ITALIAN PASSION
Setting yourself up as an entrepreneur is somewhat commonplace today, but in the Italy of 1978, it showed an astonishing amount of ambition. Nearly 40 years later, Diego Della Valle is still a fascinating—and rather eccentric—man. He’s in an immaculate blue suit and sports an armful of brightly coloured bracelets. “They all have a story,” he says, pushing up his sleeve. “One is the colours of Italy, the other is a present from my son, another was bought in Africa. My board would probably like me to take them off, but I don’t want to be a boring old man.” Boring is a characteristic the Tod’s president and CEO is not in danger of displaying any time soon. In Casette d’ete, Della Valle lives in an 11-bedroom former monastery. Following the theme, his villa on Capri, Torre Materita, is a castle and tower erected in the 1500s by Carthusian monks. He also has homes in Rome, Milan, Paris, New York and Miami; his yacht Marlin is a 15m beauty that once belonged to John F Kennedy and that he bought in 1998 while staying with Ralph Lauren. “Maybe it was fate, because Ralph lived near where the yacht was,” says Della Valle, smiling at the memory. “So I went over, made an offer and came back to have lunch. During dessert, the telephone rings. Ralph comes back to the table and says, ‘I don’t understand, when did you have time to buy a boat?’” That anecdote alone illustrates just how perfectly Della Valle embodies the American Dream. But despite his love of the US, he remains the most patriotic Italian I have ever met. He rescued Italy’s Fiorentina soccer team from bankruptcy; he spent ¤25m restoring