Kean Etro's House Is a Time-Travel Machine

One afternoon 18 years ago, before designer Kean Etro bought his 50-acre estate in Italy's southern region of Puglia, he put the home through a sort of stress test. The place had looked gorgeous earlier in the day, but he wanted to see it in less generous light. So he returned in the middle of the night. That afternoon's golden-hour sunshine had given way to something much more foul, but that was perfect for Etro. While his companions waited inside, he wandered into the middle of the field behind the stone house and began searching for wildlife. He was also seeking something more mythical. “It was a bit rainy, yes, but I wanted to feel the place.” An hour later he emerged. “I came out alive, very happy,” he says. “It gave me a very jolly feeling.” Ten days later, he bought his rainy getaway.

The house is less than a two-hour flight from Milan, where Etro grew up and where he now serves as creative director of menswear at his family's fashion brand. He's used vibrant colors, wild paisley, and a serious dose of global inspiration to produce suits for CBD-friendly CEOs.

The designer's house, which Etro estimates was originally built in the 17th century, was constructed in the typical Puglian style. The first residents did without mortar, so they could pull apart their houses when they got word the tax collector was on his way. As a result, the rooms he found were circular, with cone-shaped roofs known as trulli. “Like a magician hat,” Etro says.

But at the time of Etro's original rainy tour in 2001, the house was dilapidated and run-down. True to his past as a history and archaeology student, Etro insisted on rebuilding the property's structures using period-correct materials that could be found only in the surrounding area. So he brokered deals with neighbors over wine to secure stone, turned old wooden doors into shelves and cupboards, and repurposed floral-design concrete patches found in a nearby field into the house's bathroom floors.

Although Etro—along with his wife and children—lives primarily in Milan, the family spend as much time as they can in their idyllic abode nestled in the hills. But he bristles at the notion that the place is some kind of mere getaway that helps him flee the churn of the city. “It's not escape,” he says. “It's going back home.”

What Etro means is that in Puglia he lives the way he feels he's meant to. He spends time painting and sculpting, foraging for mushrooms, eating from a green garden in the backyard. There are caves to explore (“Like going back in the womb,” he says), a pool, and a pizza oven near a meadow where deer frolic. Best of all, Etro likes to sit on his stone patio and play his didgeridoo. A didgeridoo! Naturally: Such an ancient setting calls for an ancient instrument.

The house directly influences the way he designs, he says. “We are famous for color,” Etro says of his brand. It's all out there: the brown of a chestnut, the green of early-spring leaves.

But the place in Puglia also serves Etro in less concrete ways. According to the designer, the sorcerer-hat-shaped buildings have an odd power to them. “They are like antennas,” he says. The dreams the trulli pick up are so vivid that Etro's brother refuses to sleep in the pointy-roofed buildings when he visits. But for the designer, it's yet another source of creativity. “A lot of things come in dreams,” he says. “As long as you manage to remember them.”

Cam Wolf is a GQ style writer.

A version of this story originally appeared in the August 2019 issue with the title "Kean's Castle."

Originally Appeared on GQ