Italian Touch [Hardcover]

Donata Sartorio (Editor), Paolo Leone (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 20, 2009

The Italian Touch is a collaboration between Donatella Sartorio, an Italian fashion and style journalist, and TOD’s, one of the most important Italian companies producing luxury leather goods. It includes more than 100 Italians of different ages photographed with their families, friends, children and an assortment of dogs in splendid historic palaces and the countryside, representing the Italian way of living and a certain "style" that goes beyond fashion and time. This absorbing gallery of people includes all kinds of Italian citizens, like the sophisticated Tuscan prince, for example, who teaches International Law at university, edits a daily newspaper and manages his large winery at San Gimignano. There is the handsome Sicilian prince who rents the family palace for events, but who is also an entrepreneur and owns farms and eco-sustainable real estate. There is also the young marquis from Liguria who moved from Manhattan to Monferrato to manage the family company producing oil and wine. They are all very elegant in jeans and moccasins, all "testament" to a current but timeless style that is undeniably Italian and famous throughout the world. This is a book for enthusiasts of fashion and style, but it is also for those who love period interiors, city palaces, castles in the hills, and Italian landscapes, all ancient but alive and vibrant as ever.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Italian Touch presents a rich sampling of Italian life, with interviews and photographs, compiled by editor Donata Sartorio, that profile the effortlessly chic lifestyle embodied by its more than 100 notable subjects." ~Vanity Fair

About the Author

Journalist and writer Donatella Sartorio holds a long-standing passion for fashion. She has worked for many well-known Italian magazines including Donna and Vogue Italia.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Skira; First Edition edition (October 20, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 8857201473
• ISBN-13: 978-8857201474
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 2.1 x 11.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #727,316 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous look at the true La Dolce Vita, October 21, 2009

By 

J. Landau (Orinda, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Italian Touch (Hardcover)

Over 350 pages of the Italian cognescenti photographed at their leisure, in a beautifully produced, oversize book. You will be introduced to some of Italy's most attractive "real" people who, more remarkably, appear to also be interesting, including aristocrats and others whose names are unfamiliar and who have generally been very private. You visit their villas, studios, or apartments to see them with family and friends, always stylishly attired in their own clothes. Many of those featured have now "come out" with the encouragement of the authors and Tod's, famous for its soft leather driving shoes. Refreshingly, no celebrities.

If you liked "Vogue Living: Houses, Gardens, People", or the first Slim Aarons books, you will certainly enjoy this book. The book also brings to mind Tina Barney's "The Europeans", except in this volume, you actually get to learn something about them. The photographs are reproduced in a sun washed style appropriate to the Mediterranean that brings to mind hand-tinted black and white photographs. This choice may not be to everyone's taste. Perhaps the descriptions of each photo should be placed among the photos rather than at the end of the book and they should probably be ordered by page number rather than geographic region, but these are minor quibbles.

This is a lifestyle book which demonstrates that Italians really know how to live; it leaves us very jealous! We are also bowled over by the beauty and incredible style of so many of the Italian women in this book. David Hockney said that Italian men are far and away the most gorgeous in the world; ladies, you are in for a treat.

The importance of family to Italians clearly comes across; many photographs include two or three generations of a family although there are often just a group of young women or men. Of course, if the photo is posed so that shoes appear, more than a few of those pictured are wearing Tod's, but it truly comes across more as very appropriate (the subjects are generally casually dressed). Virtually all 350 pages feature large scale, interesting photos, with only brief descriptions of each person or place at the end of the book, all sorted by region.

Tod's has been running a series of ads using photographs related to this book. If you have seen the ads, you know what to expect, and now you can learn something about the people pictured. You might Google some of those shown, just for fun, and see how the Italians of this set have used Facebook as a social network featuring unusually original photos and also revealing the interconnections among the international set.

An wonderful gift for the holiday season for someone who appreciates luxury and particularly for those who enjoy Italian style.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ITALIAN TOUCH, IT'S A MASTERPIECE!!!!!!, February 25, 2010

By 

G. DALLA CIA (Cape Town, Western Cape, ZA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Italian Touch (Hardcover)

IT'S CURRENTLY ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS I HAVE ON MY COFFEE TABLE!!! ONE THING THOUGH, THE GLUE ON THE SPINE OF THE BOOK HAS COMPLETELY COME APART, IT'S NOT THE ITALIAN TOUCH I WAS EXPECTING...

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not a design book., December 17, 2009

By 

E. Miller "lainy1976" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Italian Touch (Hardcover)

This is a disappointing book. If you like soft-focus, blown-out photos of handsome and lovely Italian men and women, then this is great. But I was under the impression this book was going to feature more homes and lifestyle shots (like Vogue Houses, Gardens, People). This book is nothing like that. I am a huge fan of design and photography books, but this is neither. What a waste.