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Italy, beauty, and the second act you didn't know you were allowed to want.

22/09/2026

Last year, pop icon Sophie Ellis-Bextor released her latest album Perimenopop: a 12-song album poking fun at cultural expectations and algorithms surrounding women in their mid-40s while celebrating a confident "sod-it era" of joy and self-assurance.

Recently, Penélope Cruz made headlines for insisting on writing an unscripted reference to perimenopause into her latest film, The Invite, after learning about symptoms from her OB-GYN (swipe right to listen to the clip, credit TikTok).

This moment went viral for reasons that speak volumes about the current state of women’s health. In the comments, thousands of women were frantically recounting years of unexplained symptoms, everything from joint pain to brain fog, and wondering why medical systems had left them in the dark for so long.

Between outdated medical training and algorithms that push "gloomy" aging narratives (or spinning dangerous ways to stay young), women are routinely taught everything about avoiding pregnancy and virtually nothing about what comes after it.

But luckily this is starting to change.

Gloria Fuson Gloria - The Soul&Body Movement™ writes about perimenopause not solely a physical shift but also as a biological reminder to stop putting everyone else first and reclaiming our health on our own terms.

Read her full deep-dive into midlife transitions and the rise of "Perimenopop" culture at the link in bio.

21/09/2026

One of the conversations that stopped us this week came from Susan Askew in our Vivace Circle community (free to join btw!)

The premise was this: two and a half years ago, a beginner Italian course paired her with a practice partner. The group of five dwindled to two, but she and her partner kept showing up: thirty minutes, twice a week, straight through beginner, intermediate, and now advanced courses.

Along the way, her partner lost her father. Then Susan lost her mother. They talked through both, in a language neither of them grew up speaking, and built something neither expected.

It made us think about how differently friendship gets built now... online first, sometimes staying that way, sometimes not (hopefully not!)

How have you had any similar experiences? Tell us in the comments, or tap the link in bio to join the conversation in Circle ❤️. We are so grateful for you all who have joined us, are seeker deeper connections and are along for the ride. This is what is all about.

16/09/2026

"I think we spend most of our lives in the intermezzo. We're always unbecoming and becoming, whether that's through different stages of our lives, new relationships, or new experiences. We're constantly letting go of old things and taking on new ones. So I think the in-between is really where we spend most of our time. Even though we like to say definitive things like 'I am a teacher, I am a woman, I am a parent,' for example, I don't think our identities are as fixed as we pretend they are."
—Lauren Mouat

An American writer who moved to Rome in 2010 chasing a feeling of homecoming she still can't fully explain, Lauren is the author of Intermezzo, a bilingual short story collection, the founder and editor in chief of Open Doors Review, and a founding member of the Florence Literary Society — when she's not working as a licensed tour guide.

For this month's Women Writing Italy column, Laura Thayer | Amalfi, Italy (Laura Thayer) talks to Lauren about building a creative life in the space between two languages, two cultures, and two versions of home. Something we know so many of you can relate to.

Read the full interview at the link in bio.

14/09/2026

“The catalyst for my departure from that world arrived in the summer of 2023, when I met my partner at the rooftop bar of Hotel Baglioni. After years of dead-end dates, his steady, honest presence felt instantly grounding. Shortly after, I relocated to the countryside in Impruneta. The buses into town were infrequent and unreliable, making a return to art — something I had avoided for months — inevitable.

Isolated in the Tuscan hills, away from the judgmental eyes of the academy, I began to paint what I actually liked: fast, colorful sketches of villas, gardens, and palaces. I stopped caring whether anyone from my art school would approve. Mistakes became teachers rather than sources of shame. It took months of unlearning, nurtured by an environment where I finally felt safe.”

Don’t miss “The Excommunicated Artist: What Classical Training Doesn’t Teach You” an essay by illustrator Sheean Hanlan Sheean | Italy Fashion & Event Illustrator who looks back on the atelier system that trained her in Florence and why she walked away only to build a career that she never expected.

Read "The Excommunicated Artist" at the link in bio.

09/09/2026

Sara Phillips Chiappetta says patchouli gets groans every time it hits the workshop table — until students actually smell the raw material.

"Wait, this is patchouli?"

The same oil grounding today's luxury fragrances was just confirmed sealed inside a 2,000-year-old Roman quartz perfume bottle, found in a family mausoleum in southern Spain.

Chiappetta, a sensory archeologist who rebuilt her perfume career from scratch after her D.C. brand shuttered in the pandemic, took us through Rome's oldest erboristerie and the niche Italian houses working in patchouli to ask: are mass-market designer scents out, and dark, volcanic Italian niche juice in?

Read the full essay, and why Chiappetta says a signature scent is really about finding your drydown, at the link in bio.

Words:

03/09/2026

In our latest essay for Vivace, writer Kamin Mohammadi unpacks the sweet relief of il rientro — the sacred September tradition of Italians returning home and reclaiming their routines.

While the internet paints the Italian summer as a seamless blur of Aperol Spritzes and coastal boat trips, the reality for locals has morphed into a grueling combination of viral travel crowds, non-stop hosting duties, and 40-degree heatwaves turning historic piazzas into "Renaissance ovens."

After nearly two decades in Florence and Umbria, Mohammadi reflects on how extreme weather and overtourism have transformed the country's legendary August exodus from a dreamy summer escape into a high-stakes survival sport. "I don’t think I love Italy any less than I did that first sweltering August. I love it more honestly. Because loving a place fully means loving the unglamorous parts too: the exhaustion, the heat, the endless hosting duties, and then, at last, the quiet joy of everyone – myself included – coming home."

Read the full essay at the link in bio.

Photo credits: Kate Shanasy and Kamin Mohammadi

01/09/2026

As September arrives and chiuso per ferie signs come down across Italy, the country steps into il rientro, the return to everyday life.

While late-summer heat still lingers, Italian style effortlessly shifts to embrace the subtle transition toward autumn.

From swapping open-toe sandals for rich velvet friulane to replacing summer pastels with deep chocolate, olive, and navy hues, navigating this in-between season is all about intentional layering and textured swaps. You don't need heavy knits to embrace fall... just a smarter approach to transitional dressing.

Read the full breakdown on mastering the late-summer wardrobe reset at the link in bio. Words and photos GABRIELA R. PROIETTI

28/08/2026

Integrating into a new culture often feels like a binary choice: we often focus on fully adapting and sometimes that process can shrink parts of your original identity which then can make it easy to want to retreat into your own language bubble.

For writer Kristin Reinhard, living in Switzerland meant maintaining a strict separation between her English-speaking world and her Swiss life — going so far as to throw two separate 40th birthday parties to avoid the tension of a room split by language and social norms.

When you live abroad, blending in frequently requires suppressing your natural humor and spontaneity to perform in a second language (we've been there). But during a trip to Italy, watching locals and immigrants fluidly weave between English and Italian without a dedicated translator offered a different model. Maybe just maybe true integration isn't about erasing differences or keeping them compartmentalized, but letting both sides coexist in the same room, mess and all.

In this piece, Kristin reflects on language, belonging, and the ways we, at times, pass our cultural self-defense mechanisms down to our children. Read the full essay at the link in bio.

Photo: Courtesy of Kristin Reinhard | Photographer & Writer

24/08/2026

Giulia Scarpaleggia works from a place most people only dream about, an old stone farmhouse in the backroads of Tuscany, built on land her family has lived on for generations.

But when she first launched her blog, Giulia Scarpaleggia, 17 years ago, she wasn't looking inward -- she was dreaming of a life abroad, writing in English to share Italian food with international readers.

Eventually, the key to building a trusted voice wasn't looking across borders, but looking right in her own backyard. From inheriting her Nonna Menna’s seasonal recipes to navigating a crowded English-language food media landscape dominated by foreign voices, Scarpaleggia has carved out a space for authentic, flexible, and truly what-you-want-to-eat cucina casalinga.

In this profile for Vivace, writer Alexa Ahern speaks with Scarpaleggia about why true Tuscan home cooking isn't just steak and pasta, how motherhood brought structure to her creative empire, sharing what it really takes to share your culinary heritage on your own terms.

Read the full story at the link in bio ❤️. Photo credit: Tommaso Galli 📸🍝

20/08/2026

“There is a distinct trope in much of women’s literature, stretching from E.M. Forster to Elizabeth Gilbert, that treats Italy as a sort of cinematic cure-all.” In these narratives, a “woman in crisis” uses a backdrop of warm light, ancient stones, and good wine to reclaim an identity swallowed whole by loss, marriage, or expectation.

Decades later, having built a life in Italy, that romanticization can sometimes makes some of us wince... but so does its modern counter-reaction.

Content about Italy online has often flattened into extreme polarization: rage-bait algorithm fodder on one side, and hyper-curated aesthetic fantasies on the other.

For those who have called the country home for decades, this can be more than exhausting.

The messy middle ground of living in Italy: which involves balancing simple daily wins with the background hum of tax bills and rising rent is something that feels decidedly more real.

In a new essay for Vivace, Georgette Jupe speaks with seven women who packed up their lives and moved to Italy to get their take on what happens when the fantasy fades and real life begins.

From facing crippling loneliness to finding simple joy on a crowded public beach, these women explore the compromises and complexities that define their lives in a place that won’t let you perform its pretty vacation self for long.

Read the full story at the link in bio

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