Kean Etro’s House Is a Time-Travel Machine

One afternoon 18 years ago, before designer Kean Etro bought his 50-acre estate in Italy’s southern region of Puglia, he put the home through a sort of stress test. The place had looked gorgeous earlier in the day, but he wanted to see it in less generous light. So he returned in the middle of the night. That afternoon’s golden-hour sunshine had given way to something much more foul, but that was perfect for Etro. While his companions waited inside, he wandered into the middle of the field behind the stone house and began searching for wildlife. He was also seeking something more mythical. “It was a bit rainy, yes, but I wanted to feel the place.” An hour later he emerged. “I came out alive, very happy,” he says. “It gave me a very jolly feeling.” Ten days later, he bought his rainy getaway.

The house is less than a two-hour flight from Milan, where Etro grew up and where he now serves as creative director of menswear at his family’s fashion brand. He’s used vibrant colors, wild paisley, and a serious dose of global inspiration to produce suits for CBD-friendly CEOs.

The designer’s house, which Etro estimates was originally built in the 17th century, was constructed in the typical Puglian style. The first residents did without mortar, so they could pull apart their houses when they got word the tax collector was on his way. As a result, the rooms he found were circular, with cone-shaped roofs known as trulli. “Like a magician hat,” Etro says.

But at the time of Etro’s original rainy tour in 2001, the house was dilapidated and run-down. True to his past as a history and archaeology student, Etro insisted on rebuilding the property’s structures using period-correct materials that could be found only in the surrounding area. So he brokered deals with neighbors over wine to secure stone, turned old wooden doors into shelves and cupboards, and repurposed floral-design concrete patches found in a nearby field into the house’s bathroom floors.