Billionaire heiresses, iconic writers and Oscar winners have one secret hideaway in common

Some of the world’s most glamorous people are flocking to Ischia this summer, from Australian fashion photographer Candice Lake to US actress and model Aly Michalka, but the Italian island is used to that. While neighbouring Capri may have all the international designer boutiques, Ischia, a bigger, more rugged, volcanic island, has always prided itself, on, well, not having them.

Ischia has long attracted socialites, designers, actors, artists, academics and writers, who come clambering off their yachts, such as Fiat mogul Gianni Agnelli aboard his cherished Agneta in the late 1950s and 60s - or the ferry from Naples, if they’re going boho - onto the island’s rugged shores. These are ultra-wealthy, discerning types, looking for something a little less showy, a bit more relaxed, authentic and unreconstructed, which is Ischia all over.

Italian fashion house Max Mara’s Artistic Director, British-born Ian Griffiths, has visited the island four times already this year, most recently last week, to launch Max Mara Resort 2022 collection in the lush gardens of the island’s iconic Hotel Mezzatorre, recently re-opened by the Pellicano Group.

Griffiths fell in love with the whole idea of the island, having chanced upon a copy of Truman Capote’s travel diaries during lockdown, ‘Local Color’, written while on a trip to Europe with his then-new partner, the writer Jack Dunphy (they were together for 35 years).

There’s a chapter dedicated to the three months they spent on the island, living in the simple Pensione Di Lustro in the fishing village of Forio, which is, by the way, still owned and run by the same family today. Their trip seemed to embody everything that is good and important about slow travel.

“Capote described it as being the more authentic, less glamorous, less visited, more off the beaten track, in many ways more genuine of the islands,” says Griffiths. “In his day there were still goat herds just off the main roads. That’s gone now but there’s still a real sense of it being a working island and a real place.”

Truman Capote’s ‘swans’, the gaggle of international society style icons he regularly lunched with and who inspired Breakfast at Tiffany’s and included Gianni Agnelli's wife Marella, also provided inspiration for the collection.

“I was thinking about how Capote’s swans used to descend on Paris twice a year to do their wardrobes and then while they were waiting for them to be assembled, they would retreat to a yacht in the Mediterranean or somewhere like Ischia and spend a few days absorbing it all,” Griffiths tells me.

“Impeccably dressed, they used to throw themselves into the life of the place they were in. In Paris, where it was the Plaza Athénée and Maxine’s, in Ischia, it would be a beachside taverna, linguine acqua di mare and limoncini. So I wanted to design a collection of things the swans would wear today.”

Griffiths enlisted Marella’s granddaughter, the London-born producer and director Ginevra Elkann, to make a short film to go with the new collection being launched in Ischia, which captured the spirit of those strong, sophisticated women, the simplicity of the Mediterranean lifestyle and the golden age of air travel, through simple, sumptuous, sexy designs in beiges, blinding whites, intense pinks and reds.

(“I hooked onto the idea of geraniums, being the symbol for me, of everything that’s marvellous about those Mediterranean locations – the elegance of something absolutely simple. Marella Angnelli loved geraniums. It’s reds and pinks for me are the colours that signify, really, everything about that experience.”).

The legendary publisher and film producer Angelo Rizzoli was the first to put Ischia on the map in the 1950s, when he opened Hotel Regina Isabella in the idyllic waterfront village of Lacco Amena and invited his good friends Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton to come and visit. Home to a marina, it has always been easy for VIPs to glide in on their yachts. More recent guests include Matt Damon, Francis Ford Coppola, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Ischia was also, of course, the setting for the very public affair between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in 1962, both married to other people at the time, during the making of Cleopatra. Filming had moved from Rome to Ischia, where they were so blatantly canoodling that the Vatican newspaper published an open letter accusing Taylor of ‘erotic vagrancy.’

Now the in-crowd is returning and this time, there’s someone else to take the credit: Marie-Louse Sciò, CEO and creative Director of her family’s Pellicano hotel group who re-opened Hotel Mezzatorre on the island’s northwestern tip back in 2019 to the delight of her friends. She also happens to be one of the nicest, best-connected and effortlessly chic women in Italy.

“I think Ischia is the real deal, it’s unspoilt not only nature-wise but in general, which is very refreshing,” says Sciò. “There’s so much unpolished beauty here. Its imperfections are really beautiful and the hotel reflects exactly that.”

Trained as an architect and interior designer, Sciò has always moved in creative circles, surrounding herself with successful, interesting people, both socially and through the people who book into her family’s hotels. Her best friend is Alex Eagle, creative director of the eponymous London lifestyle store which has an outpost at Soho Farmhouse; another mate is Natalie Kingham of Matchesfashion.com.

In June of 2019, Sciò and Kingham dreamt up and took friends including fashion designers Molly Goddard and Haider Ackermann and The Gentlewoman Editor-in-Chief Penny Martin, on a pop-up Italian Grand Tour aboard a 1930s yacht, culminating with a cocktail party at the Mezzatorre hosted by Margherita Missoni.

Fast-forward to last week, when ninety guests attended the Max Mara show last week and the cast of models arrived in the elegant 43ft sloop used in Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film The Talented Mr Ripley, much of which was shot in Ischia. Among the crowd there to watch were actress Alba Clemente and her husband, the neo-classical painter Francesco Clemente, actress Alessandra Mastronardi, fashion editor Anna Dello Russo, Kathy and Nicky Hilton and a fleet of influencers and bloggers.

Doing multiple trips over a few months this year means Griffiths has already established his favourite places to go. There was award-winning seafood restaurant Umberto a Mare in Forio with its amazing terrace for exquisite bluefish balls, artisan Franco Calise, also in Forio, who makes his own traditional ceramics and Antoni Monti in Lacco Ameno for basketware.

There are a few things you’d be foolish not to experience on a trip to this volcanic island, rich in thermal waters. The first is a trip to the hot springs of Sorgeto, near the southern bay of Sant’Angelo. Here, the springs flow into the sea, creating a series of natural, mineral-rich pools. Then you can dine on brazed cuttlefish and crusty bread at Ristorante La Sorgente.

Then there’s Giardini la Mortella, a private subtropical garden created by Susana Walton, the Argentinean wife of British composer William Walton, in the 1950s, now open to the public, which has a teahouse that makes a great little spot for an aperitivo.

Then, of course, the Castello Aragonese, an ancient citadel on a rocky islet connected to Ischia Ponte by a causeway. Here, you’ll find multiple churches, a convent, historic residences and the atmospheric boutique hotel Albergo Il Monastero, with its glorious panoramic breakfast terrace. It’s also home to the Ischia Film Festival.

I ask Sciò if she has anything to add to the list. She mentions dinner in the garden at the amazing Michelin starred Dani Maison, which chef Nino Di Constanzo opened in his family home, fresh fish tartare at the waterfront Giardini de L’Eden, which overlook the Castello Aragonese.

“You should also pick up leather sandals from Mario d’Ischia in Lacco Ameno, get something embroidered at Jole Ricame in Ischia Porto and something made at Ceramica Mennella in Casamicciola Terme. They’re doing me a life-sized ceramic tiger as we speak.”

Fittingly for Sciò, she is tight lipped about who has come to stay at her hotel recently (“I don’t find talking about that interesting, in fact it's invasive”), although other people’s Instagram accounts (influencers Tamu McPherson, Xenia Donts, Alexandra Pereira and Leonie Hanne, for example), spilling over with images of time spent at the hotel, do tend to fill in the gaps. She does say the age range of guests is 25 to 97 and everyone from artists and poets to filmmakers and financiers.

“We had a fabulous party when we opened in 2019 and I have an itch to do another one,” says Sciò when pushed on when she’s next hosting something fabulous in Ischia. “So as soon as it’s legal I’m going to have a massive party, not in terms of guest lists, just in terms of fun.”

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