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Why Etro
loves his
trulli:
“Ancient
building,
ancient
culture, stay
connected,”
he says.
“And not
to the
internet.”foraging for mushrooms, eating from
a green garden in the backyard. There
are caves to explore (“Like going back in
the womb,” he says), a pool, and a pizza
oven near a meadow where deer frolic.
Best of all, Etro likes to sit on his stone
patio and play his didgeridoo. A didger-
idoo! Naturally: Such an ancient setting
calls for an ancient instrument.
The house directly influences the
way he designs, he says. “We are famous
for color,” Etro says of his brand. It’s all
out there: the brown of a chestnut, the
green of early-spring leaves.But the place in Puglia also serves
Etro in less concrete ways. According to
the designer, the sorcerer-hat-shaped
buildings have an odd power to them.
“They are like antennas,” he says. The
dreams the trulli pick up are so vivid
that Etro’s brother refuses to sleep in
the pointy-roofed buildings when he vis-
its. But for the designer, it’s yet another
source of creativity. “A lot of things come
in dreams,” he says. “As long as you man-
age to remember them.”cam wolf is a gq style writer.The stone
here was
rescued
from
demolished
buildings
nearby.they got word the tax collector was
on his way. As a result, the rooms he
found were circular, with cone-shaped
roofs known as trulli. “Like a magician
hat,” Etro says.
But at the time of Etro’s original
rainy tour in 2001, the house was dilap-
idated and run-down. True to his past
as a history and archaeology student,
Etro insisted on rebuilding the prop-
erty’s structures using period-correct
materials that could be found only in
the surrounding area. So he brokered
deals with neighbors over wine to
secure stone, turned old wooden doors
into shelves and cupboards, and repur-
posed floral-design concrete patches
found in a nearby field into the house’s
bathroom floors.
Although Etro—along with his wife
and children—lives primarily in Milan,
the family spend as much time as they
can in their idyllic abode nestled in the
hills. But he bristles at the notion that
the place is some kind of mere getaway
that helps him flee the churn of the city.
“It’s not escape,” he says. “It’s going
back home.”
What Etro means is that in Puglia he
lives the way he feels he’s meant to. He
spends time painting and sculpting,
↓
A portion of
Etro’s art
collection,
including
pieces from
the Sierra
Madre.58 GQ.COM AUGUST 2019
T h e
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Quarters