Silvio Berlusconi is dead: Berlusconi’s blazer and Silvio’s bandana

Silvio Berlusconi it was what it was – that is, after all, a successful manat least in his personal (but shared by many) vision of life – also thanks to his image: an image built over time with Machiavellian calculation, and woven into the larger fabric of a self narrative who resorted to every possible means of communication.

But, with an equal and opposite force, his own image was also his Achille’s heelhis side all too blatantly exposed to wild mockery and sometimes affectionate, but often violent mockery.

And, perhaps, his too gripe. An unwanted ballast that has always kept him anchored to a reality that he would have liked so much to be different: Silvio Berlusconi imagined himself and represented himself handsome, handsome, thin, tall, scalped, tanned and forever young. Perhaps some of these characteristics also belonged to him, in a distant era in time. But not all, and certainly not always.

Blazers & Co.

If in the deck of the merchant at the fair if the entrepreneur’s card existed, we would find a drawing by Berlusconi at the turn of the seventies and eighties, that is, when his face begins to become familiar to Italians as an enterprising businessman. His imagination is modeled on that of adults tycoon Americans, and it is inevitable that his wardrobe adapts to it, even if in a version with Brianza grain: his workhorse is, immediately, the legendary blazer double-breasted with shoulder pads that are gradually less hypertrophic with the passing of the years and of governmentsthe quintessence of the chivalrous look (as a Knight, not as a medieval hero).

A uniform of respectability, charm and style, which will also decline in demanding coats and will perfect in the version in pinstripe. Which, you know, lengthens and slims. Around her neck strictly Marinella ties, preferably with polka dots. On the feet the mythological shoes with the internal lift: lie or truth, weakness or help? It does not matter. Certainly a tilted fedora is enough for him to look like Frank Sinatra: it’s not enough, but it helps.

In the 1990s he was able to alternate the rigorous double-breasted jacket with a happier two-button jacket, but as time went by he returned more and more frequently to the reassuring initial model, revised and corrected in gray, with the daring insertion of the waistcoator, again, in increasingly structured and rigid fabrics, almost as if to build a diving suit/armor around him, to protect him from the barrage of enemy attacks.

The other Silvio

And then there was the other Berlusconi, the one that has become increasingly familiar to us, the one that entered the homes of Italians starting with the home of Italians, the Parliament. Prime Minister Berlusconi wanted, but perhaps had to, get closer to his fellow citizens/voters, become one of us but a little better and a little richer than us. He therefore also had to reveal his aspect of him we would not say more tender (although…), but certainly more domestic And casual. And so on the grass in the garden of Arcore he unsheathed his blue crewneck sweater – Berlusconi Blue yes it’s from Pantone, nothing but royal blue – on the light blue oxford, to stroll with the children on their shoulders. A must that represents the perfect flip side of the blazer: equally impeccable, but incomparably more human.

And the turning point: Berlusconi lives not only in blue sweaters in a casual version, but also in suede jackets and rolled up shirt sleeves. Turning point, but maybe also of no return.

Bandana & total white

The most casual of Berlusconi’s casual seasons is summer, when the Knight cannot resist – as always – the risky temptation of total white. As a pizza maker, he would have said if it had been someone else to wear it. But he was the one who wore a shirt wide open on the chest and linen trousers, and therefore the total white from head to toe could only be chic. From the coasts of Tunisia to those of Sardinia.

It is in Porto Cervo that in the summer of 2004 Berlusconi welcomes British Prime Minister Tony Blair not only in total whitebut with the unforgotten and unforgettable bandana, also immaculate, and tight on the head to protect a recent scalp thickening work. Here you are, Berlusconi’s most exposed flank ever: put on the two pans of the balance his vanity on the one hand, and the opportunities for ridicule offered on a silver platter to his detractors, he must not have had a moment’s hesitation in flattering the former and not caring about the latter. Honor to merit, and courage.

the other half of the sky

Also part of Silvio Berlusconi’s image – side by side, if you like, or by translation – are his companions. Not so much the first wife Carla Elvira Lucia Dall’Oglioas much as the best known Veronica Lario and those that followed after one of the most sensational and media-hyped (for the dynamics, reasons and consequences, in all their ramifications) public separations in Italian history, not so recent by now: Frances Pascale before and Martha Fascina until the last days. All three, alongside Berlusconi on official occasions and in those of private life that has never been so private, showed themselves in highly studied outfits that the malicious ones could have defined stage costumes moderate and sober, elegant and classic, chastened and bourgeois to the bone. In their own way, impeccable.

How much furtherin short, one can conceive fromimage of the woman as well as the light entertainment programs of her televisions, for years, they have shaped, to the tune of bikinis that are as skimpy as they are less functional to the context, of miniskirts that are more mini than skirts, of seductive frills that are at least redundant. Making that – like the drop that digs the rock, without even realizing how it could have happened – the “normal” or rather normalized image of the female figure on TV, but also in Italian society. An archetype of the feminine against which the respected and authoritative fashion critic also railed in September 2009 Suzy Menkes from the pages ofInternational Herald Tribune: in his articulated indictment he accuses Italian stylists of having sent «veline-like» dresses to the fore during the Milan Fashion Week, condensing into the role of famous valets a whole world of continuous seduction ultimately generated by Berlusconi himself. An image and consequent imaginary that only today – after years of mee too and trials and neofeminism – are we really starting to peel away from society and the mass media. Like stubborn limescale really difficult to erase once and for all.

But far toofrom the image of women that starting in 2010 – after Berlusconi’s separation and parallel to the judicial scandals that overwhelmed him – we have learned to know close to him, next to him, around him and on him. The women of the bunga bunga, the daddy girl, Noemi Letizia and Nicole Minetti, Sabina Began and Ruby Rubacuori. Women who fully reflect the aesthetics of television velinismo, but who aim to let the most expensive of Hermès bags dangle from their forearm.

Even these two types of female presence that have gravitated around Silvio Berlusconi well represent the two sides of the same coin: the divine and the human, the public and the private, that of the blazer and that of the bandana.