“What is genius? It is imagination, intuition, decision, and speed of execution,” according to a line from Mario Monicelli's film Amici Miei - Atto I
“What is genius? It is imagination, intuition, decision, and speed of execution,” according to a line from Mario Monicelli’s film Amici Miei – Atto IIº. And it is precisely this genius, mixed with a hearty dash of creativity, that Elda Calabrese, an Italian artist and doctor of pharmacy, showed this week when she improvised a red carpet look at the Venice Film Festival 2025.
Some attendees spend weeks planning their looks for their large red carpet moment at the festival, and Calabrese, according to a post on her Instagram this week, was one such moviegoer. Calabrese wrote that she had been looking forward to the night for a month, when disaster struck the day before. As she arrived by train, she said, someone snatched her suitcase.
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In an instant, everything she’d had ready for her look—save for her boots, which she joked about being lucky the thief didn’t take off her feet—was gone. When she reached her hotel room, however, inventiveness took over. Her bedsheet became her improvised gown for the evening.
“I decided to unleash my creativity by dressing myself directly with my bed sheet and even creating a train,” she wrote in her caption, (translated here from Italian). She created a draped neckline, added a belt to cinch her waist, and scribbled “ROBBED” in pen on the look’s makeshift train in a nod to her dilemma.
Instead of having her glam night out foiled by the thief, she wrote, “I was incredulous that I received so many compliments on an outfit that didn’t actually exist.”
Calabrese closed her riches-to-rags (bedsheets) story by directly addressing the mystery perpetrator who snatched her luggage: “Enjoy my clothes and jewelry, but remember, karma is always watching,” she wrote.
Originally published in Vanity Fair Italia.
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