The elegance of mixing. Softness, romance and disorder, three keywords that depict a man that’s inclined to handle his own look, and to take the risk of not being completely in line with the codes of traditional menswear. In this column I’ve already written about what I think in terms of a more contemporary attitude, but I understand that mixing genres could be not so accepted by the Italian general public. Elsewhere this mix has been legitimized for quite a long time. But, you know: we’re one of the most conservative countries in Europe. But don’t say that Tony Musante doesn’t embody a universal and traditional masculine aesthetics. And yet, the “frilly” accessory doesn’t jar. This week’s picture portrays him in the backstage of Anonimo Veneziano, directed by Enrico Maria Salerno, out in 1970, one of the first (Italian) movies that focused on the hypocrisies of traditional family. Upstream and nonconformist, indeed.

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That rétro touch. Without harking back to the same movies, those sporty-stylish cult-movies like the much-mentioned Chariots of Fire that made our Milena Canonero win the Academy Award for Costume Design, today we can reinterpret that college/preppy vintage taste with a modern aesthetic language. It’s possible thanks to the prompts coming from many designers, able to mix an actual feeling with a retro mood loved by anyone, less and very young. The basis to reach a pleasant and convincing styling, consists in knowing how to match with the right balance the Old with the New. How? For example using accessories bought in second-hand shops. That’s the secret. Be cool and modern but softening the potential overstatement of the clothes with linen socks, watches, rings and shoes in The Great Gatsby‘s style. Just to mention another much-mentioned movie, sometimes improperly. But not this time.

Not details. Eric Bergère, art director, journalist and stylist, born in 1960, in a portrait by Terence Donovan in 1988. Bergère styling is perfectly in line with those years: exaggerated and pompous. Obsessive about details: when he didn’t wear the tie, he wore the cache-col, inserted into the neck of the shirt buttoned up to the third button. With the tie he always wore the silky pocket-handkerchief, matched with the tie. The sideburns were still long, last traces of the 70s grooming; the hair instead were in very 80s style, smoothed back with hair gel. In almost 30 years shapes have changed, but in today’s collections we can see the checked moulinex on blazers and the houndstooth on trousers; rarely the paisley prints on ties. But the pocket hankie is still “missing”.

It reminds me… He was not charming, nor good-looking. But sometimes he was wonderful. Lucio Battisti appeared very rarely even in the golden years of RAI. He barely took part in only one Festival of Sanremo, in 1969 in a duet with Wilson Pickett with Un’avventura. First and last time. Lucio Battisti never made concerts, the only live appearance was in 1972 for Teatro 10, in a duet with Mina. Battisti’s voice could reach high keys, a kind of falsetto, sometimes nearly touching the bad note; but the timbre was deep, heartfelt, enchanting, touching. Among the very few pictures of him, if we don’t include those shot for the albums’ covers (but since 1979 he didn’t want to appear even on them), those by Cesare Monti, shot in his country house during his free time, stand out. In his free singing (canto libero, from one of his song), Battisti wrote the most beautiful pages of italian pop music and transmitted a sense of privacy and nostalgia, a lonely inspiration that infected other great songwriters like De Gregori and Fossati.