[ITA] [ENG] // THE BIG CABANA FAMILY // When you leaf through Cabana, you are immediately struck by its quality. Not only of the content, but also the printing, the selected paper, its thickness and its grain are all treated with the utmost care. The digital revolution has decimated paper wholesale, but it seems that payback time has arrived. Cabana emphasizes all the qualities that are denied to digital media, confined to a cold, back-lit screen. It is not just a visual experience, you can also feel it, smell it. I haven’t kissed it yet, but I’m sure it’ll have different tastes, depending on the page. The cover of the third issue looks like it could be a “good kisser”. Martina smiles, “I use the net obsessively, almost hourly, between tracking news, emails and Instagram … It makes life so simple, especially because shopping on the web couldn’t be easier now. Just a click and you’re off. But when evening comes and you’re at home in your living room with a nice glass of red wine, music playing … Well, maybe that’s when you prefer to have a magazine like Cabana rather than your iPad – and if you say it has the look of a good kisser …” I’ll give it a try, when I’m alone, and let you know. When something new comes into being, I’m always curious to know what the original seed was, the idea that burgeoned, then grew and developed into something complex and impressive. It’s not always easy, though, to pinpoint the exact moment when the seed was planted – maybe it just fell on the ground, carried by a gust of wind. Martina goes back over the months when the idea was incubating, “I couldn’t tell you how the idea for Cabana came to me … I’ve thought about it a lot over the past year. I think it grew slowly, and sprang from a series of coincidences, or rather a subtle thread that gradually linked various thoughts. A bit like Steve Jobs’ ‘connecting the dots’ … I became increasingly aware that there was a need and room for a medium devoted to everything that was highly decorative. A hymn to aesthetics in a period when the conceptual, minimal and contemporary were being celebrated. My visit to the Venice Biennale in 2013 was crucial. I had gone to see the Rudolf Stingel exhibition at Palazzo Grassi on my own. I was floored. Although I was in one of the greatest temples of contemporary art whose space was occupied entirely by one of its most acclaimed high priests, I had the feeling that I was looking at a vast set composed of interiors, almost like one of Renzo Mongiardino’s extraordinary designs. This, combined with the fact that I had just moved to London, where my desire to return to the decorative became increasingly stronger, led me to devise the Cabana project – which originated 6 months later.” Not only the choice of what to show, but also how to show it, seems to go against current trends. Minimalism is deposed by a myriad of colors, the most diverse materials and textures. “The choice of how to show it came quite naturally … I wanted the magazine to be the new Bible of Interiors (yes, I know it’s pretty ambitious, but we like it) for people who love and are inspired daily by decoration. We had to create a rich look and feel. It had to give you the sensation that you were holding the most beautiful piece of hand-embroidered silk velvet … In other words, we had to invent the Haute Couture of Publishing, a metaphor for artisanal excellence.” I wonder if being based in London has helped the project. I hope it’s not further evidence that the brightest brains in Italy would be better off leaving the country. To my relief, Marina assures me that this is not the case: “Cabana could not have been conceived or developed by me had I not been so Italian. Indeed, the fact of living in London may actually have helped the project, because ever since I’ve lived abroad, I’ve had a tremendous nostalgia for Italian beauty … It’s a bit like a romantic dream, like those Germans or English who after visiting Italy poetically celebrate its colors, its wonderful chaos, and aesthetic decadence. That’s it, Cabana is like a visual version of Goethe’s Italian Journey. Then, of course, since London is the cradle of Interior Decoration, it has enabled me to create a community of contributors who are the beating heart of the magazine, whom I call my #bigcabanafamily.”