‘The North Americans very naturally want to get away from North America. They are also after their own origins. Although they descend from people who could not succeed in Europe and furiously shook its dust from their feet, they have a sentimental feeling for ancestors...
They also come to shop. Tired of the mass-produced, synthetic materials, looking like the froth from detergents, which choke up the Fifth Avenue emporiums, they feel a need for real lace and linen, anything hand-made, even baskets. “Look,” I said to an American woman beside me in an aeroplane over Florence, “that is the Duomo.” She replied: “Until what time do the stores remain open here?”’