Dress like "Ultras" We asked how ultras dress in to 2020 to Antonella Mignogna, costume designer of last Netflix success
Ultras' culture is a composition of values, ideas, rituals and images and sounds. Many argue that this is the last contemporary subculture that has survived the evolution of mainstream culture, both in soccer and in sport.
Like any subculture, the visual aspect is one of the fundamental elements, the image of the ultras also regards fashion: from the casual British style to the new streetwear trends, the terraces' fashion is perhaps undervalued in its style and originality. To understand what today symbolizes the fashion of the Italian soccer fans, nss sports had a chat with Antonella Mignogna, who curated all the costumes of ''Ultras', the first film by Francesco Lettieri, released on Netflix last March 20 on Netflix.
In Ultras there are three different generations of fans and ways of understanding fashion.
Who were you inspired by the look of each of the three groups?
From the beginning, in imagining the identities of the various groups with Francesco, we said to try to immediately make from the visual point of view the differences of the three different groups and also of the individual characters who participated in the story. When we started thinking about the Apaches, Francesco came to me with a fanzine of the Napoli ultràs of the early 90s. We had images of walls of people dressed in this denim with super light wash and at that moment, in our mind, was born Sandro who (to make it more aggressive) made his own that stemmed from the model of a vintage jacket, nowhere to be found, of the period of I've always been in love with. During my visual research, through the almost untraceable photos of the time, it turned out that at that time, in the stands of the Napoli fans (which seemed to me a kind of cleaned and much more honest paninari) was not so respected a dress code that only later became (although perhaps in Europe and especially in England already was) of the world ultras. I realized that each of the people I saw in those images, in his own way, was a character in itself that came out of the homogeneity that is one of the peculiarities of casual culture. And that's how we represented the initial team of the apaches, "the distrusted". Each of the characters in the group of founders had their own characteristics that communicated quite clearly, being a film of great corality, its own personality.
I attended the stadium and the stands only in Naples and in a single period of my life: the one when Napoli played in Serie C (I was still in high school) and I went to Turn A with two friends most Sundays. There were very few diehards around me, but so much true heart. The images of that period remained in my eyes and I hid the details in the imagination that I gave to the various groups from that of the distrusted up to the figures and appearances of the mass scenes of the clashes and the stadium.
Which movies or magazines did you use as a reference?
Many fanzine and searches for rare images and video clips of the away groups and at the stadium, especially private ones. Beyond E.A.M - Strangers to the mass I saw for the first time in that period under the advice of Fra (Francesco Lettieri, n.d.r). By choice and to define the artistic approach to this work, I chose not to review, before starting the design and subsequent choices for the film, the illustrious films of the genre. I preferred to watch as many documentaries as possible on the web also to understand the international appeal of the looks and to have a more realistic approach that I could on today's culture and differences than in the past. I want to mention among all the series "The real football factories" that I found really very interesting. Among the readings recommended to me and which I recommend in turn to understand the thought and genesis of philosophy ultras, deserve the books: "The rebels of the stadiums" by Pierluigi Spagnoli and, in a broader sense on the youth conflict that manifests itself in subcultures, "The syndrome by Andy Capp" by Valerio Marchi. Visually, one of my favorites of the period was Gavin Watson's 2008 "Skins."
One of the cornerstones of the ultras subculture is nonconformism. How do you reconcile this value with the fact that aesthetically the ultras have a very homogeneous style between teams and different countries?
I believe that a first response is to be sought in the desire for immediate recognition and in the manifestation of belonging to the group attested through the unique style on the outside, although this characteristic belongs to many if not all movements subcultural, especially youth. The second variable can be identified in the actual decoding of what is today the ultras style starting from its genesis. I am convinced that casual, by its own definition of birth, wants to approve the style of the middle class of society in order to better identify with it. On this basis, the style has then become "divided" so much as to allow, at the same time, both depersonalization and the identification of a status: the "declaration" of being both an intrinsic part of society and the manifestation of a movement that navigates to the edges of it. And it translated into the way you define yourself discreetly. Starting from this concept the bargained look has then become part of their visual and conceptual universe resulting in international diffusion.
