Sanremo 2021: all the times that Achille Lauro amazed us

Transforming pieces of cloth into a political and social message has always been the mantra of many artists who understood before others that, if they wanted to change things, they had to start with what they were wearing. From Freddie Mercury’s colorful wigs to David Bowie’s heeled shoes through Madonna’s pointy bra and Elton John’s glittery glasses, Achille Lauro is the worthy heir of that lesson, brave enough to propose it on the perhaps most traditional and canonical stage that there can be, the one who shouted scandal when Loredana Bertè showed up with a thick belly tightened in a black leather dress: that of the Sanremo Festival. Even before treading the Ariston for the second time in 2020, the year that marked his artistic turning point through the choice of provocative and beautiful Gucci outfits, custodians of precise and well-studied meanings and symbols, Achille Lauro that road had begun to follow it before.

For Achille, aka Lauro De Marinis, music has never been just a passion for its own sake, but also the engine to suggest to the world where it is going and what it can do to avoid ending up in the famous boxes that he tries to break down. a whole life. His looks on stage, from the sequin rompers to the pointed spurs that sprout from his collar, from the clearly visible thigh cuts to the heavy make-up that frames his eyes, they are a message of fluidity and acceptance, also a political battle to try to make it clear that there are not only black and white, but also shades, grays, chiaroscuro, those hybrid shades that could allow everyone to experience a freedom never fully savored, forced always having to deal with a rigidity imposed from above, with the belief that all the colors that come out of the edges are wrong and can be erased. To amaze, therefore, more than the references to his texts and the iconography of his covers (think of that of Mother boys who saw him in an x-ray with cocaine eggs hidden in his belly), is the value of contamination, so loud (as demonstrated on the album For love) as much as tailoring. The first time it goes up in Sanremo is 2019 sings Rolls Royce, a song that mentions the eternal rock stars like Jimi Hendrix, Axl Rose and the Doors, but also blatantly pop characters such as Paul Gascoigne and Marilyn Monroe, idols that Lauro pursues and who will be the starting point for the definitive revolution of the image.

After continuing to wink at the 1960s, a decade of world-class cultural revolutions, the public falls in love with him for good in 2020, when at the first evening of the Sanremo Festival the black cloak with golden inlays is taken off and remains on stage half naked, wrapped in a semitransparent onesie studded with glitter. It is a reference to Giotto’s San Francesco, Lauro will later explain together with the creative director of Gucci Alessandro Michele who for him has continued to make very precious clothes always linked to characters and symbols of a certain importance: from the plumed headdress of the Marquise Luisa Casati to the skirt in crinoline of Elizabeth I up to Ziggy Stardust of Bowiana inspiration. Achille Lauro amazes, undermines certainties and brings in the 2000s that explosion of life and colors that helped change the world in the 1960s and beyond. Trying to understand, therefore, what the paintings of which he will be protagonist at the 2021 Festival will consist is the peak of the public’s curiosity also for this.

Browse the gallery above to see all the times that Achille Lauro has amazed us >>