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Milan’s Paninaro Subculture: Precursors to the Ultras
Paninaro is a youth subculture that was born in Milan in the 1980s, when the youth of northern Italy were crazy about football, fast food restaurants, Stone Island and Moncler jackets, and Vespa scooters . They replaced the goth and metal movements, as well as various anarchist subcultures, while not standing out much among the average city dwellers, a kind of casuals of Milanese origin.
Fashion and football
Milan is a city associated with two main cultural spheres: fashion and football. And these spheres often overlap. In terms of fashion, Milan has long been predictable – a mecca for luxury brands, iconic fashion houses and designers. Although this is beginning to change these days with the arrival of young and innovative designers and brands, Milan retains its status as the capital of the world of high fashion.
On the other hand, the city is home to world-renowned football teams Inter Milan and Milan. Both clubs have a long history and identity not only on the domestic scene but also around the world. The striped red and black and blue and black shirts are still instantly recognizable, even though both clubs went through hard times in the 2010s.
If you were to combine these cultural phenomena, football and fashion, within the city of Milan, stylish footballers such as Roberto Baggio , Paolo Maldini, Rui Costa and Andrea Pirlo would certainly come to mind.
Fashion trends in the Milanese football and football-related scenes have always been visible and important. And this influence has been most clearly reflected in youth subcultures, including those that, in fact, are considered to have originated in the United Kingdom. It is not without reason that Italian ultras and British casuals are so often compared to each other.
Fashionistas from Al Panino cafe
It all started in the 1980s with a group of young Milanese, nicknamed ‘paninaro’ by journalists from the Turin newspaper La Stampa. It was a youth group that chose the Al Panino fast food café near Piazza San Babila as their meeting place.
Cafe Al Panino
Panino or panini is an Italian version of a sandwich, and this name has become a household name precisely in honor of the Al Panino establishment. For Italian society, this was a real revolution, since in Milan, they preferred long and measured meals. The food was painstakingly prepared at a slow pace, and you could enjoy the wonderful atmosphere of the establishment, pleasant weather and the playful look of the girl sitting next to you. But the progressive world dictates its own rules. Paninaro appeared in an era when the desire of city residents to quickly grab a sandwich called panini and run on about their business grew by leaps and bounds.
Panino/panini sandwich
In Rome, by the way, the movement only gained momentum in the mid-1980s, when a McDonald’s fast food restaurant opened in the Piazza di Spagna area.
Over time, Milanese paninaros adopted another fast food chain called Burghy, which sold real American burgers. And the most famous establishment of the chain was located there, in Piazza San Babila.
Paninaro style
The characteristic feature of this group of young people was their neat appearance. Paninaros wore brands such as Best Company, Stone Island, CP Company and Moncler, Timberland boots
Burlington Argyle socks,Levi“s 501 jeans,bomber jackets,Ray- Ban sunglasses . The most coveted accessory for paninaros was the luxury Rolex Daytona watch, whose demand in Italy increased so much that its price instantly jumped around the world. In an interview with MixMag, Stone Island clothing collector Archie Maher compared paninaros to teenagers who nowadays search the Internet for the latest in their favorite brands:
“The Paninaros were a group of middle- and upper-class Milanese youths known for riding mopeds around the center of Milan from café to café. They favored Stone Island and CP Company, along with brands like Moncler and Versace.”
The subculture arose mainly due to the propaganda of the free spirit spread by the United States of America. This new philosophy arose due to the hedonism policy of the US President Ronald Reagan. In Italy, all this resulted in a pronounced wave of reflection on the free American society and divisions within their own society, which immediately followed the turbulent politicized decade in Italy.
Rejecting all forms of social obligations and enjoying a carefree life, Italian youth took their cue from the models of young people from American cinema, commercials, and overseas commercial television, which began to be actively broadcast on the Italia 1 channel. At the same time, even American Comics became popular among young people .
Silvio Berlusconi, former Italian Prime Minister and owner of AC Milan, ran ads in a number of media outlets he owned, including television, that supported the new free spirit. Incidentally, a characteristic feature of the new youth movement in Italy was its almost complete rejection of American clothing brands; there was some patriotic devotion to its own designers. The only exceptions were Timberland boots, Levi’s jeans, and a few other foreign brands.
It would be wrong to say that the Paninaros chose only Vespa scooters for riding on the streets of Milan. The Zundapp KS 125 motorcycle was very popular, as well as the Yamaha XT 600 and Suzuki DR 600.
The female equivalent of paninaro is called “sfitinzia” (or squinzia). This is a girl with a playful grin, not very smart, flirtatious and definitely knowledgeable about the world of fashion.
Pet Shop Boys – Paninaro
As with any youth subculture, music was an integral part of the paninaro identity. The synth-pop of the 1980s was their favourite genre, in particular the music of the New Romantics, among which the work of Duran Duran stood out, whose song Wild Boys inspired the creation of a periodical of the same name dedicated to the paninaro movement. Other favourite hits of the trendy Italian youth were The Edge of Heaven by Wham!, Samurai by Michael Cretu and C’mon! C’mon! by Bronski Beat.
In the 1980s, several magazines and periodicals appeared, such as Paninaro, Preppy and Wild Boys. These media outlets eventually found their way to the UK, where they were loved by travelling football fans from England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland. Those same people who would not mind visiting Milan during international matches at both club and national team levels. The British and Irish loved to compare the fashion of Milanese residents with the photos they saw in the above-mentioned magazines. And it is worth saying that the islanders began to partially copy the appearance of the Italians. Thus, the casuals subculture began to develop noticeably towards choosing more elite wardrobe items. The same Stone Island jackets with the iconic patch became, to a certain extent, a detail that helps football hooligans identify each other in the city.
In 1986, the paninaro movement inspired the Pet Shop Boys to write the song of the same name, ‘Paninaro’. The duo’s lead singer, Neil Tennant, has repeatedly admitted not only to his sympathy for the paninaro movement, but also to his adherence to their style and philosophy. He initiated the creation of a song dedicated to this rebellious subculture. Neil also stated that the motive of the composition was inspired by a song by the group Baltimora called ‘Tarzan Boy’.
Original Lyrics:
Passion and love, sex, money,
Violence, religion, injustice, death
Chorus:
Paninaro, Paninaro, oh oh oh
Girls, boys, arts, pleasure Girls
, boys, arts, pleasure
Chorus
Food, cars, travel, food, cars, travel, travel Travel travel
New
York, New York, New York, New York
Chorus
Armani
Armani, AA-Armani, Versace, cinque
Chorus
Armani, Armani, AA-Armani, Versace, cinque
Chorus
I don’t like Country & Western
I I don’t like rock music.
Ehm, I don’t like, I don’t like Rockabilly.
Rock ‘n’ roll in particular I
don’t like much, really, do I?
But what I do like, I love passionately.
Chorus:
You! You’re my lover, You’re
my hope, you’re my dreams, my life
My passion, my love, my sex, my money, Violence
religion, injustice and death.
The song was included on the 1998 album Essential, although it was recorded in 1986. But before that, a mix of the track was included on the 1986 remix album Disco, and later on the debut album reissued in 2001 under the title “Listening Listening 1984-1986”.
The 1995 version has received remixes from Angel Moraes, Tin Tin Out and Tracy & Sharon. Tom Stephan of Tracy & Sharon has continued to remix ‘Paninaro’ under the moniker Superchumbo. The 1995 version is also included on the 2003 PopArt album compilation and the 2001 bilingual BCD reissue.
The original release featured a DIY video shot in Italy, with the singing duo appearing alongside locals.
A little later, the video clip ‘Paninaro ’95’ appeared, which was directed by Howard Greenhalgh. The success and popularity of the video was so highly praised that the Top of the Pops show copied the imagery of the Paninaro ’95 music video, using the same costumes, lighting and male dancers.
The song itself was re-released as a chiptune on the Commodore 64 by Dutch musician Edwin van Santen of 20CC for the Public Domain demo. The track is featured in the C64 High Voltage SID Collection (HVSC) archive.
Clip from 1995
Subculture today
Having acquired the logos of famous brands as symbols of their informal subcultural movement, combined with a modern interpretation of sprezzatura, a style of light casualness in clothing, rich young people who had not found a job for themselves, found an opportunity to assert themselves. Gathering in their favorite places, sometimes in hundreds, they began to invent their own slang, acquire nicknames and even choose informal opinion leaders who determined the agenda of meetings and parties.
Over time, the paninaro’s appearance became the basis of the image of a typical young representative of the city of Milan. Many habits and manners began to be used everywhere, which ultimately deprived the once popular subculture of identity and uniqueness. Being a paninaro became the norm, which is why the boundaries of the subculture became so blurred that today it is almost impossible to identify its bright representatives. All the youth of Milan, even more so the north of Italy, and especially football fans became paninaros.
Today, brands like Stone Island can still be found in the Curva Sud (San Siro stadium stand), home to Milan ultras, or in the Curva Nord, home of Inter ultras. The refuge of the radical and daring paninaros has migrated from drinking establishments to stadium stands.