A few months ago I did a post on stylist, singer and fashion director Namalee winning the Sound & Vision (S&V) competition. The party finally took place last week at the Yurban Music Club in Thiene, near Bassano del Grappa where S&V is actually based. The event was a sort of double celebration in honour of Namalee and of S&V magazine’s 5th anniversary. 
Though there was a public transport strike in Italy I miraculously managed to get there (I was on a mission from God…). Bassano is a nice town in the Veneto region, a place full of bars where you can drink great grappa and wine. I have some good friends over there (in random order…Daniele, Giorgio, Margherita, Martina, Ilaria, Carla, I’m sure I’m forgetting somebody here…sorry). 
The party at the Yurban started with six catwalks organised by a few shops based around the Bassano area. The best ones were the vintage/urban wear shops such as Treviso-based Hanger with its colourful garments, sequinned jackets and shorts and a relaxed and careless attitude. The Hanger team took a few funny pics with Namalee backstage a few moments before her performance. Yes, you heard well, I said performance. The S&V competition was about voting for the coolest MySpace profile among some of the best designers, illustrators, singers, bands, party organisers and troublemakers I interviewed over a year. The deal was that the winner had to show the readers what made them so cool. The people I interviewed in the last twelve months were very different one from the other and I must admit that, though I desperately wanted Namalee to win, I often wondered if S&V readers would have voted for her. 
Would Italians readers like her maxi-maximalism, her music and her style? Well, a second after Namalee went on stage - clad in a black catsuit and a Basso and Brooke multi-coloured corset and wearing Irregular Choice boots, Minnie Mouse ears and a massive smiley face necklace made of Lego bricks - I realised the answer to my questions was a definite “yes”. It was incredible how in just three songs Namalee won them over. Not sure if it was the rhythm of 'Namazonia' or the energy of 'U Glo Grrrl', but the audience absolutely loved her mixture of electro-pop-punk. 
At the end of this mini-gig there were smiling and happy faces all around, and it was then that I understood the reason why people voted for Namalee: her optimism and SuperSuper aesthetics proved absolutely irresistible to our readers. With financial crises all over the world and with a major political crisis in Italy (we gave Namalee a crash course in the latter, that’s why she probably can't stand us anymore…) she was definitely a welcomed antidote to gloom and doom. Bless her.
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