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Switzerland

Looking Smart! The Latest Fashionista's Must-Have Accessory Is A *Book Bag*

The newest trend on the red carpet: Why are it-girls and stars carrying a book under their arm, heading to a movie premiere with Nabokov's Lolita or Albert Camus's La Peste? Well, look inside.

Feeling bookish? (Olympia Le-Tan)
Feeling bookish? (Olympia Le-Tan)

*NEWSBITES

That's Sartre, not Prada: the newest must-have accessory for fashionistas is – a book.

The idea is to look intellectual, but horn-rimmed glasses perched on your nose are so, well, yesterday. What you need is a clutch bag that looks exactly like a book -- giving new meaning to the word "pocketbook."

Some people might think that anybody who spends their time flipping through ad-filled glossy fashion magazines has probably forgotten how to read and definitely has no idea who Thomas Mann or Emily Dickinson are. But American actress Chloë Sevigny, French model and actress Clémence Poésy, and other high-brows, are trying to prove the contrary by carrying clutch bags embroidered with the covers of literary masterpieces by the likes of Nabokov, Salinger or Fitzgerald.

The bags, which have gold frames and clasps, are the brainchild of London-born French designer Olympia Le-Tan who is part of the clique surrounding Purple Fashion Magazine founder Olivier Zahm in Paris. It was just a question of time before the daughter of renowned French illustrator Pierre Le-Tan came up with her own creative pursuit. Three years ago, armed with a love of literature and a penchant for embroidery ("I inherited a talent for it from my grandmother"), she launched her first accessories.

A brief look at all the "sold out's on www.net-a-porter.com is enough to see that Le-Tan's clutches are very sought-after. That they cost more than €1,153 (over $1,500) each doesn't seem to deter those in search of just the right literary fashion statement.

Read the full original article in German by Olivia Muller

Photo – Olympia Le-Tan

*Newsbites are digest items, not direct translations

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Society

Genoa Postcard: A Tale Of Modern Sailors, Echos Of The Ancient Mariner

Many seafarers are hired and fired every seven months. Some keep up this lifestyle for 40 years while sailing the world. Some of those who'd recently docked in the Italian port city of Genoa, share a taste of their travels that are connected to a long history of a seafaring life.

A sailor smokes a cigarette on the hydrofoil Procida

A sailor on the hydrofoil Procida in Italy

Daniele Frediani/Mondadori Portfolio via ZUMA Press
Paolo Griseri

GENOA — Cristina did it to escape after a tough breakup. Luigi because he dreamed of adventures and the South Seas. Marianna embarked just “before the refrigerator factory where I worked went out of business. I’m one of the few who got severance pay.”

To hear their stories, you have to go to the canteen on Via Albertazzi, in Italy's northern port city of Genoa, across from the ferry terminal. The place has excellent minestrone soup and is decorated with models of the ships that have made the port’s history.

There are 38,000 Italian professional sailors, many of whom work here in Genoa, a historic port of call that today is the country's second largest after Trieste on the east coast. Luciano Rotella of the trade union Italian Federation of Transport Workers says the official number of maritime workers is far lower than the reality, which contains a tangle of different laws, regulations, contracts and ethnicities — not to mention ancient remnants of harsh battles between shipowners and crews.

The result is that today it is not so easy to know how many people sail, nor their nationalities.

What is certain is that every six to seven months, the Italian mariner disembarks the ship and is dismissed: they take severance pay and after waits for the next call. Andrea has been sailing for more than 20 years: “When I started out, to those who told us we were earning good money, I replied that I had a precarious life: every landing was a dismissal.”

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