Henry James: “There’s no romance here but what you may have brought with you.”

Carlotta Antonelli:  What do I constantly bring with me? Nothing, always nothing. All the time I take with me something different. I can tell you what I am carrying now, just now. Only when I want it, because I enjoy it, I am delighted by being misunderstood. 

H.J.: “I didn't refuse often enough” 

C.A.: How many times I have said yes - a little bit because I am bored, a little bit because of rage. I want to learn how to say no, every time I do it, I feel heroic. When I do my shock therapy, when I face things that scared me, without courage, just with fear, I feel heroic.

H.J.: “Her real offense was having a mind of her own.”

C.A.: Independence is like when you were a baby and you stop to sustain yourself on your own hands and feet, and you walk, just no one holds you, if you fall, and no one says you “good job”, there is just you now. You teach yourself how and where to walk.

H.J.: “She spent half her time in thinking of beauty, bravery, magnanimity; she had a fixed determination to regard the world as a place of brightness, of free expansion. She had an infinite hope that she would never do anything wrong.”

C.A.: I made mistakes so many times when I forgot who I was. I make mistakes every day time I make mistakes. Sometimes I like it, sometimes it teaches me something, and it hurts a little bit. I almost never asked for help, it was wrong. I could have, I needed to.  Alone, I have helped myself, even when I couldn’t.

 H.J.: “I've been deceived too often; I've ceased to form attachments, to permit myself to feel attractions.”

C.A.: Attraction and desire, attachment, and need. But, is it so difficult to stop being scared by desire? You must accept that eternity doesn’t exist and everything will end. Need is like believing in God, it makes you comfortable and you can face death because there will be something else after. I don’t believe in God, so I should begin to accept, that you need freedom for desire and you need to be brave in order to be free. To have courage, you have to stop believing in God.

H.J.: “And you can't always please yourself; you must sometimes please other people. That, I admit, you're very ready to do; but there's another thing that's still more important--you must often displease others.”

C.A.: Identity, because we are and not because we want to be. It is my authenticity, which allows me to think independently, but I have to seriously question myself. An independent thought means freedom.

Featuring Actress Carlotta Antonelli

Photography Peppe Tortora

Creative direction by Valentina Ilardi

Written by Alessio de’Navasques

Texts by Henry James and Carlotta Antonelli

Clothes by VI MMXX styled with Carlotta’s own wardrobe

Fashion coordinator Marco Serangeli

Hairstyling by Silvia Massicci and makeup by Giulia Luciani

for Simone Belli makeup

Project coordinator Maria Cristina Bastante

Fashion assistants Raven Narvaiz, Nelly Ciobanu, Alex Sinato

Location Sabaudia