Nonna Giada

She was not yet Nonna Giada; she was Giada Maria Corsini, a young woman about to turn twenty-five, invited to a night party in central Paris.

She was more innocent than people believed, although her innocence went unnoticed because of her habit of showing up alone wherever she went.

From afar, she noticed a woman with her back uncovered, dressed in a long velvet gown that brushed the floor, and something strange and magnetic hanging from her hair. She came closer and discovered a face of around fifty, with a sharp, Asian, shimmering gaze.

The woman, sensing those curious eyes upon her, slightly turned her head and returned the look.

“You’re wearing an extraordinarily elegant spider hanging from your hair,” said Giada.

The woman smiled. They recognized each other by instinct, as if one were the future reflection of the other: one innocent and bold, the other wise and free.

Then the woman loosened her black hair and, handing her the spider, said:

“Sometimes we are as beautiful as someone makes us feel. I guess the aim is for that someone to be ourselves.”

That woman, whom Giada would later know as Vera, gave her the spider as one offers an amulet. And from that moment on, something in Giada changed: she understood that true beauty is awakened, not imitated.

 

*In the original story back in 1952, Vera asked a waiter for a small Parisian pastry box, placed the spider inside, and gifted it to Giada. Today, The Foyer reinterprets that scene with a contemporary box, a symbol of how ideas travel and transform. What was once a box for sweets is now food for thought.

 

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