Andra

Milan native Andra, 21, is a biomedical student by day and a ballet dancer by night. Based in the hip outer fringes of historic Porta Romana, with Rem Koolhaas’ Fondazione Prada as its scruffy artistic star, she is an Italian woman of the 21st century.

Forward-looking but with a few old-fashioned fascinations—from antique leather books hand-bound in Firenze to the long-forgotten art of “arcieri medievali” (medieval archery).

As she dances between the demands of school and the studio, this well-dressed ballerina likes to catch her breath in Bonvini, a century-old stationary shop filled with Olivetti typewriters, its own Heidelberg press, and over a hundred years’ worth of wax-sealed secrets. If her classic-meets-contemporary wardrobe in romantic Renaissance hues is any clue, the always-in-vogue Andra—like Botticelli’s Venus in a boxy puff vest—prefers to keep one satin-covered foot in the past and the other firmly in the future.