This episode forms the 1st part of a special trilogy featuring the escapades of the amazing Francesca Sorrenti. Francesca and I are also joined on this trilogy by our dear friend Karl Plewka, stylist and editor of Beauty Papers magazine who I invited to join me to do the interview. This special Trilogy of interviews I have chosen to call The Godmother. Like Mario Puzo’s fictional Sicilian-American family of the The Godfather series, the Sorrentis are to fashion what the Corleones were to organised crime. It all began with a girl from Brooklyn called Francesca whose epic story commences in the vibrant music scene of Manhattan in the late sixties. Fran, as she is know to her friends, later gave birth to Mario, now a legendary fashion photographer, Vanina, a stylist & photographic artist and the late Davide, a searingly brilliant young photographer whose untimely death in Feb 1997 has led Fran to campaign for the protection and treatment of young people in the fashion industry. Now a recent documentary, book and exhibition of Davide’s work have received critical acclaim and as the Sorrenti dynasty reaches it’s 3rd generation, as Mario’s photographer daughter Gray’s star begins to ascend, now seems like the perfect time to hear Fran’s story from the beginning. And it is a blockbuster of The Godfather proportions. So sit down, get comfortable, and enjoy part 1