Model, muse, artist and humanist, Conie Vallese takes us on a Roman holiday in the autumn travel special edition of Financial Times HTSI [IG] Magazine. This team also collaborated for HTSI’s Women’s Style Special AW25 [in the AOC queue].

Isabelle Kountoure styles Roman holiday-travel Vallese in Miu Miu for the cover lensed by Hill & Aubrey [IG]. Anne makes the same statement every week: for now — and I don’t mean a week or two — all roads lead to Rome.

AOC doesn’t treat Rome as a trend but as a truth, a key plank in the complex story of human civilization.

The same Vatican that recently put Pope Leo on the map as the DNA-rich, ancestral hodgepodge of the once-admired American experience was also a key financier and institutional player in the historical diaspora of the world’s peoples — in the name of God.

Anne’s First Rome Story

So many brand stories have multiple versions. My alma mater Victoria’s Secret is no different. One looks at Conie Vallese’s cover images and asks “that’s Rome?” The answer is yes if you’ve come by private jet as I did.

I’ve already told the story somewhere in AOC, but that day is on my top 10 list of most meaningtul days ever in my life. A group of us from Victoria’s Secret were sitting at the dinner table in Florence, Italy and I looked at Grace Nichols, who became president of VS.

We were pretty tight and I asker her casually, sitting opposite her at the table: “Do you think we should go to mass tomorrow? We are in Italy, after all.”

Now I was the renegade at Victoria’s Secret, not Grace. But I will always remember her response — and it was a daring one for her, because Grace Nichols did not throw money around. There was not an ounce of pretension in this uber-successful woman’s body.

Grace responded [I paraphrase]: “Well, if you want to go to mass, then we should REALLY go to mass.”

My eyes locked on hers across the table, and I can still feel the wry smile pulling at the corners of my mouth. Understand that this was 9pm on Saturday evening. I began counting hours out on my fingers. How long had our pilots been off duty determined my reponse.

Once I crossed the magic number, I could not contain myself any longer. “We’re going to Rome?” I asked the question out loud at the table, but my eyes locked on hers.

Not hearing any VS colleagues say “You two have had too much red wine”, we were on the verge of a spontaneous and dramatic change of plans.

This is how we rolled in those glory years. “If you want to,” was her eyeball-to-eyeball response.

“Okay, we’re going to Rome then, as long as we can get a landing spot at the airport. I’ll call the pilots and the hotel to arrange the transportation.”

And so, we were off to the Eternal City, as if I was Dorothy and we were on our way to Oz. ~ Anne