Tadorn ours today special issue divided into three newspapers: a single theme, explored from different points of view. In 2023 we asked ourselves about Generations, to understand what it means today to live and work in a world where as many as five of them coexist, from those who were touched by the Second World War to those, Gen Z, who find a completely changed sky. Last year, Time was our protagonist: what we are going through, among a thousand uncertainties, what awaits us tomorrow, and what is further away, still immersed in the future.
This week we deal with Bonds instead. The traditional family, which for centuries has dictated the rhythms of our civil life with a single pattern, has crumbled and recomposed according to new rules and with unexpected outcomes. Living alone is not a taboo.
Women, emancipated thanks to workthey no longer need male protection to set their own path and can choose whether and how to focus on themselves. Children, both male and female, remain in the “young” range for a long timecaught between tortuous training paths, the search for a stable job, an accessible home and a partner in tune with their needs. Many elderly people have returned to being single not by choicewho once would have returned to deafening families, among children to look after and caring women, today find themselves on the arm of a caregiver to face their days.
Danda Santini, director of “iO Donna” (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
Living alone is increasingly widespreadand loneliness cannot be exorcised with virtual or distant connections. Some pioneers outline experiences of collective life even without blood ties: communities united by elective affinities, where spaces and times are shared and a different way of being on Earth is imagined. Friendship takes on more weight, also to fill the voids left by finished marriages (and in this, women turn out to be women’s best friends).
This week “iO Donna” makes three (illustration by Cinzia Zenocchini).
It resists, even if for shorter periods and according to always different compositions (it’s the era of diversity!), the myth of the couple: in balance between personal ambitions and openness towards others, between self-contemplation and exploration of the world. A fragile jewel, once a transitory model that lasted the time of falling in love and then stabilized by multiplying according to nature and becoming a family. Today, however, it can be self-sufficient.
Potentially everyone is free to experience all the phases, depending on their age and disposition towards the world. In reality, it’s not always a choice. In the middle, between the desire for independence and the need for a warm embrace, different lifestyles take shape. We talk about this in our three issues, 1, 2 and 3+, single life, as a couple or in a group, where we face the new challenges (and shadows) of today’s relationships.
We accaccompany the photographic eye of three artists and the words of three writers who imagined an exclusive story for us inspired by three famous paintings. Plus, the interpretations and images that the fashion, beauty and furniture editors have thought up for us. With one conviction: there is no better formula. But a beautiful interpretation of each phase is always possible.