It’s the last day of Milan Fashion Week. Not much is happening anymore, not even a handful of shows worth attending. Most of the international fashion crowd has packed its Louis Vuitton monogrammed suitcases and is en route to Paris by now. But I have extended my trip because there is one diligent, funny girl I want to photograph. She’s in town from Turin and I have to catch her this morning before she and the dozens of clothing shipments she received disappear again. Her name is Eleonora Carisi, a 28-year old Sicilian firecracker and self-proclaimend “multi-tasker” who runs a clothing store for emerging designers and her blog, Joujou Villeroy. (She calls it a “platform”, not a blog, because “Joujou Villeroy is more than a blog where you share your stuff as a diary. It’s like a magazine: you can find me, photography, fashion, art and design. Joujou is a project!”) She’s been running her site for the past three years and has gained a steadfast and growing amount of loyal followers in Italy, where she is also one of Grazia’s It-Girls. Besides her on-line activities she also works with brands, and successfully grows her own collection of clothing and accessories under the name “What’s Inside You“.

A busy bee, and quite a unique one at that. She’s one of the street style girls I personally find inspiring, sexy and humorous. I mean, let’s start with that perfectly placed ‘tache de beauté’. It’s disgracefully cool. And her degradé hair that seems to effortlessly fall into a roller-set curl the moment she wakes up. Her friends construe her personality as “colorful and a little bit weird” but to me she’s the ultimate Italian woman: “strong, brave and challenging” as she likes to describe them. “They are women pushed by their passion, always going to any lenghts, never imprisoned in the Italian woman’s commonplace.” She draws inspiration from “women of the past”, she tells me. “I’m hypnotised by their beauty and boldness. A kind of beauty that doesn’t exist anymore. I’m not fascinated by today’s beauty standards as much as I am by the charm of Rita Hayworth, Grace Kelly, Verushka, Marlene Dietrich and Brigitte Bardot, with their vaporous, wavy hair and their red lips enclosing a cigarette. They really wore the pants. I like this concept.”

She likes vintage too, for obvious reasons, but she didn’t bring much to Milan, so we are left with a huge, almost debilitating dilemma. Do we go shopping or will Candela let us raid her basement? (Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Eleonora is staying in Candela Novembre‘s guest house.) After a few panicky moments we get the green light and return from the once-flooded dungeon with armloads of forgotten, musty treasures. We mix everything with Moschino, Valentino Red and Eleonora’s own designs. When I ask her where she usually shops she tells me about Balon, Turin’s famous flea market. “Every Saturday and one Sunday a month you can find vintage clothes and accessories, plus furniture and old vinyl. I’m looking for 50s clothes and vintage earrings; I don’t have pierced ears so I can only wear vintage earrings.” But she doesn’t necessarily collect anything, not since stamps, when she was a kid. She’s just obsessed with photographs, and especially flowers and dark images which she chronicles on pinterest.

The last look she puts on is a simple skirt and T-shirt with one of Candela’s old army jackets she cheers is “so me!!”. We pick up a juice and apple from the organic fruit stand on the corner and hop in her Lancia chauffeured ride to see Frankie Morello‘s show. It’s a different crowd, more local and a little bit eccentric even. Chiara is there, of course, and a handful of photographers Eleonora gracefully tries to avoid. “I am not in the mood for interviews right now…” she moans and pretends to be on the phone. Frankie’s show turns out to be pretty cool and we’re happy with this ending. Even if it means it’s really just the beginning of the next round.