This week we attempt an impossible mission. We’ll try to put together two opposite styles, but with music in common. The cover of the LP by Fabrizio De Andrè and PFM, of 1979, that I found in the book Pop life: a life on the cover by the art director Luciano Tallarini, recalls the pictures by Hedi Slimane. Not for the technique – Slimane’s black&white is very defined and the lights are sharp – but the guitar and the “raw” set make us think about his shoots dedicated to pop-rock stars. Our try is to mix, through menswear, the radical mood belonging to both categories: the aggressive one, from the leather rock world, with the softer and anticonformistic one, from the 70s songwriters, from De Andrè to James Taylor. The coexistence gives birth to a new outcome that redefines these getups placing them in a more modern setting. The cover of “In concert”, album by Fabrizio De Andrè with Premiata Forneria Marconi (1979).

(Revisited) Icons. Is there a way to update an iconic style? It’s difficult, because the icon has a precise symbolic meaning, which is “untouchable”. The English poet Thom Gunn (1929-2004) chose to move to San Francisco to come out. In those years, the Sixties, even in the States this matter was a taboo (it doesn’t mean that now it’s a bed of roses…). In the picture on the right we see Gunn in a biker-casual outfit: checked shirt, gun belt and jeans. An iconic attire, in fact, adopted by many Hollywood stars, from Steve McQueen to Jude Law (when he’s far from the red carpet, of course). It reminds us the costumes of Brokeback Mountain, just to stay on the topic. Well, this week I throw down the guantlet: I try to “debunk” that old-fashioned image with a base close to the original, but with a modern styling. Look at the pictures, and tell me if I’m wrong. The English poet Thom Gunn