Agatha Relota Luczo and regeneration on the green slopes of Sicily

As we reached the end of the dirt road, a tall metal gate marked ‘Bona Furtuna’ signaled our arrival. Agatha Relota Luczo welcomed us with a warm, radiant smile. Whether it was her genuine kindness or the breathtaking landscape before me—endless green expanses infused with an intoxicating blend of scents—I couldn’t say but at that moment, one thought was certain: Sicily is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Although she lives between Paris and Corleone, Agatha immediately tells me that she loves spending summers in Croatia. It was hard not to touch on her origins at the very beginning, bringing a shared smile to both our faces. “My parents are actually from Bosnia, but they moved to America about 60 years ago. I grew up in New York speaking Croatian at home, and on Friday nights we had Croatian folk dance classes, which was really fun,” she recalls, adding: “I often say that ‘we from the region’ are actually everywhere. It happened to me so often in New York that during a business meeting or interview I’d meet people from Croatia or Serbia—someone always knows someone from our part of the world. My child’s godmother is from Belgrade, and even our PR assistant is half Croatian.”

Here on the Sicilian estate La Furtuna, magic begins, and at the center of this story is a promise Agatha’s husband, Steve Luczo, made to his grandmother Rose when he was just ten years old: that he would bring back the family land where his Italian ancestors were born. Their journey to find this land began more than 16 years ago, and when they finally found their piece of paradise, it was just a small, dilapidated, abandoned stone house. They decided to buy it and fulfill the promise, and gradually their desire to preserve their heritage turned into an emotional story far greater than any idea they had originally imagined. Over time, they purchased the surrounding lands, and today the estate covers around 300 hectares. Situated between two mountains, Castro and Barraù (whose name in Arabic means “to the sea,” because once you climb to its peak, you can see all the way to Sicily’s coast and the sea, even though it’s an hour and a half away), the estate is a sanctuary for numerous plant species. Their efforts have contributed to conservation and biodiversity in everything they’ve done since purchasing the land.

“Through a mutual friend, we met Sicilian Pasquale Mimmo Marino, a skilled botanist and agronomist who had already spent years studying Sicily’s flora and fauna, had written a book on protected species, and collaborated with universities. He offered to run the farm for us,” Agatha explains how they achieved the fact that today, 80% of the land is a protected biological area, all living organisms are fed with spring water, and starting from the soil, everything here is organic and treated exclusively with nature. When you hike through the valley (yes, it’s that vast), you can fill your water bottle from numerous springs along the way. “Sicily has this magical soil full of minerals and volcanic ash, which nourishes the plants and makes them full of fantastic nutrients. This is, above all, a regenerative farm; from 500 plant species and 50 medicinal plants growing on our estate to 12,000 olive trees that produce our award-winning extra virgin olive oil. The Biancolilla Centinara variety of olive tree was on the brink of extinction, and now we have 4,000 trees here on the farm,” says Agatha as we stop by the “bee village,” where bees live a rather happy and dynamic life—I find myself almost wistfully longing for their conditions. “The black Sicilian bees were also once endangered, and here we are nurturing them to help preserve their population.”

Twelve years ago, they started producing extra virgin olive oil, and thus the brand Bona Furtuna was born, which regularly wins awards worldwide. Agatha, who is also a certified olive oil sommelier, tells me how much she adores it, calling it “liquid gold.” “I’m obsessed with olive oil. Every day, I take a shot of our LXR06 extra virgin olive oil on an empty stomach. I cook with it, bake with it—I do everything with olive oil. In our Mediterranean culture, everything revolves around it.” As she said this, I remembered how my mother often applied pure olive oil to her skin for beauty. “It’s a fountain of beauty and essential for health, which is why it’s also the main ingredient in our Furtuna Skin cosmetics,” Agatha continues, explaining the parallel story that unfolds alongside the production of the oil on their farm. She launched this premium clean beauty brand after realizing the treasure their fields provide, already well aware of the harm caused by industrial cosmetics. Modeling, which she began at the age of just 16, opened the door to that world. One moment she was spotted on the streets of New York, and the next she was on a plane to Paris as the new face chosen by the great Karl Lagerfeld for the house of Chanel. During her successful career, she worked with numerous industry experts, learning from them and falling in love with the beauty universe. “While working fashion shows in Paris, I discovered micellar water and the importance of evening out skin tone, so I recreated it as part of our brand,” she tells me, highlighting that she had always thought about creating products, but pregnancy made her most aware of the toxicity of the ingredients we expose our bodies to.

“Our skin is our largest and most important organ — what we absorb through it into our bloodstream is just as important as the food we eat. Our Mimmo has discovered over 500 wild plant species growing on the farm, and we know that wild plants are more potent than cultivated ones. Our plants share nutrients with other plants, communicate with each other, and grow in all areas of the farm — even on mountain rocks, making them extremely resilient. These are what we call extremophytes, evolutionarily adapted to survive and rich in powerful active ingredients.” Agatha is involved in the entire process of their farm-to-skin philosophy, which is why transparency in Furtuna Skin products is crucial for the story’s consistency and sustainability, something their team of botanists and product development scientists in their Milan laboratory also work on. I learned that they use a soundbath extraction method to obtain nutrients from the plants, done within an extremely short time frame to preserve everything valuable in them.

At the beginning of launching the brand, just five years ago, Agatha had no idea what success awaited. Hailey Bieber, Julianne Moore, and Kourtney Kardashian are fans of her products, and she doesn’t even know them personally. As she says, this is one of the “proofs of the organic success of this beauty story.”

“With every project my husband and I undertake in life, we ask ourselves — how can we use it to make the world a better place? Everything we do with the farm is our way of giving back to nature, to the community by educating and employing people, and to help boost the local economy here in Sicily,” Agatha tells me about the principles that make this an undeniably important story about nature, sustainability, and people. She emphasizes her love for this land “where you can almost feel its heartbeat.”

“When I need to escape the city and its chaos, I come here to ground myself, drink spring water, and listen to the birds. This nature is incredible, and the abundance of potential that grows here is extraordinary. Give it a little love, and it will return it a hundredfold.” I also ask her how she manages to be the mother of four children. She laughs and says that she has the best children in the world and that the support of her husband and family means a lot to her — along with getting enough sleep, though she admits with a smile that sleep is the one thing she’s always missing. But ever since she turned 40, she’s been taking care of herself in many ways, emphasizing how important that is, always returning to olive oil as her most important beauty ritual. “I never skip my morning shot of olive oil; it’s incredibly important for gut microbes, glucose levels, it’s rich in antioxidants, and it soothes inflammatory processes in the body…”

With a view of the sunset behind the green Sicilian hills, it became clear that health here is not just found in top-quality cosmetics and exceptional olive oil but also in a positive approach to life, profound respect for nature and the community, and a desire to make that respect a legacy for all future generations.