Destination Lignano Sabbiadoro for seafront shopping
Summer time: a boutique in the pines, right in front of the beach, where you can find technical swimming costumes, handmade sandals and sunglasses with crystals.
by Lisa Corva
3' min read
3' min read
As a child, Vito Dal Mas used to go on holiday with his family and cousins to Lignano. It was in the Friulian town that he and his wife Manuela decided to open their three fashion boutiques, Times. "I started exactly forty years ago," he recounts. "It was 1985 and I passed by chance in front of a shop with the sign for sale. I bought it: an impulse decision. Then I took over an old lace shop that was closing down. And, finally, a newspaper shop'. The shop in Lignano Pineta was recently redesigned by Moitié Studio, the Milanese creative duo composed of interior designers Giorgia Rossi and Francesco Gennaro: "In this historical period, in which online shopping often penalises physical shops and, in particular, multi-brand stores, we think it is essential to give shops that unique dimension back where the shopping experience can be lived calmly. We try to do this, for our retail customers, also with a new search for materials, perhaps simpler, but which are sufficient to give identity and contemporaneity. In designing the new concept for Times, for example, the aim was to create a relaxing environment to welcome people in the best possible way: 80 square metres and five shop windows, walls and ceiling covered with sand-coloured hand-laid lime, birch wood, raw linen for the curtains in the fitting rooms, and the element of the sail, symbol of the link with the sea, which is repeated throughout the project: the sculptural wall sconce, the handle of the interior flush-wall door, the details of the shelves and front hangings".
At Times you can find wearable garments, ideal for weekends at the beach: 'This summer we are focusing on Golden Goose: the new Marathon trainer with the star (from 450 euros), the sunglasses (from 250) and more generally on the brand's men's and women's clothing,' explains Dal Mas. "Then Alohas, a men's/women's footwear brand (from €130) founded in Hawaii in 2015, designed in Barcelona and made by local artisans. UGG, with its new trainers and women's sandals (from 110 euros) and, again on the trainer front, the latest model from New Balance. The men's suits are by Dsquared2 and RRD. Finally, Max Mara, which has always been a brand we love, and Lorenzo Serafini's entire collection for Philosophy (lace tops from 390 euros, dresses from a thousand): long, flowing dresses, perfect for a summer evening.
If someone asks him for advice on how to experience the city, Dal Mas suggests: 'The Terrazza a Mare restaurant, built in 1972: resting on stilts in the water, a white shell-shaped structure, it is one of the symbols of Lignano, so much so that it appears on all the vintage postcards. We are all waiting for its reopening, after a long renovation. Then I suggest an evening aperitif at the Tenda Bar in Lignano Pineta, facing the sunset'. An opportunity to discover what is not only a woodland overlooking the sea, but also a page of Italian architecture. Here, in the 1950s, in what used to be a former hunting reserve (where even Hemingway went), the architect Marcello D'Olivo, a pupil of Carlo Scarpa, was called upon to design the entire urban development plan: a spiral urban layout made up of villas, cottages and lots of greenery, which from above looks, deliberately, like a snail.
