When the German-born fashion designer Tina Lutz Morris traveled to Milan in the 1990s — as she did when she was part of the design team at Issey Miyake in Tokyo, or later on, when she worked for Calvin Klein in New York — she found the city “gray and depressing,” she said. So how did it happen that, 30 years later, as the owner of her own brand — Lutz Morris, which offers minimalist leather bags whose thin, gold-toned hinged frames serve as pockets or as openings — she adopted the northern Italian city as her home? As the designer, 59, sees it, Milan has blossomed in the past decade, morphing from a dull industrial hub into a landing place for creative types from across Europe and farther afield. On a Friday evening in mid-September, she hosted some of them, as well as a handful of locals, at a party (belatedly) marking her arrival.
The designer founded her company in 2018 while living in Berlin, where she, her husband, Justin Morris, now 55, a psychotherapist specializing in trauma and addiction, and their son, Lou, now 20, had moved three years earlier. Their time there was always meant to be temporary — the couple wanted to let Lou soak up Lutz Morris’s native language — but after her brand took off, she didn’t want to venture too far from her team of artisans outside of Düsseldorf. Simultaneously, several of the family’s friends were drifting toward Italy. “Everything pointed to Milan,” said Lutz Morris.
In 2022, after nearly a year of searching, she and Morris secured a pair of top-floor apartments in a Rationalist-style building in the city’s central Guastalla neighborhood and began working to combine them. The result, finished early this year, is a two-bedroom residence with an open-plan common area outfitted with warm wood shelves, wide-leafed monsteras and a kitchen island made of green Avocadus stone — a nod to the dark green marble commonly found in midcentury Milanese entryways.
The home also has a terrace that runs the length of the building. That’s where the first wave of Lutz Morris’s party guests congregated after arriving around 7 p.m., which meant they got to watch, aperitifs in hand, as the sun dipped below the skyline. The last of the visitors stayed until around midnight. Besides being a successful housewarming, the party offered a moment of relative calm before fashion week. Soon after, Lutz Morris unveiled her latest collection at her Milan showroom alongside atmospheric pictures taken by the photographer Stefan Armbruster. Over the past four years, he’s captured Lutz Morris bags at his home in Germany’s Black Forest, as well as during his travels to places like Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands. Now, those styles and images, like Lutz Morris herself, have found a new home.
The attendees: Among the 40 guests were Nina Yashar, 68, the founder of the design gallery Nilufar, who’s called Milan home since the 1970s, and the interior designer Rebecca Jezek, 45, who arrived three years ago to join the architecture firm Locatelli Partners. Massimiliano Locatelli, 58, was also there, as was the second-generation artistic director of the homeware brand Fornasetti, Barnaba Fornasetti, 75. Representing the fashion world were Lawrence Steele, 62, the former creative director of Aspesi; Paul Surridge, 51, the creative director of Prada men’s wear; Junse Liu, 25, who makes made-to-measure clothing under his namesake brand; and La DoubleJ founder J.J. Martin, 51.
The table: Lutz Morris pushed a dark stained wooden dining table against a wall and arranged a buffet of finger food on top, using textured bowls by the Berlin-based ceramist Kirsten Landwehr and wooden boards balanced on glass cake stands. The designer doesn’t often buy cut flowers — “it makes me sad when they die so quickly,” she said — but she made an exception for this occasion, visiting a wholesale flower market just east of the city. Hydrangeas hovered in mismatched vases on the table, and dark purple lilies and pompom-shaped dianthus sat atop the bar on the terrace.
The food: “Milan is a melting pot,” said the chef Davide Negri, 49, whom Lutz Morris called on to cater the event, and its food should reflect that. Servers circulated with trays of homemade bao buns stuffed with pork shoulder slow-cooked with Chinese five spice; matchbox-size croutons dyed black with squid ink and topped with sweet Cantabrian anchovy and a squiggle of mascarpone mousse; and crispy dumplings inspired by Tunisian brik, a North African street snack usually featuring crepe-like malsouka pastry wrapped around egg and tuna and here reimagined with phyllo pastry filled with Piedmontese ricotta and shrimp. “We had a whole conversation about the Parmesan wheel,” added Lutz Morris, referring to a massive circular block of cheese that Negri had brought, which was given pride of place in the center of the buffet table. “Apparently, Americans really like it, but Italians don’t think it’s chic.” In any case, as the night progressed, it reduced in size.
The drinks: The cocktail of the evening was a Doladira Negroni. Doladira is an organic and slightly less alcoholic alternative to Campari — Lutz Morris is friends with the rhubarb aperitif brand’s co-founder Meredith Erickson, a Canadian food writer who discovered the recipe while researching her 2019 cookbook, “Alpine Cooking,” in the Italian Dolomites. “It’s herbaceous, with a slightly salty note at the end,” said Erickson, 44, who was among the evening’s guests. The mixed drink also featured sweet vermouth and gin by Tassoni, a centuries-old beverage company based in Lake Garda, Italy. Others partook of Palomas made with a bitter grapefruit soda, or of zero-proof gin or vodka tonics.
The music: Luca Marullo Viola, a co-founder of the Milan-based architecture firm Parasite 2.0, was to serve as DJ, on account of his good taste and ability to read a room. But with the threat of rain and only enough space for a DJ booth on the terrace, Lutz Morris asked him to compile a playlist instead. His selections skewed toward jazz and instrumental and included a track by the Japanese composer Katsuhisa Hattori, several Miles Davis songs and “Stark’s Reality” a collaboration between Ghostface Killah and the Canadian trio BADBADNOTGOOD.
The conversation: As at just about any gathering of expats, talk turned to what had brought each guest to Milan — a job, a spouse, a whim — and that led to an exchange of tips on the group’s favorite new restaurants and bars. People also spoke about their recent August holidays: Locatelli told stories about Vietnam, and Martin extolled a silent retreat she’d attended in Tuscany. Lutz Morris had been to the Greek island of Patmos, where, coincidentally, she’d first met several of the party guests: Yashar, the interior architect Giampiero Tagliaferri and Surridge and his partner, the interior designer Rodrigo Izquierdo.
An entertaining tip: Lutz Morris is enamored with the Italian way of living communally, whereby people of different ages — from older grandparents to young children — come together for all manner of events. “I think it’s the secret to why Italians live longer,” she said, and channeled the approach by having her son invite several of his 20-something friends, who chatted with the other guests throughout the night.
The post On a Terrace in Milan, a Gathering of Creative Expats appeared first on New York Times.
