Throughout the history of Antica Barbieria Colla it has often happened that the fathers have passed on the custom of serving themselves in our shop to their children, who have in turn become our customers in respect of a sort of family tradition.
Something similar happened with one of the most illustrious Milanese families, that of the Visconti di Modrone: Giuseppe Visconti di Modrone began to frequent the barbershop at the beginning of the twentieth century and continued until his death, then followed by several of his descendants, including his son Luchino Visconti di Modrone, one of the most important Italian directors and screenwriters of the twentieth century.
Franco Bompieri, who was his barber, says:
Text taken from Presi per i capelli by Franco Bompieri (Mondadori 2000)
« Visconti used to like high taper and short hair, short at an unspecified level, so he often accused me of having done everything wrong, giving me quick and playful fists on my shoulders.
I delude myself thinking of it as a way to establish a human relationship.
Visconti was the director who, with The Earth Will Tremble, but above all with Rocco and his brothers, had given dignity to poverty and immigration, the conditions of my first life.
Visconti was also the director of Senso, shot for the most part in my region, on the river Mincio, on the thread of a beloved Verdi: it was natural that I saw him with special eyes and soul.
No confusion: the interest and perhaps also the love Visconti carried for man and the things around him and that come to life from the passions and sufferings of which he gave unique representations, could never have filled our profound difference in social rank, but I am sure that more than a subtle thread was pulled between us. Perhaps because, as a son of a horsemanship, I was still wearing a well-known smell to Visconti who was, in his youth, a passionate breeder.
One day I asked him: “Why did you leave horses for theater, Mr. Count?” “Horses gave me great satisfaction, almost the best of what you can get from a living being, but they do not speak”. Despite The earth trembles, he was still a Visconti. »