Lifestyle
Mauro Morandi, Italy’s Robinson Crusoe, Dies at 85
Mauro Morandi, whose 32-year sojourn on an uninhabited Mediterranean island led to his being known as Italy’s Robinson Crusoe, died on Jan. 3 in Modena, Italy. He was 85.
The cause was a brain hemorrhage, said Antonio Rinaldis, who wrote a 2023 book with Mr. Morandi about his life on the island.
Unlike Daniel Defoe’s hero, who was shipwrecked and fervently hoped to be rescued, Mr. Morandi chose his life of solitude.
He said he had fallen in love at first sight with Budelli, a pristine, undeveloped island off the northern tip of Sardinia. He arrived in 1989, somewhat by chance, he said in interviews. He left — against his will — in 2021, writing on social media that he was tired of “fighting against those who want to send me away.”
Mr. Morandi’s singular choice to live in solitude spawned at least two books, at least one song, short documentaries and countless interviews. As the world turned inward during the coronavirus pandemic, reporters sought Mr. Morandi’s insights on isolation.
“I read a lot, and think,” he told CNN in 2020. “I think many people are scared of reading because if they do, they’ll start meditating and thinking about stuff, and that can be dangerous. If you start seeing things under a different light and be critical, you could end up seeing what a miserable life you lead.”
Budelli, one of the main islands that make up the Maddalena Archipelago, is a dab of paradise occupying less than two-thirds of a square mile. It is known for its pink sand beach surrounded by turquoise water. The island has no running water, is not connected to an electrical grid and is accessible only by boat.
Mr. Morandi lived in an abandoned World War II hut, tacking up canvas tarps in an open area in front. He created sculptures from branches, cooked on a propane stove and read voraciously, buying books and supplies on trips to La Maddalena, the largest town on the archipelago. Visitors also brought him food and water. He used car batteries and solar power to charge his cellphone and his tablet.
It was, he said, “a simple life made up of big and small pleasures.”
“The most important thing,” he added, “is that I have a serene relationship with time.”
For years he was the island’s designated guardian, hired by the Swiss-Italian real estate company that owned it.
His main task was to protect the island’s habitat from unruly tourists, who are allowed only on certain paths, part of an effort by Italy’s environment ministry to protect the rare pink sand. He told people about the marvels of the island, and how fragments of coral and shells had turned the sand pink. He picked up trash from the beach, cleared the island’s paths and carried out light maintenance.
Mr. Morandi initially chose to live as a hermit, he said in an interview at Genoa’s maritime museum, but he ultimately welcomed select people as part of his mission to make them “understand why we need to love nature.”
He said he did not miss human contact. “He didn’t like what humanity had become in the 21st century — consumeristic and individualistic — especially with regard to nature,” Mr. Rinaldis said. That was why Mr. Morandi cared about protecting Budelli.
When he finally got an internet connection, he used social media to showcase the island’s untamed beauty.
In 2016, after a protracted legal battle over the island’s ownership, it was turned over to the state and became part of Maddalena Archipelago National Park. Mr. Morandi was asked to leave.
The park’s president, Giuseppe Bonanno, acknowledged Mr. Morandi’s unique position. “Morandi symbolizes a man, enchanted by the elements, who decides to devote his life to contemplation and custody,” he told reporters. But there were other issues, including whether Mr. Morandi would be able to survive a medical emergency alone, not to mention his shack’s failure to meet code.
He fought back. He campaigned against his eviction on social media. He gave interviews to the news media. An online petition drew nearly 75,000 signatures.
“We do not want Mauro to leave the island because we think first of all that if Budelli has remained a wonder of nature it is also thanks to him,” the petition said. “And second, because we are convinced that the park has everything to gain from his presence: Mauro has lived on Budelli for a quarter of a century, he knows every plant and every rock, every tree and every animal species, he recognizes the colors and scents with the changing of the wind and the seasons.”
But after battling the authorities for five years, Mr. Morandi relented. He was 82 and no longer in good health. “Part of his resignation was tied to his fragility,” Mr. Rinaldis said, “but he was also disappointed because he had been forced to leave by the authorities.”
Mr. Morandi left the island for good in March 2021 and moved to a small apartment in La Maddalena. “I’ll leave hoping that in the future, Budelli will be safeguarded, like I’ve been doing it for 32 years,” he said.
Mauro Morandi was born on Feb. 12, 1939, in Modena. His father, Mario Morandi, was a gymnast who won the national championship for artistic gymnastics in 1936 and was later the caretaker of a school. Mauro’s mother, Enia Camellini, worked for a tobacco company.
Mr. Morandi studied to become a physical education teacher and taught at a middle school in Modena through the 1970s, when he was able to retire early. He had three daughters during a marriage that ended in divorce.
They survive him, as do a brother, Renzo, and six grandchildren.
In a 2016 interview with the Turin daily La Stampa, Mr. Morandi said that after reading Richard Bach’s 1970 best seller, “Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” he “took flight,” discovering the sea. In 1989, he said, he decided that he was “tired of society and seeking a different life.” He bought a catamaran with some friends, with the idea of sailing to Polynesia.
To raise money, they scouted locations for charter cruises and came across Budelli. There they met Budelli’s caretaker, who had recently decided to leave. He offered them his job, and Mr. Morandi took it. He was paid at first, but he stayed on even after he was no longer receiving a salary; he then lived off his teacher’s pension. On rare occasions he returned to Modena for short holidays to visit his family.
At one point he read a study by the University of Sassari showing that Budelli’s flora and fauna were similar to those of the Polynesian islands he had once hoped to reach. “It was almost as though Budelli wanted me, made sure I got here, to the only beach in the whole Mediterranean Sea, which is almost similar in composition to the islands where I wanted to go,” he said in a 2016 interview with the photographer Claudio Muzzetto.
After Mr. Morandi’s death, Margherita Guerra, one of his many thousands of followers on social media, wrote: “Safe travels. Finally no one will ever be able to send you away from your beloved island.”
“She’s like a female Willy Wonka,” Sakief Baron, 36, said about Kendra Austin, 32, after she explained that her personal style had a playful and cartoonish spirit.
Dressed in loose, oversize layers in blue and neutral shades, the couple were walking on the Upper East Side of Manhattan when I noticed them on a Saturday in April. There was a symmetry to their ensembles, so it wasn’t too surprising when she noted that he had influenced her fashion sense.
Before they met, she said, she was “less sure” about her wardrobe choices. “I also have lost 100 pounds in the time we’ve been together,” she added, which she said had helped her to recalibrate her relationship with clothes.
His style has been influenced by hip-hop culture, basketball players like Allen Iverson and his mother’s Finnish background. “I just take all these pieces and then it kind of comes together,” he said.
Both described themselves as multidisciplinary artists; he also has a job at a youth center, mentoring children. “I want to make sure that I look like someone they want to aspire to be every time they see me,” he said.
In my L.A. Buy Nothing group, I started noticing how some objects, given for free from neighbor to neighbor, carry emotional weight. An item was more than it appeared. It was a piece of personal history, perhaps one with generational memories.
From one person’s hands to another’s, objects find new life through the free gift economy on Facebook or the Buy Nothing app. Buy Nothing Project, a public benefit corporation, reports having 14 million members across more than 50 countries who give away 2.6 million items a month. There are more than 100 groups in Los Angeles alone.
Buy Nothing reduces waste by keeping items out of landfills. It also builds community. When our lives are increasingly online, Buy Nothing encourages us to get out of our cars and make connections with neighbors, even if the interaction is no more than a wave when picking something up left by a doorstep. Researchers have found that even small social interactions can foster a sense of belonging.
Still, Buy Nothing has its challenges. For years, some have complained that the groups shouldn’t be limited to neighborhoods, but rather have more open borders. Last year, many longtime members complained about the project enforcing its trademark, leading Facebook to shut down unregistered groups even if they were serving people under economic strain. Critics saw the tattling as a shift from mutual aid toward control and branding. For its part, Buy Nothing says its decisions are based on building community, trust and safety.
Despite those disagreements, Buy Nothing offers a platform for special connections. As much as there are jokes about people offering half-eaten cake, many have passed along treasured items. Buy Nothing items may feel too valuable for the trash or too personal for Goodwill. The interaction between giver and receiver becomes just as meaningful as the object itself.
I set out to document these quiet exchanges in my Buy Nothing group, drawn to the question of why people choose to pass their belongings from one neighbor to another.
Tiny builders, big exchange
Lidia Butcher gives a toolbox and worktable her two sons used to Chelsea Ward for her 17-month-old son.
“We’ve had the toolbox and worktable for the last 10 years, it’s been very special. When I told my youngest son we were going to give it away, he was a little sad. He said he was still playing with it, but then I explained that it’s been sitting untouched for a year and that if we gave it to someone else, maybe someone else would be happy about it. So he felt joy about giving it to another child who would want to play with it. I have this little emotional feeling letting it go, but at the same time, it’s a good feeling. Like a new beginning.”
— Lidia Butcher, 35, joined the group several years ago when someone told her a person in the group once asked for a cup of sugar.
“We’re getting a worktable. Benji is now old enough to be interested in playing with tools. I’m going to move my drafting table out of his room. His bedroom is my office. So that will go into storage or the Buy Nothing group and the worktable will go in its place. We live in an apartment, and as he’s growing, his needs change but our space doesn’t. Buy Nothing is really helpful to be able to cycle out of stuff.”
— Chelsea Ward, 38, has found the Buy Nothing group extremely helpful since becoming a mom.
Something borrowed
Abby Rodriguez lends Sophie Janinet a veil for her wedding.
“Sophie had asked for a wedding veil on our Buy Nothing group and I’m lending it to her because I wanted it to have a second life. I hate the idea that precious things just sit there and never get touched. My wedding day was one of the best days of my life. At one point the power went out and now we have this amazing picture with my husband and I and everyone using their phone to light up the dance floor.”
— Abby Rodriguez, 40, discovered Buy Nothing when she moved to her northeast L.A. neighborhood in 2020.
“I moved to Los Angeles from France four years ago. The day I joined Buy Nothing was the first time I felt connected to the community. It played a huge role in my adapting to life here. I’m receiving a veil because I want my wedding to look and feel like my values. I thrifted my dress, I chose a local seamstress to alter the dress but when I tried it on, I felt something was missing. I wanted a veil but I didn’t want to buy new because I didn’t want to add anything to the landfill. So I posted a request for the veil on Buy Nothing.”
— Sophie Janinet, 37, is recreating the low-waste, slower-paced values she once lived by in France through her local Buy Nothing community.
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1. Abby Rodriguez, left, holds her wedding veil that she is lending Sophie Janinet, right, for her upcoming wedding. 2. Michele Sawers, left stands with Beth Penn, right, while giving her a decorative owl.
A pigeon-spooking owl gets a second life
Michele Sawers gives Beth Penn a decorative owl.
“Coming from a place of luck, now I have plenty to give. The owl has been with me for 26 years. I bought the owl soon after I bought this house. The owl was purchased because I had a pigeon problem, they would camp out under my eves and I would have bird poop everywhere. The owl must have worked because they’re gone and they haven’t come back.”
— Michele Sawers, 58, uses Buy Nothing regularly to connect with her community and support her low-consumption values.
“There are things I don’t want to own. So borrowing those things on Buy Nothing is really nice. There is a person who I borrowed their cooler twice and their ladder twice so I feel like they are my neighbor even though they are not [right next door]. We get these birds that poop on the deck and the recommendation online was to get a fake owl. When it was posted on Buy Nothing, I thought, ‘I have to have that owl!’ It’s going to have a good home with me on the deck with some cats, a dog and some kids.”
— Beth Penn, 47, once helped build her local Buy Nothing group and now experiences it from the other side, as a member.
Stuffed toys find a new purpose
Magaly Leyva, left, stands with Tatiana Lonny, right, with the stuffed toys and play balls she is gifting her.
(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)
Magaly Leyva gives stuffed toys and plastic play balls to Tatiana Lonny.
“My mother-in-law gave the dolls and plastic play balls to my daughter, but she has so much. My daughter is not going to play with them with the same intent that another kid would, because she’s really little. I’d rather another kid use these things.”
— Magaly Leyva, 35, joined Buy Nothing nearly four years ago to find clothes for her nephew.
“I’m taking these new items to a township called Langa in South Africa. I know the kids there will be so happy. They have so little there. I’m doing this all by myself, I’m just collecting a GoFundMe for the suitcase fee at the airport.”
— Tatiana Lonny, 51, began using Buy Nothing in hopes of finding resources to support the animals she rescues.
A second helping
Laura Cherkas gives Aurora Sanchez a cast iron pan.
“Buy Nothing gives me the freedom to let go of things because I know that they will stay in the community and the neighborhood. I’m giving a couple of cast iron items that my husband and I got when we were on a cast iron kick, probably during COVID. We determined that we don’t actually use these particular pans and they were just making our drawers heavy. So we decided to let someone else get some use out of them.
“I hate throwing things away. I want to see things have another life. Sometimes I take things to a donation center, but I like the personal connection with Buy Nothing and that you know that there is someone who definitely wants your item.”
— Laura Cherkas, 40, has built connections with other moms through Buy Nothing and values it as a way to cycle toys in and out for her child.
Laura Cherkas, left, holds the pan she is gifting Aurora Sanchez, right, through Buy Nothing.
(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)
“I wanted a cast iron pan because I cook a lot of grilled meat. I’m excited to try this style of cooking out and it will help me when I cook for only one or two people. I got lucky because I was chosen to receive it.”
— Aurora Sanchez, 54, has spent the past two years engaging with Buy Nothing, finding in it a sense of neighborly support that makes her feel valued while strengthening her connection to the community.
Next player up
Joe Zeni, 70, is using his local Buy Nothing group on Facebook to give away a basketball hoop he used with his son when he was little.
(Dania Maxwell/For The Times)
Joe Zeni first offered a basketball hoop on Buy Nothing in 2023, where it remains unclaimed.
“I’m giving away a Huffy basketball freestanding hoop because it’s just taking up space. We used to play horse and shoot baskets together. My son is now 35, he doesn’t live here anymore.”
— Joe Zeni, 70, uses Buy Nothing often to give items away, believing many of the things he no longer needs still have purpose.
In the year since his death, there has been no hard pivot at Armani. The shadow of the founder has stayed in place over the Milan HQ, where the brand seems happy to leave it. Armani is not just plumbing the past for continued inspiration, it’s reselling it.
Today, Giorgio Armani is announcing Archivio, a grouping of 13 men’s and women’s looks, plucked from the brand’s back catalog and remade for today. (And, yes, at today’s prices.) There’s a jacket in pinstriped alpaca of 1979 vintage; a buttery one-and-a-half breasted jacket with a maitre d’s flair that first appeared in 1987; and an unstructured silk-linen suit that will activate ’90s flashbacks for die-hard Armani clients and those who want to capture that era’s nostalgia. The advertising campaign was shot and styled by Eli Russell Linnetz, who has his own label, ERL, but always seems to be the first call brands make when they want sultry photos with the aura of Details magazine circa 1995. (He did a similar thing for Guess recently.)
Linnetz’s images are a reminder of how Armani’s work still reverberates decades later.
Archivio is also a canny recognition of what shoppers crave now. On the resale market, Armani wares are as coveted as can be. Every week it seems as if I get an email from Ndwc0, a British vintage store, announcing a new drop of meaty-shouldered ’90s Armani power suits. They sell for less than $500. At Sorbara’s in Brooklyn, you can buy a tan Giorgio Armani vest for $225.
That vintage-mad audience is in Armani’s sights: To introduce the collection, it’s staging an installation, opening today, at Giorgio Armani’s Milan boutique. It will feature the hosts of “Throwing Fits,” a New York-based podcast whose hosts wear vintage Armani button-ups and shout out stores like Sorbara’s.
It’s prudent, if a bit disconnected. Part of the charm of old Armani is that it can be found on the cheap. I’m wearing a pair of vintage Giorgio Armani corduroys as I write this. I bought them for $76 on eBay. Archivio is reverent, but its prices, which range from $1,025 to $12,000, may scare off shoppers willing to do the searching themselves.
If you ask me, the next frontier of this archive fixation is that a brand — and a big one — will release a mountain of genuine vintage pieces. J. Crew and Banana Republic have tried this at a small scale, but a luxury house like Armani hasn’t gone there. Yet. Eventually, Armani (or a brand like it) is going to grab hold of the market that exists around its brand, but through which it gets no cut.
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