An explainer on Vivre de Benne— how to “live well” — from skincare founder Irene Forte, and La DoubleJ’s J.J. Martin.
Benessere is what ChatGPT will serve up if you ask it to provide the Italian word for “wellness,” a wholly American concept that has created a trillion-dollar global juggernaut of green juices, celebrity smoothies, and health-by-way-of-supplement regimens and optimized biometrics. But for a language whose country of origin likely dominated your FYP over the summer with images of sunsoaked beaches, golden skin, and bottomless bowls of pasta, the actual answer can’t be reduced to a simple AI search.
According to La DoubleJ founder, JJ Martin—a Milan-transplant by way of New York—Vivre de Benne is a more apt translation. “It means ‘living well’—being with friends, eating the best ingredients with family, resting, traveling. That’s wellness for Italians.” Martin would know. The designer’s 2023 book, Mama Milano: Lessons from the Motherland, tackles how these values exist in stark opposition to those that are more commonly engrained in American upbringings. “Italy is another dimension,” Martin says, dressed in a few choice pieces of her “high-frequency” fashion line, which features bold prints and vibrational color palettes, an aesthetic approach that reflects the “divine mother energy” of Italy, where all of her production takes place.
We are sitting on a portico at Rocco Forte’s Verdura Resort in Sicily earlier this summer, overlooking the sea, as the warm afternoon light hangs low beyond the volcanic peaks in the distance. “The typical American tools of judgment, punishment, criticism, it’s-going-to-be-this-way-or-the-highway, do not work in this ecosystem,” Martin insists. “You have to learn how to operate from the heart here— from your intuitive centers—not your logic.” A typical American I have traveled to Italy to learn these hard-won lessons from Martin, and my other Vivre de Benne guide for the week, Irene Forte.
Growing up between London and Tuscany where she spent summers and holidays with her Italian mother’s family, Forte had a similar wellness awakening about 14 years ago. The second of hotelier Rocco Forte’s three children didn’t initially intend on joining the family business. But during an internship at Christie’s in Paris in 2011, the communications manager at what was then a newly opened Verdura Resort suddenly left and, in need of a quick replacement who could speak Italian, Forte convinced his daughter to make the trip to Sicily. Fourteen years later, Irene still seeks refuge on the Mediterranean island as the portfolio’s Wellness Consultant and the founder of Irene Forte Skincare, her eponymous skincare brand which launched seven years ago with 26 skus inspired by Verdura and the idea of creating skin rituals at the intersection of natura e scienza, where nature and science meet.
“I just loved being here,” Forte tells me of what drew her to the sprawling 568-acre seaside retreat, where the air smells of herbs and orchards dotted with sweet almonds and citrus. You could fill an entire afternoon with long walks through the gardens and olive groves, which provide the polyphenol-rich oil for all of Irene Forte Skincare’s non-water-based products. Forte and Martin had gathered a group of Vivre de Benne-seekers at the property on Sicily’s southern coast to lean into wellness and longevity, all’Italiana, and a very specific kind of holistic well-being at the heart of both of their brands.
“Longevity” is perhaps an even trickier word to translate in Italian as the wellness concept du jour— the idea of living longer, better—was essentially created by Mediterranean cultures, no cheek-swabbing and DNA testing required. This is nowhere more apparent than in Caltebellota, a small town of about 3,000 people in the nearby Sicani Mountains where Forte got married a few years ago, and that was recently identified as an emerging Blue Zone for its sizable population of centenarians and optimal altitude for clean air and mineral-rich soil and water. Leisurely strolling on its stone-paved winding streets with Forte and Martin is eye-opening. “It’s really a combination of what they eat, daily exercise, spirituality and family,” Forte says of the town’s healthy, older population that prioritize daily walks, locally-pressed olive oil, home-grown produce, and regular social rituals, from going to church on Sundays to eating meals with friends and family.
The same walk is an integral part of a new Irene Forte Longevity Programme that launched at the Verdura resort in July, intended to boost vitality with gentle movement, results oriented skincare treatments, food-sensitivity and diagnostic testing, as well as a soil-to-table menu designed by clinical nutritionist Giancarlo Giammarresi and the resort’s Creative Director of Food, Fulvio Pierangelini. Pierangelini, a genial man with a thick accent who oversees the food program across all eleven Rocco Forte hotels, is yet another ambassador of Vivre de Benne. While presiding over a cooking class featuring the most beautiful, just-plucked-from-the-vine tomatoes I have ever seen, he refused to use a knife. “Tomatoes hate the knife, they want to be caressed” he said, breaking the ripe red fruit apart with his hands. “Touch your food,” he encouraged us. “Close your eyes. Eat. Feel. Then, let go.”
The impassioned display provided a perfect, if unintentional, analogy to Forte’s clinically-validated formulas. She creates them with an Italian pharmacologist to ensure efficacy, but not at the expense of sensoriality. There’s an overarching philosophy that prioritizes skin health in the long-term over quick fixes and trend-based ingredients. “We don’t use anything that’s overly harsh. We don’t strip the skin. We’re certified for sensitive skin and we supply the skin with a lot of the omega-rich oils you find here,” Forte explains of the locally grown sweet almond oil, and the prickly pear seed and pistachio oils she has made cornerstones of some of her brand’s bestsellers. “In a world where everyone’s doing so many lasers, and everyone has sensitized skin, we are very much about giving the skin what it needs to look healthy, and stay healthy.”
It’s what makes standout products like the AHA-packed brightening Lemon Toner, the nourishing Prickly Pear Face Cream enriched with the smoothing neuropeptide Myoxinol, and the delectable Rose Body Oil, which features retexturizing Ximenynic acid, so appealing in Sicily, and beyond. Tucked away in my suitcase as a salve for endless summer travel that took me to the wilds of South Jersey, upstate New York, and mid-coast Maine, every application provided a reminder to breathe in, and slow down.
On the way back to New York from Sicily, opting for a layover instead of navigating the perils of Newark International Airport, an extended tarmac delay provided the perfect opportunity to lean into Vivre de Benne as a familiar wave of anxiety rippled through the group of editors I was traveling with. After a sweaty sprint through Rome’s Fiumicino airport, I DM’d Martin.
“I channeled you when our plane from Palermo was grounded for 1.5 hrs and we arrived with 20 minutes to make our connecting flight to JFK. All the Italians on board were unphased. ‘You’ll make it,’ they kept telling us. And we did!”
“Exactly,” Martin replied.
