Once upon a time it was worn by the Lawyer and Gigi Rizzi, today it is sported by clumsy characters and sinister elitists. Up to Sigfrido Ranucci, who made this garment symbolic, which smacks of purity, but which hardly remains white
Fabrizio De Andrè, in 1981, in the list of things he didn’t miss, put in first place: «What I don’t have is a white shirt». Symbol of everything he hated: the bourgeois hypocrisy of a garment suitable only for those who never got their hands dirty, (falsely) democratic, immaculate uniform of the owner of the ironworks. Gianni Agnelli she wore it a little loose on the hips with theOmega diver clearly visible above the cuff (throws of real estate agents will try to copy it for years with grotesque results). But since the days of the Whipped Cream Lawyer (Scalfari dixit) it has done countless spins in the spin cycle (which then, my lady, with each wash we well know comes out less white, actually tending towards a yellowish cream), until it landed wonderfully on Siegfried Ranucci.
His white shirt, so tight that you imagined love handles, will ultimately be all that will remain of this mess. Tight, now and always slim-fit, casual and unbuttoned, naturally rumpled, undeniably soigné, it immediately brings us back to Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, Watergate and All the President’s Men. In short, the no iron button-downs from Brooks Brotherswhich in the 1980s could only be found in the store on Madison Avenue in New York. So the Italians on the move filled bags with them, along with tubes of Crest toothpaste and returned happy from the trip to the Big Apple.
Because, if the blue one is an Atac driver, the white one remains linked to the imagination of the Alfa(Southern) male. Especially when the first undone buttons reveal the hairy and tanned chest (however this is not the case) perhaps adorned with the gold chain with the First Communion medal. And he is immediately Caliph, Jaguar and women, “he who never denied his friends even if they were criminals”, as the crude biographer of Burnt Rome, Aurelio Picca, writes. But the one worn by the former body and soul of Reports it is much more sober. She was a leading actress, because Ranucci is her shirt.
It characterized it, distinguished it, that white smell of sanctity lightened it like a “lighthouse where there is darkness” (cit.). As Rumi, the Sufi mystic master and poet, said: “Exist as you are or be as you appear.” And they were inextricably linked, the habit that the monk makes becomes his glory and then inevitably also the shroud. Proving one absolute coherence he never abandoned her: in good times as in bad times. Even when some inevitable splash of grease got it dirty, perhaps due to a killer clam linguine, he continued to wear it.
In his personal “Museum of Innocence” (we all have one), like the poetic one created by Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul, where objects ultimately remain the only witnesses of our experience, that garment will have the right to its own display case. Because Siegfried with all that white on him, which illuminated him immensely, made a dirty impression. A bit of wild boar, stench and sensuality at the mushroom festival, cleverly mixed with a few drops of Hemingway at the presentations of the intimate memoir, The Choice. Yet at the time of the fall the bad guys quickly noticed that the journalist was missing his neck. And oh well, too Maurizio Costanzo he wasn’t very gifted at it, but with the Dino Erre Collofit he had overwhelming success. The legendary commercial remained in the history of TV: «Good shirt everyone».
Between the myth of the reporter and the immutable uniform
Even Ranucci, who wore it like a glove, actually declared that he had it well twelve all the same. Oh God, we’re not talking about Richard Gere’s walk-in closet in American Gigolo and we’re certainly a long way from Rino Giori’s times. The very rich Italian entrepreneur, manufacturer of money printing machines, who sent them to be ironed only in London. Tres chic. Back then they were made of impalpable silk and obviously with numbers, to show off on the crazy nights of the Saint-Tropez nightclubs, like that hunk of a man Gigi Rizzi did, the playboy with whom BB fell in love. Today, all that remains are rows of toy boys, who don’t even know how to button them.
From an object of pleasure it has slipped towards the work uniform, a comforting tool for asserting professionalism, precision and rigor. This is how, according to ours, English reporters dressed The Guardiancombining it with jeans and Clarks. But Sandro Viola, the great special correspondent, at the American Colony in Jerusalem in forty degree temperatures wrote without ever taking off his jacket, perhaps an elegant tweed bought in London.
However, identifying with a uniform is the constant of who you consider yourself to be successful mantoo busy to waste time matching the heads in the morning. Steve Jobs was the first and also the coolest: he never took off his black turtleneck. Or Sergio Marchionne, who worked day and night in the ironworks, certainly didn’t dare to wear white, a tough and pragmatic Abruzzo native who only had dark cashmere crew-neck sweaters. But that fox always knew it Matteo Renzi who chose it as a uniform, very tight, in unsuspecting times. The shot (all that candor didn’t do him any good) of the reformist leaders of the European left in Bologna in 2014, where they posed in total white, remains unforgettable: from Manuel Valls, then French Prime Minister, to Pedro Sánchez.
The dictatorship of whiteness from left to right
Even in the symbolic photo of the wide shot they are all in shirts, but it must be the fault of the wrong lights, they look like fifty shades of white. Today no one escapes the dictatorship of the currency Ranucci-style (of course, those hands on hips look a bit like Good Soul), transversal, universal, it ends up on even those who, alas, don’t have the physique du rôle. Whether it’s the smoking Stefano Bandecchi or the overflowing Claudio Lotito.
It’s black that wears you out, kids. You know, man of paunch, man of substance, those who get on the yacht rented only for the central two weeks of August will think, with the buttons pulling, Briatore of the poor, who don’t deny themselves the cruise to the Aeolian Islands to post like damned people on Instagram the crystal clear sea (maybe) and the stuffed squid. And to think that everyone at the market stalls is complaining that the ancient short-sleeved shirts “not even the farmers want them anymore”.
So much bitterness, they were so nice, fresh for the trump, in poplin, often with nice stripes on the brown (which holds dirt better) and the pocket for the MS. Nothing to do, abandoned in a corner, while after the affair-Report the trendsetters have already shattered our family jewels, electing him boss of the year. The banality that doesn’t hurt. We wish Sigfrido Ranucci (the cruel social media have already renamed him Lagnucci) that if life (or Lavitola, as he chooses) has not been kind at all, at least life will be so. bleach and do not cause him further damage, which is irreparable.
