Love in the city: Michele Franzese and Milena Giordano. The first meeting when she was 13 and he was 21. Ten years after the wedding.
Milena Giordano is 13 when Michele Franzese notices her in a group of girls her age, in Sant'Anastasia. He is 21 and has finished high school, she is still in middle school: the point of contact between them are their brothers, who act as a bridge between their distant worlds. Because the years that separate them are an abyss in this phase of life. Milena - who is actually called Carmela, but who is called by everyone with a more contemporary and light-hearted diminutive - almost makes fun of the attentions of that young adult, she laughs about it with her friends. But he is a boy with determination and a far-sighted vision, who pushes himself much further to the point of imagining a future together with her and thinking big even professionally. Thus, without ever wavering, he overcomes the resistance of the beautiful teenager and they get together. It is 1990 and for ten long years they grow up together, as fiancés. Then the wedding, 25 years ago. Milena is young, but she faces the path of adult life with an awareness and strength that are part of her strong-willed character and that are a rock on which Michele knows he can count to realize his ambitions. While three children are born — Gaya, who is 23 and making her debut as a doctor; Giada who is 19 and studies Economics at Bocconi, and the youngest of the house Michele Maria who is 8 and attends the International School — they set up and realize a project that has its roots in their shared passion for fashion. And that unravels from a thin thread that comes from the past — Michele's father made shirts — and pushes towards a complex future, with international visions. Both of them have a forward-looking gaze: in 1992 they open a shop in Sant'Anastasia that becomes the point of reference for the world's major luxury brands. It is a painstaking work, of choices and challenges that leads them to create a company — which expands exponentially — in which they work side by side, each on their own front. The shops, the samples, the trips in search of new ideas and new proposals: she is active in women's and children's fashion, he is focused on men. Then they arrive in Naples, where they open a boutique that lights up, window after window, a large part of Via Morelli. Then they choose to make a clear change also personally and to live in the city. In the couple there are balances that pass through silences and the ability to know how to dose each choice. Working together is not easy and each has his or her own character: he is more eclectic, she is more reserved. The children absorb attention and commitment, but the time taken away from work and family is just for them. Vacations in Ibiza, Capri or Sardinia are escapes that they give themselves. Less often than they would like. Over time they have learned to manage the jealousy that occasionally pops up and, between the two, she remains the one most annoyed by the attention that someone might reserve for her husband. The only man in her life, who wanted her as his woman forever. And they both know how to continue choosing each other, every day.
Source: Corriere del Mezzogiorno