The maitre d’ was making me a poncho from a bin bag. It was raining heavily – fat spring rain that glossed the cobbles and made the bankers on their bicycles skid as they cut the corners. He poked two arm holes in the sides of the bag. “Milano chic!” he proclaimed, and then made another hole where my head would go. “For cigarettes,” he explained, offering me one to light up. It was about 4pm, an hour or so after lunch service had finished (tonnarelli with cacio e pepe and some red shrimp on top, plus some tiramisu, plus some ice cream). I’d had to return to Il Solferino because I’d left my wallet there, and the wallet contained a little pouch, and the little pouch contained an engagement ring, and the engagement ring contained my life’s savings. The group of waiters and cooks, about a dozen of them, having their early supper from a vast spaghetti pot, looked alarmed as I burst in, soaking wet and English and flustered. The maitre d’ handed me the wallet at once (he also gave me a rose stem, which may or may not mean he looked inside it), and said: “We could have just dropped it to your house this evening.” I said I was staying at a hotel and leaving tomorrow, unfortunately, but thank you anyway. “Oh, I thought you lived here,” he said. “All the English live here.” And he went back to tailoring his bin bag. He seemed to be contemplating pockets.
Milan's Porta Nuova District skyline with priapic Samsung Diamond tower and “Bosco Verticale” building
All the English live here. And the Americans, and the French, and the Germans, and the Spanish, and, most surprisingly of all, perhaps, the Milanese, too. The old joke ran that Milan was always the perfect place to be – so long as you wanted to leave it. An industrial and financial workhorse near the very top of Italy, for decades the best thing about it was the places you could get to: Lake Como in 90 minutes; Portofino in two and a half hours; St. Moritz just a little longer in the other direction; the Côte d’Azur in only six hours. It should, by all rights, have long been a beloved base camp for the modern jet-setter – a sort of magnificent sun at the centre of the globe-trotting solar system.
But things don’t always work like that. I’m told that Milton Keynes is very well connected, too. I’ve never been.
But something ’s changed in the past decade. Everyone’s moving to Milan. The shift started at the Expo 2015, held in the city – a sort of triumphant showcase for foreign investment. Then Brexit happened in 2016, and a few expat Italians decided to return home from London, and apologies again for all that. At about the same time, the then-Prime Minister Matteo Renzi introduced some nifty tax schemes to incentivise monied foreigners to come, and persuade affluent Italians to stay. One scheme got the nickname ‘svuota Londra’ – literally ‘empty London’. It meant incoming foreigners could pay a flat tax of €100,000 (roughly £80,000) a year on any foreign income and assets, and be exempt from inheritance tax. Footballers liked it, as did tech founders, dynastic heirs, oligarchs and financiers. And when they came to Italy, they mostly came to Milan.
It is the city that’s most similar to other cities, with a cooler climate and stately architecture that puts one more in mind of Vienna than Naples, say. It has skyscrapers branded by banks and a heritage of taste and style. And yet its flavours are not too strong or overwhelming. You could easily transplant yourself from Paris or London into the area (provided you had restaurant-grade Italian) and not suffer too much of a culture shock. And so plenty of money has trickled into the country of late.
A truly sublime Duomo di Milano
Historic European flavour in spades at the Arco della Pace arch
But vibe shifts are not solely geopolitical, and if money was the only factor, we’d all move to Dubai. The maitre d’ at Il Solferino – like hotel concierges, a city’s real canaries in the mine – had not detected simply an in- crease of economic migrants, but an increase in cultural ones, too. A soft-power swing. There are plenty of threads in this tapestry. Cabana magazine – the chi-chi bible for people who inherit good chairs – marked 10 years of existence this spring, and opened its first store to celebrate. The founder, Milan native Martina Mondadori, told the Financial Times that she’d always assumed they’d open a shop in London or New York first, but she opted for Milan instead because of its recent renaissance. Casa Cipriani opened a very elegant new club here last summer. Soho House is opening a site in 2026.
The English-language MBA programme at Bocconi University is now acclaimed as one of the best in the world, bringing in wealthy students who might otherwise have gone to Oxford or Paris. A spectacular new Prada museum opened in 2015 – a strong mix of culture and couture. There are dashing, statement buildings by Zaha Hadid and Arata Isozaki. People even whisper that Bernard Arnault might be moving to town. “Ten years ago it was very boring,” says Elena Clavarino, a senior editor at Air Mail who was born in Milan and splits her time between the city and New York. “On a Sunday if you wanted to eat, most restaurants were closed. It was very provincially minded in a way,” she says. “But not anymore.”
The raw ingredients, of course, were always strong. Handsome architecture. A good size and scale – manageable but not parochial. (There is a decent cycling culture here, Roman flagstones be damned.) A historic fashion scene (Prada, Armani, Valentino, Etro, Dolce&Gabbana, Versace, Bottega Veneta etc) that makes London look like, well, Milton Keynes. Good food and wine (Piedmont is right next door), and, yes, that historic access to everywhere you’d want to go ever – including the lovely Ligurian countryside, to which wealthy Milanese have always decanted themselves at the weekend. It’s like the Cotswolds with vineyards. Or maybe the Cotswolds without the scenesters.
The intricacies of Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, said to be the world’s first indoor shopping mall
Ted Gushue – the photographer, writer and creative agency founder – lived in New York, then London, then St. Moritz, but now he’s in Milan. “A lot of people got reassigned here when banks got freaked out by Brexit,” he says. “So a lot of club-going Cambridge graduates suddenly found themselves here.” And yes, he admits, “the tax incentive was really quite aggressive and attractive.” But there’s much more to the shift than money. Firstly, Milan is Italian.
This is something that seems obvious to say, but cannot be overstated. It is a country that has its priorities in order: food; family; sport; beauty. Work-life balance, too, though the Italians wouldn’t use such a ghastly phrase. (You don’t need expressions for things that are obviously elemental.) But a New Yorker or a Londoner might be irked by the slower pace and stifling heat of another Italian spot, further south – and so Milan represents the best of both worlds. The dolce far niente is all well and good for a week or two, but we’ve got kids to put through school here. You can also wear a blazer in Milan, which is important. In fact, the men really know how to wear a blazer in Milan – the suit-separate (again, an adage they’d never use) is an art form in the after-work bars of the city. Ted points out how Milan has a very distinctive energy within that greater Italian ethos. A sort of historic authenticity and a long view.
“Milan is a very honest place – bullshit doesn’t last long here. There’s real things that have been here for a long time. So it doesn’t really suffer gimmicks. In London, they open up a new Amazonico and everyone goes: ‘Woo, just like they have in Monaco!’ Here in Milan it needs to be really good. People eat very well at home. We have democratic access to high quality ingredients. You don’t need to duke it out in Waitrose for a tomato.”
This lends things a certain refined understatement and Ted agrees. “No one’s trying to impress anyone in their Rolls-Royce.”
The Fondazione Prada building
Milan’s 19th-century mosaics underfoot lend the city a storied and timeless feel
That’s a mark of a city, perhaps, with less polarised economics than London or Manhattan. “Quality of life and rent is far more reasonable than London,” Ted says. “We pay significantly less than we would for a comparable quality of life in London – probably a third of what we’d pay in Chelsea for a similar lifestyle.” Up-and-coming areas include a spot north of the Piazzale Loreto, “which people used to think was really far away,” says Elena. “Now people are calling it ‘NoLo’ and buying lofts there,” she says – a chic Manhattanisation of a former industrial region. The international influx has boosted rent and house prices, which rightly irks some long-time residents.
On the whole, though, it is a welcoming place. “A big draw is the friendly people here,” says Elena. “You’re in a city with a more human dimension.” For an expat looking for fresh pastures, this is a key point of difference. Londoners are racked by snobberies and class anxieties so deeply ingrained they’re not even aware of them. New York is good so long as you’re happy to get shouted at a lot. Parisians hate everyone, including themselves. In Milan, people smile at you if you try out a little Italian here and there. “Posso avere una tavola per due?” “Si, preggo.”
Incoming Londoners will be equally soothed by the new trend for members’ clubs here. The team of the Arts Club on London’s Dover Street are just about to cut the ribbon on The Wilde – a “next-generation members’ club for a curious, inspired, global community”. Art advisor Ed Tang (son of bon vivant David Tang) is doing the walls. Luke Edward Hall is doing the decor. It’s situated in the “former home of [businessman and politician] Santo Versace and has been magnificently restored by the designer and architect Fabrizio Casiraghi,” says Gary Landesberg, the club’s founder and chairman. “Our members will be global, diverse and dynamic, span- ning multiple industries, ages and interests,” he says. The general mood “will speak to their desire for unique and personalised experiences,” including “a varied programme of live music, DJs, theatrical performances, and masterclasses, as well as wellness retreats, pop-up events and gallery visits.”
The design-led Bocconi University campus
Natasha Slater, a British PR who’s been living in Milan for 20 years, runs Dinner Conversations, a sort of club-without- the-clubhouse, which gathers an interesting, international set together for events. “A lot of creatives have moved here, and I just closed two memberships with two Italians who are moving from London back to Milan. They’ve invested in property and startups here.” Natasha says that “Milanese culture, on the whole, is a group culture. People stay in groups.”
Once upon a time, those would consist of insiders and outsiders, she says; of locals and expats. But that’s changing now. “Making friends here is very easy,” says Nadine Choe, an American who worked in real estate private equity before starting The Stanza – a newsletter about hospitality with a business lean – in Milan. “That’s one of the best things about Latin culture – there’s an emphasis on community and gathering, which I love.”
Still, there can be frictions. “If you come over here expecting to find Mount Street, you’re going to be disappointed,” says Ted. “But if you come over here with a sense of adventure and a love for Italy, you’ll have a great time.” Nadine agrees. “Without a network of family, friends or a job, it’s really hard for a non-Italian speaker to integrate properly – there’s a language and a culture barrier that people don’t talk about.” She points out that the approach to entrepreneurialism and risk differs to an American sensibility. “The biggest miss is how Italian bureaucracy prevents people from taking risks, which translates into almost every aspect of your professional life,” she says. This is certainly something for entrepreneurs to bear in mind, but it also speaks to the subtlety of the city’s mindset – to its inherent and peculiar philosophy.
San Francisco wants you to move quickly and break things. New York is the city that never sleeps. Milan takes a calmer view. Balance in all things. Romance and industry. Creativity and pragmatism. If you’re going to make a bin-bag poncho, make it chic.
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