About Me

Elena Roussey

Journalist · Vintage & Antique Dealer · Founder and Editor of Morante Boutique

I could explain how Morante came about by telling you that I have "always been passionate about antiques." That I spent my childhood wandering around flea markets in search of "hidden treasures." That I have always been fascinated by "objects with a story", admired "the craftsmanship of a bygone age," felt the "soul of old things," and dreamed of "giving forgotten treasures a new life."

I could.

But I won’t, because none of it is true.

That’s not me at all.

I spent many years working as a journalist, editor and editor-in-chief for online publications. Later, I created my own popular travel website.

And there was one particular part of the job I always enjoyed more than anything else.

Back before artificial intelligence, when people still went to libraries and actually searched the internet themselves (God, yes, I remember that), getting to the bottom of a difficult subject meant working your way through enormous amounts of information. Separating fact from fiction. Checking sources. Finding what mattered. Comparing different theories, arguments and points of view. And then making sense of the whole thing.

The best part came afterwards: explaining it all as simply as two plus two to someone who, the day before, had no idea the subject even existed.

I particularly loved subjects with no single right answer. The ones where different schools of thought, methods and approaches collided. Where experts could make equally convincing arguments for completely opposite conclusions.

I was never interested in picking a side and declaring everyone else an idiot. It was much more interesting to understand why they disagreed, where one approach worked and another did not, and eventually find a sensible way through that was actually useful in practice.

Yes. I like difficult problems.

And then, one day, old things started appearing in my life.

I live in France, where, as everyone knows, money is simply lying around on the ground. At least, that is what people who don’t live here seem to believe. Dolls, toys, household objects from the last century and the century before...

And I was delighted to discover that the world of antiques and vintage comes with an almost unlimited supply of difficult problems.

Conflicting dates. Wrong attributions. Makers who have all but disappeared without a trace. Worn marks, faded catalogues and old advertisements. Descriptions written by one seller years ago and copied by the next fifty — until eventually Google confidently presents them as fact.

I felt quite at home.

For several years, I put all of this to work in the world of vintage, antiques and e-commerce.

And then came Morante.

It could hardly have happened any other way.

I find objects that interest me. I research them. Sometimes I discover that the story behind an object is far more interesting than the object itself. Sometimes I discover that what everyone says about it is not quite true. And sometimes a question becomes so interesting that it turns into an article of its own.

And so the journalist and the antique dealer finally stopped looking like two completely unrelated professions in my biography.

Morante Boutique is where these two sides of my work come together: finding interesting old objects and uncovering their stories. In Morante’s Notes, I write about discoveries, makers, design, attribution — and whatever else turns up when you start digging a little deeper.

That is also where Morante’s motto comes from:

For Those Who See the Difference.

Because seeing the difference does not require some mysterious gift, exquisite taste or secret knowledge of old things.

Sometimes you simply need to know where to look.

And explaining what to look for is exactly what I do.

Welcome to the Morante Universe!