The best time to see Turin is before anyone else does. Via Po at seven in the morning is a different street. The porticoes cast shadows that stretch across the entire road. The stone is pink.

We walk this route to the atelier every morning. Seventeen minutes from Piazza Vittorio to our door on Via San Tommaso. We have done this walk perhaps four thousand times.

Turin doesn't perform for you. It simply is. That's what we love about it.

The newspaper kiosk on the corner opens at six-thirty. The woman who runs it has been there longer than we have been making clothes. She reads La Stampa front to back before her first customer arrives.

The Light

In February, the light hits the eastern facades around seven-fifteen. For about twenty minutes, the buildings along Via Po turn the colour of raw linen. It is the same colour as our unbleached cotton before we dye it.

We have tried to photograph it. It never looks right. Some things you have to see.