Close your eyes and rewind the tape of your memory to Milan, Italy, circa 1985-86. Now stop. Play. If the geolocation software of your memory works fine you will find yourself around Piazza San Babila. The place is crowded with young people hanging around the recently opened fast food joints, dressed with the uniforms of those years - Moncler padded jackets in bright colours, Best Company sweatshirts, Armani or Americanino jeans, Burlington socks, Timberland shoes, El Charro belts; Naj-Oleari bags are instead a must for the girls.
These groups of young people (most of them scions of wealthy families who could afford this lifestyle of casual yet expensive brands) belong to a local subculture, they are indeed the "paninari" behind Pet Shop Boys' famous hit.
Some of the brands favoured by the paninari transformed and mutated, others were forgotten, among them also El Charro. The brand was launched decades earlier by a young man called Marcello Murzilli. The son of wealthy parents based in Rome, Murzilli had spent his early twenties travelling through Mexico, Bolivia, Peru, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.
Once he returned to Italy he tried to combine the American Dream with Italian style, Western traditions and Milanese elegance, first by importing small products such as belts and other handmade products, then launching his own label - El Charro.
The "paninari" weren't the only ones who fell for El Charro products: many fashion legends report indeed that even Gianni Agnelli, known for his elegance, would wear every now and the designs produced by this brand.
El Charro went through a crisis in the late '80s, then changed direction and tried to adapt to the new rhythms of fashion, but never went back to the level of trendiness it had reached with the paninari.
Now, press Stop and send forward the tape of your memory. Go back to the present times and relocate to Florence. Here, among the various events that took place during the Pitti Uomo trade show in the last few days, there was also a special runway dedicated to Dorian Stefano Tarantini's new brand, M1992.
The founder and Creative Director of Malibu 1992, Tarantini initially started M1992 as a video-art project a couple of years ago, but has so far worked as a DJ and music consultant.
Invited for mysterious reasons surely not linked to originality and talent to show his new collection during the Pitti trade show, Tarantini brought on the runway a veritable disaster (mind you, Magliano was another Pitti mess we'd rather forget...).
Tarantini opted indeed for a mix of '80s wide massive padded shouldered silhouettes as reinvented by Demna Gvasalia at Vêtements/Balenciaga, and mixed it with the paninari tropes.
So you got fake Moncler padded jackets (and padded mini-skirts for a change...mind you, the women's looks seemed as bland as the men's), sheepskin or denim jackets lined with faux fur (yes, another solid trope of those years...) and then plenty of El Charro belts, T-shirts and sweatshirts.
There were even jackets embroidered with El Charro's iconic roses, and, for a change, Tarantini threw in shirts with lame slogans such as "Montenapo" (hinting at the fashionable Via Monte Napoleone in Milan), or with images of a Nintendo Power Glove (could this be a copyright infringement case?) and an '80s mobile phone for that frisson of '80s nerdishness suspended between modern series such as Stranger Things and Regular Show.
Some models also wore "Paninaro - Milano" scarves and T-shirts for the benefit of the millennials who weren't there and who can now join in the fad 30 years later.
Up until seeing the clothes on M1992 runway I personally believed the return of El Charro was just a personal nightmare of mine.
It turned instead into a tangible reality in this collection that proved terribly weak from different points of view.
First of all, the paninari were nothing but a symbol of consumerism, they weren't indeed there to rebel, but to conform. Politically speaking, quite a few of them displayed a fascination with the right wing (critics used to say they were the heirs of the fascists who used to meet around Piazza San Babila), even though their faith in Timberland and Moncler was stronger than any political ideal they may have had.
In a way they were united by their passion for designer shoes and clothes rather than by an in-depth identity.
Yet M1992's lazy exercise in revomiting the past also brought with it another issue: here we have another DJ turned designer. In the last few years we have seen musicians à la Kanye West or Rihanna and DJs à la Marcelo Burlon becoming fashion designers.
So, as our readers may remember, we went from Takeji Hirakawa's "Fashion DJ" turning into a professional "Fashion Remixer", to the DJ becoming a polymath genius.
Sadly, though, M1992's collection shows that some DJs shouldn't also be fashion designers.
Mind you, Tarantini can't be entirely blamed for this mess: he must have looked at Demna Gvasalia's Vêtements and must have thought that, if people are buying into repackaged trends, they will also buy into revomited designs from the '80s.
Guess the only people who may be happy if the paninari ever return are the Pet Shop Boys as they may be able to re-release their track for the third time. As they are also on Dior's Homme S/S 18 campaign and have their hit "Heart" on the Dior adverts this may be a good time for them to do so. But for the rest of us it feels like we are living in 1986.
What did you say? Fashion goes in circles? Oh yes, it does, but now it seems that, rather than going forward, we are going backwards and what's worse is that, by doing so, we may accidentally reimport some of the most obnoxious trends from the past. You don't believe me? Well, you'd better trust me, I have spent part of my teenage years closely observing the wannabe paninari in my class sitting in genuine discomfort during the lessons while their engraved Western-inspired El Charro belt buckles pressed on their vital organs (no, there were/are no uniforms in Italian schools...) and laughing my heart out at their stupidity.
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