The Travel Elena. There's enough room in here for not only a bottle (or two) but an array snacks, books and additional layers for the chillier of days. We’ve also found it to make the perfect travel companion and we find ourselves returning to it time after time.
When you live in Spain the opportunity to picnic is year-round (even in December) and we’d be lying if we said it wasn’t a considered factor when we relocated here. As a testament to the Spanish winter, this particular picnic may not have been the warmest, but it was actually one of our favourites so far. Whilst maintaining a pretty heavy, round the clock work schedule in Barcelona, The Natural Park of Montsant has become a welcomed weekend retreat of ours over recent months. Among the rocky outcrops and sun-soaked valleys of Montsant lies Terra Dominicata, a medieval monastery turned boutique hotel & winery lined with lofty cypress trees & near-endless grape terraces. The perfect backdrop for & picnicking and place for us to capture the beauty of MILANER's bestselling masterpieces: The woven leather collection.
A collection that has in fact become part of our daily lives, since we visited their atelier in Le Marche earlier this year and captured the production process behind the Milaner collection, witnessing first hand the passion that is poured into each individual piece.
Milaner’s mission
“Real craftsmanship reflects real caring, and real caring reflects our attitude about ourselves, about people, and about life.”
As the much‑loved editor of Italian Vogue, Franca Sozzani declared:
“Ethical is a way of thinking, a lifestyle…it means respecting nature and the environment, it means fair trade… uniqueness, quality, diversity, the respect for nature, for the environment, fair trade and sustainability. These are the new words for luxury.”
Regardless of whether you’re heading upstate or to the Cotswolds in December, this collection offers you exemplary countryside chic. Each piece is a statement piece in itself and requires no over-styling. A simple pairing of some crisp cosy knits and a western boot is all that’s needed to complete the look. And whilst this refined yet rustic ensemble may lead to assumptions that you’re headed to participate in activities that may involve horses, We’ll stick to our cava-filled picnic perched upon a winery for now. Coming in three different sizes, Milaner’s woven collection caters for all your picnicking needs and desires.
If like us, you sometimes find that your picnic is usually a little thin on the packed lunch and consists mainly of a bottle of bubbly and some clinking glasses, then the miniature will more than suffice. Note, this doesn’t leave much room for the obligatory picnic blanket, so you might need to double it up as a fashionable shawl to-and-from (try not to spill too much on it..)