“By now I am a resident of the island and have understood the beauty of slow times. Growing up, I also realized the value of simplicity and freedom.” At the entrance to her salon in Panarea, the pearl of the Aeolian Islands, the curious inscription “knowledge is the beauty of the soul” also screamed in English to make it international and prepare clients for a journey of beauty, but also of knowledge. Fabio D’Oncia, Born in 1974, born in Gela but now adopted by Panarello, he has made a choice that goes against the grain. Indeed, secondly, given that he chose to live in the Aeolian Islands, and in his kingdom there is no place for tabloids and gossip magazines, but for many Italian and foreign books.
Start
“I was born into a family of industry professionals, and this profession was in my DNA in a certain sense,” says Fabio, “ my grandpa and uncle did the same and i remember watching this world as a child. Then at the age of 17 I left home to find out what was going on outside, I lived in Milan, Rome, London and I had the opportunity to learn a lot, because I believe that if a person is probably born and dies in the same same place, he is not I live the same life as someone who travels and discovers new cultures.” And Panarea? “I was working in Milan at the time,” he continues, “a client friend of mine came in to get her hair done. He looked in the mirror, dropped it and broke it. Vannoni, who was a customer of the store, said the classic phrase of the case: “it will bring bad luck to someone.” The next day I had an accident on a Vespa and my friend who broke the mirror invited me to convalesce on Panarea, an island I didn’t know or even know where it was. It was September 2006. I fell in love immediately.”
Moving to Panarea
Back at Grand Milano, the young man began to develop the idea of diving back into the Aeolian world to spend the season, and so he began, then when he always returned on vacation, he was always stopped by an islander who asked if he was “armed” with scissors and a comb, and the Argentinean’s son, who had lived on the island for a long time, suggested that he go into business. No sooner said than done. On the same day, he found a place and signed a contract, finally saying goodbye to the fashion city of Milan and the house he had just bought: “The island,” he recalls, “slowly became my home. And over the years I have collected many beautiful ones. Even if I’m always used to meeting VIPs, because I’ve always worked in a mid to high level context. It happens that on Sundays you are called to repair the boat, and in doing so I had the opportunity to get on yachts that I probably would never set foot on. One day I remember that the president of Napoli called me, Aurelio De Laurentiis at 8am to order a haircut for my wife and I was sleepy and asked him why he called me so early. That day, his wife and I laughed out loud and she praised me because I didn’t have that annoying attitude that everyone has, and she told me that her husband told this episode from the heart, laughing. She came last year Natalie Kellyknown for the successful series Dynasty and The Vampire Diaries, who asked me if I could color them at 9pm, which is a weird time, and that she was the one who asked me for the photo after all, but I found out who he was only by talking to us, because, unfortunately, I have that bad flaw that sometimes I don’t even recognize myself.
funniest episode
Unforgettable? “A very funny episode,” he smiles, bringing to life what looks like a comic film, “which happened to me many years ago. I went into boat service after being hired by an agency. Arriving with the tender, I found a crazy hot guy who I thought was the skipper, a black lady who made me say to myself, “See, black people mistreat them even on the boat”, and a beautiful, pretty girl, just like the owner of the boat. When I got out, I was stopped by a guy who asked who was on the boat and showed me a whole series of shots of me getting on and wandering around the boat. Finally, I gave them all names: Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, and reporter Winfrey’s proposalwhile the owner was Diana von Fustenberg. And in the end I understand that ignorance has always helped me, because excitement would dominate.
innovative idea
The idea of cultural exchange was born almost naturally on an island that unfortunately suffers from a lack of cultural space: “Everyone,” he emphasizes, “wants culture and the bookcrossing service was born almost as a joke, because I had books at home and I didn’t know where to put them and took them to the store. From there word spread that I was collecting books, and I found myself out the door with boxes of volumes that people would have thrown away. The do ut des principle applies here. If you take one book, another will remain. How’s the wedding. The husband does not leave, except for what he takes. And the most beautiful thing is to see,” he concludes, “new generations reading while spending less time on social media.” And Fabio against the backdrop of books reminds us of the importance of beauty, which, according to him, lasts as long as the weekend, and of kindness. A mood that boasts to everyone: not VIPs for whom the fare is the same, but above all those who do not expect it.