Sanremo Fashion: When Costume Met Couture
Between the 1970s and 1990s, Sanremo’s costumes were meant for (moderate) shock and awe
As much as Sanremo is Italy’s most eminent music festival, the event is hardly just a music show: the songs are just one component of a variety-style tv show known for its hosts, performers, comic interludes, and the endless stream of discourse that arises after each night. Needless to say, fashion has become the subject of discussion just as much as the songs.
In the current era, costumes exist to make a singer’s performance go viral on social media: think of Achille Lauro’s glam-rock unitards in 2020, of Paola and Chiara’s 2022 metal-corset-adorned chainmail-like gowns (from Dolce and Gabbana’s 2007 collection) and of this year’s BigMama, outfitted like a 1920s Cabaret performer, or Mahmood, looking like a futuristic reinterpretation of a Greek statue thanks to Rick Owens’s draped tunic.
When it comes to the female co-hosts, the gowns they wear are just a showcase of a designer’s couture collection, and they tend to safely play with red-carpet-ready tropes (ball gown, mermaid gowns, high slits, lots of chiffon). Singers, however, have to convey creativity, innovation, and, to the extent deemed acceptable by national tv standards, transgression. And while now all of this results into social-media and meme bait, between the 1970s and the1990s, Sanremo’s costume and fashion department had reached a delicate balance between couture and variety-like spectacular fashions.
For the sake of coherence, we will just discuss the looks of singers who had some affinity with Italian and/or Italo disco, even though they did not necessarily present a disco-infused track at Sanremo.
1970s
Color tv did not arrive in Italy until after 1976, and, as a consequence, clothes were not particularly outré until the late 1970s.
The first appearance of ska and Italo disco diva Donatella Rettore at the Sanremo music festival took place in 1977 with “Oh Carmela.” On that occasion, she wore an outfit that still looks current to this day: a tunic-like shirt and black leggings tucked into cowboy boots, topped with a long, voluminous bob.
When Anna Oxa first debuted on the stage of Sanremo in 1978, her outfit consisted of a menswear-inspired three-piece suit, complete with a waistcoat, and her hair was slicked back. To offset the overall gender-bending component, she sported a heavily editorial, almost Cleopatra-like makeup, complete with maroon eyeshadow and eyeliner. Overall, the styling clearly contrasted with the borderline-operatic nature of her song “Un’emozione da poco.”
1980s
The 80s were the decade where the balance between couture and costuming reached its peak, where outfits were, in equal measure, creativity, virtuosity, and artifice.
Take the singer Marina Lai. When she presented “Centomila Amori Miei” in 1982, she wore a black fan-pleated jumpsuit by Krizia, with bold shoulders and exaggerated barrel-shaped wide legs. In a way, it’s reminiscent of Kansai Yamamoto’s famous jumpsuit worn by David Bowie.
In 1983, synth pop group Matia Bazar presented “Vacanze Romane” and on that occasion, front woman Antonella Ruggiero wore a 1940s-inspired two-piece suit and performed in a way that would have been perfectly at home in a David Lynch film. The strength of that performance lay in the juxtaposition of the 1940s vocals and visuals with the synth and electronic-heavy instrumentation. In addition, they performed on an elevated stage platform, which gave the performance an even more otherworldly feel.
Visually, Patty Pravo dominated the 1984 edition of the festival: she wore a high-priestess-like lurex gown by Versace coupled by a geometric hairstyle with blunt strands of hair that hinted at Japan’s own hime haircut, as seen on Cher in the 1960s. Her song, “Per una bambola,” has an elegiac tone that reminisces about lost love, lacking bitterness.
Oxa made her mark again on the fashion front. After shedding her proto-punk, androgynous and provocateur persona, she became the ideal canvas for couture. In 1985, when singing “A Lei,” she majestically descended a staircase, Wanda Osiris-style, and for her first performance, she wore a red cape-like coat that she took off to reveal a matching sleeveless catsuit, notable for its crotch-length frontal zip. For the subsequent performance at the 1985 festival, she also had an alternate jumpsuit in the same style, but with a more intricate, cosmic-like pattern.
She got flak for it, but she pushed back by remarking “all dancers wear this type of unitard, and it never caused any clamor.” In 1986, upon presenting “E’ tutto un attimo,” she went in yet another direction: this time, Versace created a riff on the little black dress: a midriff-baring criss-cross top coupled with a scifi-like hood, all made in leather.
Overall, Sanremo 1986 was marked by excellence in costume design.
That same year, Loredana Berté wore leather too and, thanks to the creative zest of Luca Sabatelli, she sported a studded minidress whose focal point was a fake baby bump. This caused controversy too, and, at the time, she declared herself surprised by that reaction. “Had Madonna done it, nobody would have objected,” she said then. Sabatelli and Berté also wanted audiences to stop seeing pregnancy as a debilitating illness but, rather, a state of heightened strength and vitality.
Donatella Rettore went full sci-fi with a draped, stark white gown with a thigh-high slit and maximalist, wing-shaped shoulder pads, a cross between princess Leia and a cosmic Valkyrie. Her alternate outfit looked like a figure-skating costume, complete with an ornamental skirt and mirror-like shards on the bodice area. The song had been originally written by Viola Valentino, and only assigned to Rettore at the last minute. Rettore, on her part, never shied away from talking about how displeased she was with that song, seen as an admission to weakness and meekness, and, for a long time, blamed her decline in popularity on those Sanremo performances.
1990s
By the time the 1990s rolled around, Sanremo’s fashion choices started crystallizing around standard red-carpet fare. As for the last two decades, though, Anna Oxa was the one delivering the most statement-making looks. As she co-hosted the 1994 edition, she wore a Versace gown made of the finest chainmail and what looked like a Longobardian iron crown. The sheath-like gown might have looked simple and sleek at first glance, but the material, the styling, and the color made it one of the most remarkable looks in Sanremo’s history.
Five years later, in 1999, Oxa presented the anthemic song “Senza Pietà.” In the music video, she played a medieval warrior, brandishing a sword, but when she debuted the song at the Ariston theater, she instead chose a Tom-Ford-era Gucci ensemble consisting of low-slung, rhinestone-studded suede pants, with a thong peeking out, and a simple mock neck sleeveless top. Her hair had a dramatic two-tone styling, with platinum and jet-black strands seamlessly atlernating. Italian newspapers now maintain that Italian tiktokers copy this look, but it’s unclear whether they’re willingly referencing Oxa or just the y2k style signifiers that outfit embodied.
As the subject is very similar to Raffaella's post, I repeat my text:
Thank you for the dissertation! You made me go for the dictionary for some of the precise vocabulary you used.
Has there ever been an exhibition of those dresses? I think it would be a great exhibition for the V&A in London or the Musée des Arts Decoratifs in Paris (the Theirry Mugles exhibition was fantastic, and it had most of the dresses Mugler supplied for music videos). It would definitively put Italy back on top in its rightful tof fashion pop position. "Italian disco fashion: Dare to dance with style"
Or is there a book?