Have you ever wondered why, since several years now, the new big names in fashion world have not been coming from Italy anymore? Probably you haven’t, as you have more important things to do than thinking about it, and, believe me or not, so do I. The point is that, after I watched another video with Anna Russo talking crap in a strange language I cannot identify as English, I had a flesh of inspiration and realized what the real problem of the new generation of designers, stylists and personalities of the Italian fashion is: their English is too good and they fail to distinguish properly by the competitors. Let’s make it clear: it is obvious that today the conditions of global fashion are totally different than 20 or 30 years ago: nowadays, it’s much more difficult to emerge into the world of big corporations. Furthermore, saying there are no new Italian designers it’s only partially true: just think about people like Pilati or Tisci, and for sure you can find many other very talented stylists. The point is that they failed to impose their own name and image as a worldwide recognizable brand. On the contrary, Donatella Versace and Roberto Cavalli, for example, succeeded in doing it; besides being able to exploit of the bad taste of the more or less wealthy people all around the world, they also managed to benefit from their garbled English. Like other great designers, in fact, over the years they have been taking out a wide range of linguistic monstrosities that delighted audiences around the world and contributed, so decisively in my opinion, to create very recognizable characters; at the same time, they kept alive the stereotype, no longer so strong as once, of the Italian who speaks a very bad English. So, sometimes it seems that success in fashion is inversely proportional to the knowledge of the English language. Here are “the Guardians”, who protect Italian fashion and culture from the Anglo-Saxon interferences.
DONATELLA VERSACE
Donatella’s “problem” is not really her knowledge of the English language itself, but the mix of her accent, her deep voice and especially her face: some say it’s the closest thing to a character from Avatar, according to others she is the potential wife of Voldemort. In the video above, although Donatella speaks in English, she is always subtitled. Actually her “inglish” has became legendary, and has inspired a series of highly successful mockeries, primarily the Saturday Night Live one.
ROBERTO CAVALLI
Roberto Cavalli speaks and writes a very shitty English. So shitty he managed to make it an absolute selling point. His twitter account is a must-follow, one of the few able to offer constant satisfaction, almost on a daily basis. It’s such a successful operation, I’m almost sure it has been planned, and that the one managing the account organizes the tweets making they play at the right level of ignorance.
VALENTINO
Heavy tanned and with style to spare, Valentino is the refined version of Roberto Cavalli (actually, Roberto Cavalli is the gross version of Valentino), even at the linguistic level. There are not many English interviews with the stylist, but as long as we can see, Valentino gets along quite well. Let’s say, in his speeches, there’s just the right amount of blunders to make you like him, like when, in the video above, he tries to say “I was not running with a pen in my mouth, fixing the girl before she goes out to the runaway”, but pronounces ” I was not running with a peen in my mouth” to the delight of the interviewers.
ANNA DELLO RUSSO
Anna Dello Russo, fashion journalist, stylist, editor-at-large of Vogue Japan, and self-proclaimed “Guardian of de Fescion”. Actually, what’s surprising about Anna and her anything but perfect English is she is a journalist, not a designer, who operates internationally and tries to make a name for herself as a global internet star. Moreover, in the video above Anna herself says: “Fashion is my real language” and her wardrobe is her “Bibliothèque”. In other words, Anna is able to read fashion. What about you, would you be able to wear a book?
( By Lorenzo Mapelli from www.vice.com )