California 1960

Bring the desert into the house. Tame it, but without taking away its space. To make the cliffs, the sand and the thistles unfold before you without any disturbance, as if no one had ever observed them. To make the peace of the desert come to you, in the same way that one usually goes to the desert to take refuge among the clouds.

That's how Richard Neutra envisioned the place when he received the commission of a lifetime: to create a winter getaway home for a Pennsylvania tycoon. The result is one of the most iconic works of architecture in the international style of the 20th century.

In this house begins and ends the journey that inspires the new collection of Lo de Manuela.

A unique house in a unique place, where Mustang horses and Native Americans coexisted with the growing audience of artists seeking to hide, if only for a few days, from their responsibilities. A place where a Sinatra, a Boggart or a Kennedy sat gazing at the stars and breathing in the air of nature.

It is California, the land of Calafia, the place where sand and earth win the war against all the elements, where art and cinema enter through every pore of your skin, where the silhouettes of thistles and flowers blend into every landscape and where we, with the strength of linen, velvet and aboard a wild horse, are heading to this season.

This journey does not begin in the present but travels through memories, framed in an old love story that today takes me back to the California desert, where I loved and disliked deeply.

Do you want me to tell you about it?

Take a seat, take a breath and welcome to California, 1960.