While Milan turns to the supermodels walking the runway, we’re turning to the people who can barely walk to the bus stop. We’ve already inherited half our nonni’s closets; the least we can do is credit the source. The style of Italy’s elders is ruthless about function, built to last, and dare we say, actually quite cool? This season, let’s stop fetishizing the Next Big Thing and admit what we really want: orthopedic chic.
1. The Carrello
Recent years’ handbag wars have given us two extremes: micro-bags that barely hold lip balm, and boho totes the size of small hammocks. Nonna solved this conundrum decades ago, and we’re following her lead: the true It Bag rolls. The carello—the two-wheeled shopping cart—is the ultimate do-it-all Mary-Poppins solution. With one, you too can start stockpiling clementines! You too can save your shoulders the pain of carrying your groceries to your fifth-floor walkup! Who cares if you wake your neighbors as you drag it up one stair at a time! With a carello, you don’t have to choose just one heavy item per shopping trip—you can get detergent and olive oil in one go. And when it comes to the fashion aspect, the world is your oyster: carelli come in every print and color imaginable, but to go true nonna—and what we love for fall—it’s tartan all the way.
2. The Orthopedic Slides
Forget kitten heels. Try walking the poorly paven streets of any Italian town, and you’ll see the only shoe with true staying power has arch support. With wide straps, Velcro fastenings, and soles engineered by someone with a diploma in podiatry, grandma slides are clunky, clompy, and so unapologetically anti-sexy that they loop back into being hot. This shoe is the ultimate revenge on stiletto culture and is guaranteed to outlive both trends and joint cartilage. If Crocs can make it to high fashion, surely farmacia footwear deserves its turn at fashion week.
3. The Borsalino Hat
Streetwear gave us baseball caps, TikTok gave us floppy buckets, and Nonno gave us the Borsalino—the rare hat that makes you look both trustworthy with a bank loan and suspicious in an alley. Please, though, we beg of you, don’t go all Pitti Uomo with it (no feathers and no peacocking!). For fall, keep it felt and unfussy in camel, chocolate brown, or charcoal. Wear it with the brim tipped low, your overcoat buttoned to the very top, and your hands clasped behind your back.
4. The Crucifix Necklace
Kim K and Madonna go for big, ostentatious crosses that are worthy of the stage or red carpet. Our elderly, meanwhile, keep theirs pared back: a thin chain, a modest charm, barely more than a flicker of gold at the throat. Nonna wears hers over a pressed cardigan and Nonno his over a hairy chest (which he’s just as proud of). They’ve most likely been wearing theirs every day for 40 years, though if you see it on a younger Italian, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re Catholic (more on Italians’ complicated relationship with religion here). Today, in Italy, you can wear it and pay homage to whichever capital-M Madonna you prefer.
5. The Portamonete
Tiny bags may look cute, but do they broadcast your whereabouts across a multi-block radius? Enter the jingly portamonete, or coin purse. Its snap closure is a sensory thrill (and a godsend for the fidgeters among us); its heft reminds you that money is, in fact, real. When your grandparents fish one out, you know something important is about to happen: perhaps exact change (down to the centesimo), bus tickets (they certainly don’t do contactless pay as you go), maybe a caramel that expired in 2004. In the right hands, the coin purse is high drama—plus, all the junk that’s normally floating around your bag will be contained to one palm-sized vault.
