Creatives Are the New Athletes
An Interview with Jenny and Phil of OBJECTS ARE BY
About: Jenny and Phil are advisors to In Search Of and are the founders of OBJECTS ARE BY- a future-conscious homewear brand + creative studio. They are a power couple (Jenny is the ex-CBO of Versace, Phil is an artist and creative director), living and creating in Milan. I had the pleasure of sitting down with both of them to hear more about what inspired their recent book, their take on Milan, longevity and their newest project - a teahouse!
While everyone’s obsessing over their VO2 max and ordering another supplement, we’re missing the people who’ve actually figured out how to live well: creatives.
I’m talking about the people who obsess over their craft the way biohackers obsess over their bloodwork. Who understand that to create anything worth a damn, you need a clean body and a clearer mind. The difference? Creativity isn’t linear. Which means these people are better equipped than anyone to understand that health isn’t either.
Here’s where it gets interesting: many of them stay up at night to create. They fly across time zones to play shows, to shoot, to perform. Everything a longevity guru would tell you is actively shaving years off your life.
And yet.
Creatives often have something most people grinding through Huberman protocols don’t: neuroplasticity on steroids.
Your brain ages faster than most organs, and these people are naturally working it out in ways a crossword puzzle could never touch. Research backs this up - a 2019 study in Aging & Mental Health found that engaging in creative activities is associated with lower mortality risk and better overall health outcomes. Another study from UC San Francisco showed that creative engagement literally changes brain structure, increasing gray matter density in regions associated with emotional regulation and cognitive flexibility. Creative people show better stress recovery patterns than non-creative controls, according to research in The Arts in Psychotherapy.
Maybe we’ve been looking at the wrong athletes this whole time.
I had the honor of writing a forward to a book called Keys to Milan, where Jenny and Phil, shot over 100 Polaroids of key creatives in the city. The project captures something essential: that creativity isn’t just about output: it’s about how you move through the world, who you surround yourself with, and the intentional friction you introduce into your life.
Here is the full interview with the authors:
Julia: This book you did with Polaroid featuring over 100 creatives - what inspired it?
Phil: We wanted to create something well-rounded. We’ve all seen “top 10 creatives in Milan” lists. But for us, creativity here is wide-ranging: the chef, the bar owner, the architect, the painter, the graffiti artist. We wanted to understand what that looks like holistically.
Jenny: Milan is booming right now. The Milanese creative community inspires us so much. What’s exciting is that it’s definitely on the global map, yet there’s still room for additional development, creativity, and growth. The level of talent here is world-class!
The name Keys to Milan came from how Milan doesn’t show off.
Keys to Milan Launch Event, April 2025
Julia: How did you choose who made it in the book?
Jenny: Most people were either those who inspired us or people who were already in our immediate community: a lot are existing or future collaborators. But it’s also about people who are good at participating and contributing to community. For example, a friend used to be an editor at Vogue and now she’s building a hiking club. That’s not the traditional creative trajectory, but she’s contributing to the creative community.
We were walking to get one of the pictures and passed a graffiti wall, then a fashion showroom, then a publication office. We said, “This is Milan.” It’s everything. There’s a graffiti artist and a tattoo artist next to an editor of a magazine.
Phil: That’s what makes Milan special. Like the salons in Paris - you’d have a writer sitting next to a painter sitting next to a scientist. It’s the spirit of this city where Leonardo da Vinci had such a strong impact. In LA, I have friends in Hollywood and friends who are artists, and none of them know each other. Here there’s this overlap, which is really inspiring.
Keys to Milan Launch Event, April 2025. Jenny & Phil with Tamu McPhearson.
Julia: Give me a highlight from shooting all these people.
Jenny: Edward Buchanan stood out - the first creative director of Bottega Veneta ever, a powerful voice in Milan as an African American who’s been here about 20 years. Going to his house, we talked about 2000s New York, the ‘90s, people we hadn’t thought of in such a long time.
The next day we went to Francesco Risso, Marni’s creative director at the time. He took an old cheese factory and turned it into his house. You get to touch what they’re working on, and a lot of times it’s stuff they don’t publicize. Even if you know someone for a certain title, they’re doing 20 other things you’re not hearing about.
Phil: The name Keys to Milan came from how Milan doesn’t show off. You arrive, you don’t think it’s amazing right away. People who don’t take time to connect really don’t like Milan. You need to have the keys to the city. And we realized the key to the city is the people. Full circle, it became the key that led us into people’s houses and studios.
Julia: You’re technically healthier than anyone else just by being creative - your brain is better. But you also have a very specific longevity routine. Walk me through it.
Phil: Health and wellness has been a conscious part of our lives forever. I’ve been vegetarian since I was three and vegan since I was 14.
Jenny: We’ve been doing wellness things before the concept of wellness and longevity was popularized.
Phil: We’ve been vegan together for about five years. That goes to other wellness practices that are very ritualistic. I wasn’t working out as much before - now she pushes me.
Jenny: I’m slightly more active than Phil. But we’re big tea drinkers. We love the outcome of tea - there’s tea that’s energizing, calming, detoxifying. There’s a solution in the tea world for everything.
Phil: It’s tied to gut health, metabolism, vitality. In China, they put tea leaves in corners of factories because it sucks in toxins. It does the same thing in your body: it’s a detoxifier, great for cell longevity
Jenny at The Ranch earlier this year.
Jenny: I’m not a big coffee person, so he’ll have coffee, I’ll have tea in the morning. Every night he makes me a tea - usually peppermint or a nighttime blend. Recently I went to The Ranch in Malibu. I’m already vegan, so the diet portion of the retreat wasn’t difficult. The more challenging and rewarding part was that they push you every day, you’re hiking two to four hours, then you work out, and then you do these workshops like energy work or...
What I loved was being away from my phone. You’re out in nature, touching grass, and there’s a sense of community. They had amazing teachers: meditation, a sound bath, someone who studied Qigong and Tai Chi. I took some of those practices on. If I don’t feel like doing yoga, I’ll just do some gentle Tai Chi or Qigong moves.
Ferdinando Verderi & Jenny Pham
Julia: What Milan spots do you go to where you feel creative?
Phil: Milan has incredible natural wine bars right now: Bar Nico, Ultramarino, Bar Paradiso. Very cool, well-designed spaces. But one place it’s lacking is day spaces where you can hang out.
Jenny: Day spaces aren’t super common here. It used to be very traditional - everyone works, then everyone eats lunch at the same time. Very predictable. Now there are more freelancers working in cafes with laptops, but that culture isn’t common here like in New York or LA.
We took this idea of our love for tea and a need to meet people in the daytime and we’re launching a teahouse.
Julia: Is there a name?
Jenny: CROMO teahouse. Cromo has different meanings: It means chrome in italian, it means color in greek, it also is short for chromosome. We love that it’s open-ended. And I love the link to chromosome because it has a wellness tie.
Phil: What’s missing is a focus on health and wellness in Milan in an accessible way. There are longevity spas if you have money. If you don’t, it’s harder. For us, it was about creating a space that feels democratized, where anybody can come and have tea that actually gives you benefits. It’s not all focused on alcohol. This is our current obsession.
Julia: Most places in pretend they’re about longevity - there’s no real longevity. Getting an LED mask in a fancy spa affects you less than having tea in a community surrounded by good design.
Jenny: That’s exciting for us. We hope it’s also a space for creatives in Milan. That’s the real goal.
Phil: Where do we bring friends in the middle of the day? We don’t know where to go. So let’s create that space where the community can come together. Like the salons in Paris - where the thinker and the scientist and the artist and the musician can all sit together at the table.
Julia: And then life comes full circle. The only longevity study we have is the Harvard one about community. So you’re doing exactly that!
Jenny and Phil are doing something that should reframe how we think about wellness entirely. They’re not building a supplement brand or a biohacking lab. They’re building the space where the most neuroplastically advanced people on the planet can gather, drink tea, and do what they do best: make unexpected connections.
Because that’s the thing about creatives: they’ve always understood what the longevity world is just starting to grasp. Health isn’t about control, but about adaptability and community. And mostly, It’s about building a life that makes you want to stay in it.
The CROMO teahouse opens in Milan soon (see their first pop up here). And if you’re keeping score, that’s one more reason the creatives are winning.
Follow Jenny and Phil at Objects Are By and explore Keys to Milan here.
Sharing with friends in Milan!♥️