It’s the season of a very specific fantasy that goes like this: “You, too, can be Mediterranean!”
In my fantasy, my to-do list simply powers down for a full month, and, as is my duty, I pack up the family and drive our vintage Cinquecento to Nonna’s podere in Umbria.
My fantasy centers on what I think of as the pan-Mediterranean, vaguely 1950s, preternaturally glamorous siren. The woman who can somehow throw on a pair of giant sunglasses without looking like an insect. It’s a species for whom, seasonal realities be damned, it is perpetually summer. This particular genus is a mix of elegance and barefootedness; members know a Verdicchio from a verdejo and can sit sidesaddle on a Vespa. They lovingly embrace their bodies and the full spectrum of their Romance-language womanhood. And they wear a scarf while doing it.
Last year, I was living in Spain, and as August approached, I decided I wanted to be one of them—or at least approximate being one of them. So I did a uniquely un-European thing: I asked a lot of questions. One very clear takeaway: This wasn’t going to be easy.
• “Never eat and walk at the same time,” says Maite Arcaya Soden, owner of the El Velázquez 17 restaurant in the Recoletos neighborhood of Madrid. “And never snack between meals.”
• Never leave the house with wet hair. Leaving the yacht with wet hair, on the other hand, is perfectly acceptable.
• Edit your closet. “We don’t buy on credit,” says Arcaya Soden, “which means we often have small wardrobes, and we don’t follow trends as much.”
• “If you can’t walk in heels, go barefoot,” says Virginia Lio, manager of La Bandita Townhouse, a stunning boutique hotel in Pienza, Italy (and a woman who would look like a million bucks in a burlap sack and bare feet). For those unwilling to chance broken glass, flat sandals will suffice.
• “Carry your favorite perfume in your purse,” says Lio. “Always.”
• Order a glass of rosato. You know who doesn’t drink wine at lunch on a weekday? An American.
• “I believe there is nothing more unnatural than false or too-long nails or too much manicure,” says Lucia Fabbri, an Italian lawyer and the Platonic ideal of bella figura.
• Get out of the gym. “I stopped going … because I felt like a hamster on a wheel and I hated the unbreathable air and being indoors,” says Fabbri. “My exercise is walking in the countryside every day in any season. It’s good to oxygenate the skin and the brain. I always wear gloves and a hat to prevent from getting damaged with the sun.”
• Take your coffee small, quick, and without a lot of decoration. Think of a venti Starbucks caramel white Frappuccino macchiato with extra foam. Now get the opposite.
• “I never use hair dryers, and this keeps my hair healthy and shiny,” says Fabbri. “If sometimes my hair is a little frizzy, I put two drops of olive oil on the palm of my hand and pass it gently and quickly through the hair.” (This makes the “Don’t leave the house with wet hair” rule trickier and more time-consuming, but being a glamorous European woman is something of a conundrum.)
• “No ponytails, even though you only wash your hair once a week,” says Annalisa Fernandez, an American who spends part of the year in Madrid.
• Open a bottle of wine with a classic waiter’s corkscrew (i.e., a sommelier knife). “We don’t use a lot of gadgets to open wine,” says Nikki Barbery-Bleyleben, a philosopher who lives in London and Madrid. “Also, more wine, less beer.”
• Know your way around a dinner table. Barbery-Bleyleben explains: “No hand under the table whilst eating, keep the fork in your left hand, not your right, and cut one piece of food at a time.”
• “Less makeup,” says Barbery-Bleyleben. Fabbri adds: “I don’t use skin makeup but only mascara and some eye shadow and lipstick.”
• Cross at the green. “We never jaywalk,” says Arcaya Soden.
• Dress for the occasion. Loungewear is for lounging. Sportswear is for sports. And neither is advisable after 11:00 a.m.
Danielle Pergament is a Los Angeles–based writer. Formerly an editor at Goop, she frequently contributes to The New York Times
