go. Giulia had made something with anchovies and we had stopped pretending to take notes.
Day three — the way back
We left on Sunday evening, in the dark, the lake flat and silvery and the villa looking, already, like a place we’d invented. Everyone wore what they’d packed for the flight home: all of them, somehow, in ecru.
Fourteen frames made it into this dispatch. Eleven people, three boats, a case of Franciacorta, a crewneck that now has a name. We’re already planning the next one — the manifest opens for Volume 015 in August.