We dressed the American style. Today at the Metropolitan Museum in New York opens the first part of the exhibition In America: A Lexicon of Fashion; the second one – An Anthology of Fashion – is going to open in May 2022. In terms of self-celebration the Americans are champions; just like the French. Lucky them. But in terms of fashion, luxury brands are rare exceptions. On the other hand they’re brilliant communicators, brave and skilled in marketing, but not always able to leave the mark with memorable collections. “American fashion” is, indeed, more referred to an idea of style and talks about a self-referential culture, everything but inclusive. “American fashion” is Brooke Shields in Calvin Klein denim, Ralph Lauren’s Hamptons, the Studio 54 star system celebrated by Halston. It’s a mood. Not by chance the ambassador of fashion worldwide has been an Italian, Franca Sozzani. Anna Wintour has never been able to bring Italian and French designers on New York catwalks, like she’d like to (for years).

Other subversive. The cover of Style Magazine shows a kind of aesthetics we’re not used to anymore. The politically correct idea of beauty diffused nowadays has been and will be essential to convey an inclusive signal even from who, for example the fashion press, privileged a single idea of image in the past. But if we have to be inclusive, let’s include also the classic beauty (that we don’t dislike at all). On the cover, the 80s reference is pretty clear; the photographic technique, the casting, the grooming and the styling remind us the era of the beautiful and unattainable. While the clothes, by Alessandro Sartori for Ermenegildo Zegna XXX, are the combination of the contaminations and a creative path that, in the last years, have overturned the codes of conformism and tradition of a historic brand looking for contemporaneity.

“Too much” is trendy. What we considered “too much” in the past, now reviewed, modified and updated, is trendy. Maybe it’s not chic, but it’s fashionable. That’s why even an old picture of the frontman of the Albatros, a very young, big-haired and furry Toto Cutugno, looks like a modern one. This pic is from 1976, the period of committed songwriters on one side, and on the other the period of heartbreaking, half-spoken songs just like Volo AZ 504 by the Albatros, that the band presented at Sanremo Music Festival featuring the beautiful singer Silvia Dionisio. The highest top of this genre was reached by Patti Pravo with Incontro. But the same success was achieved by Claudia Mori with the unforgotten Buonasera dottore. Really pop.

The perfect single. In 2009 A single man, directed by Tom Ford, was out in cinemas. The cinematographic adaptation of the novel by Christopher Isherwood got an Oscar nomination and won a Coppa Volpi for Best Male Actor (Colin Firth, playing the part of the californian professor George Falconer). The novel lingers neither on the care that Falconer has for his appearance, nor on the nearly obsessive attention to details that, instead, represents a key element in the movie. Who internalized the figure of the professor thanks to Isherwood’s virtuosity, and then watched Ford’s adaptation, could have been annoyed by the softened and cold perfection of the character. The same thing happened for his bestfriend, Charlotte, interpreted by a sensational Julianne Moore. Tom Ford projected himself onto Falconer, even if he keeps the dramatic nature of the story. This would be Firth’s look (with accessories) if the story would have been set in 2016 instead of 1962. Tom Ford portrayed by Terry Richardson for Style Magazine (2009).

The pinstriped doublebreasted. The peaked lapels. The silk shirt and the scarf knotted around the neck. The first steps of masculine/feminine by Tom Ford for Gucci in the early Nineties. Top Model Larry Scott, Picture by Davide Cernuschi, Styling Alessandro Calascibetta.