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It’s a group of ducks that triggers Tony Soprano’s first panic attack. A family of ducks, to be precise. After settling in the backyard pool of the Soprano home in New Jersey, they fly away. That’s the exact and punctual trigger that gives life to one of the strangest, bloodiest, and at the same time most complex mobsters in history. The ultimate antihero, the boss of a crime family, seen through the lens of a white man in his 40s who convinces himself to start therapy with a psychologist. The ducks, who appear again later in the series, represent for Tony the looming sense of emptiness brought on by the anticipated loss of his own family, which will crumble under a moral weight too heavy to carry. If David Chase, with The Sopranos, succeeded in creating the first true antihero of American television - complex and tormented, yet inherently evil - one wonders what he would make of the life of Fabrizio Corona, the first real antihero of Italian pop culture. «I really see myself more in Tony Soprano, or in Al Pacino’s Godfather, than in Scarface, which is who people try to associate me with,» he told us when we met. «Tony Montana is a loser. I think I’m more like Tony Soprano - an antihero.»
Corona’s story is one that has been told far and wide. For a very long time, he was public enemy number one, enduring an incredible number of trials, convictions, comebacks, and moments that, for better or worse, have marked the history of this country. But just as The Sopranos and all the mob movies of the ’90s defined the aesthetic of a historical moment - certainly sugarcoating the narrative, but with meticulous precision - Corona’s aesthetic story is perhaps the one missing piece of his narrative. A story almost erased by Corona’s own actions, which in this interview will not be commented on or analysed. But it’s the story of the birth of gossip culture itself, of the celebrity aesthetic captured by paparazzi—an aesthetic that, just a few seasons ago, monopolised fashion campaigns for every major brand. Bottega Veneta first and foremost, though the most striking example is Balenciaga, with the earliest experiment being the famous Vogue shoot by Steven Meisel in 2005, at the height of the tabloid mania that fed on the Britney Spears saga and saw the rise of figures like Perez Hilton. It was the era of bling, of homemade celebrity outfits, of popular fame in Italy epitomised by the footballer-and-showgirl duo, with all their flashiness and showmanship. And Corona’s story begins right there—in the idea of mainstream fashion, in print magazines, and in million-euro campaigns (and before that, billion-lira ones). A story that, just like Tony Soprano’s, has quite a lot to do with family.
«Back then, for those who didn’t live through it, it’s impossible to understand what fashion really was. The top photographers shot major campaigns in Milan, the big magazines came to shoot in Milan, and the greatest designers in the world were Italian. Milan was the fashion capital. New York and Paris were years, generations behind»
«There are people who don’t really know my story, especially my social background, except for those truly rooted in Milan’s important fashion world, because many of them are still alive and many have been interviewed for something major I'm working on,» says Corona. «They don’t truly know what social background I come from. Because I come from a bourgeois family, but most importantly, I come from a father who was considered the greatest genius of creative journalism in Italy,» he tells us, referring to Vittorio Corona, a heavyweight of Milanese publishing and the mind behind a vast number of publications that filled Italian newsstands for years. «My father started working as a journalist very young at La Sicilia, in Catania. Then he moved to Milan and began working on magazines that, oddly enough, actually succeeded.» His first major role was as editor-in-chief at Novella 2000, which «in the ’70s wasn’t a gossip magazine but a very important magazine covering current events. Back then, society news was very relevant, and these magazines were the best-selling ones of the time, when there was no television, no mass media, no social networks. Publications like Oggi and Novella 2000 were the most important in Italy - not just the most read.» He had essentially landed a permanent position when he met Paolo Occhipinti, editorial director at Rizzoli (now RCS Periodici), and was «immediately hired,» Corona continues. «Back in those days, if you didn’t live through them, it’s hard to understand what fashion really meant,» he goes on. «Fashion was represented by Milan, which was the Caput Mundi. The great photographers shot major campaigns in Milan, the big magazines came to Milan, the top designers in the world were Italian. Milan was the fashion capital. New York and Paris were years, generations behind. During Fashion Week, the entire world would come. And Milan was the most important city in the world. Above all, Italy set the rules in fashion. That’s how my father started working at Annabella,» he tells us. Which, he adds, «underwent a major transformation during the industry crisis, eventually becoming just Anna.»
For years Anna was a very «sought-after» magazine, but «like all women’s magazines, it eventually folded and was shut down amid the publishing crisis.» In any case, Corona Senior «began that career until RAI called him to work on a fashion magazine.» At the time, RAI was a much more culturally relevant and publicly connected entity than it is today, in an age of countless channels. «Of course, it made sense. They were state-owned, and if they worked in television, they also needed to be present in print media. Back then, fashion was the most important thing around, so they called him,» Corona continues. «He was very young, and the magazine [called Moda, with a second title King that came out in the late '80s, editor's note] became the most important magazine in the world within five years. They opened offices in Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo, Paris, and Barcelona. They had a global correspondent network. It was the power of RAI, a strong economic power.» That very success brought Vittorio Corona into the world of television, leading him to host two weekly segments for RaiDue: Moda, which aired from 1985 to 1988, and 1990 Mode between 1989 and 1990.
It was precisely in this pivotal moment that Vittorio’s son, Fabrizio, first came into contact with the fashion world. A world that, truthfully, today’s public doesn’t instinctively associate with him. And that’s the point. There’s a Fabrizio Corona everyone thinks they know -the one who dominated public discourse for years, the one tied to jail, Lele Mora, and Nina Moric, but also to Belén Rodríguez and Francesco Coco. A figure capable of shaping and dominating public opinion, but also the aesthetics of an entire country. And it all began when a young Fabrizio Corona discovered fashion at age 14, realised he was physically striking, and started working as a model in the United States. «I worked with the top agency in Miami, Boss. I traveled a lot and worked a lot, but I was completely out of my mind. I got involved in a crazy scene. These days everyone talks about Diddy’s parties and all that. When I was 19 I used to go to parties at Gianni Versace’s house in Miami, that same villa where he was murdered. And I think compared to Diddy’s parties, those were on another level. You’d see crowds of people, mountains of cocaine, every kind of drug, heroin, young girls and boys, people screwing, snorting. It was alienation and damnation. You’d come into contact with worlds that truly made you lose your mind. Then I started dating a Colombian girl, I was going back and forth to Colombia, we didn’t sleep for days. I was deep in it. Then I met a beautiful girl, a Dutch top model, an angel who had come to work there. We fell in love and she told me she wanted to leave that life and go back to Milan to work, so we came back,» Corona recounts. «And that’s when I told myself it was time to change. I called my father, and he gave me a job. That’s how I began, for the first time, doing the job I still do today and learned from him. Keeping in mind that even during high school I used to work in the afternoons at a press agency, organizing slide archives, because digital didn’t exist yet.»
In Fabrizio Corona’s life, there’s a clear before and after. The turning point is the birth of Corona’s: initially a production company, and very quickly, a paparazzi agency. «The goal was to create a photographic production agency. We started with the good side. I was doing fashion reportages, and I also began producing a lot of fashion work. For example, I shot Barbara Berlusconi’s first magazine cover when she was 18,» Corona recalls. With this first project that was truly his own, Corona’s aesthetic taste began to show clearly: the agency's logo was a hybrid between The Sopranos graphic style and the sign of Badabim, the strip club Tony Soprano runs in the series. Even the style of the merchandise closely followed that of the show: «The look of The Sopranos is the mafia look, it’s The Godfather look translated into fashion,» Corona explains. «Many designers paired tank tops, short-sleeved silk shirts, and gold chains with trousers. It was a killer look.» It’s also in this fascination with that aesthetic that we see the roots of Fabrizio Corona, who, although often idealised as an icon of Milan’s nightlife, was born and raised in Catania, Sicily, where he developed his broader aesthetic sensibility, «It's true, I often came back to Milan. But throughout high school, until I was 17, the moment school ended on June 1st, I’d go to Catania and stay there until September 30th. In those four months a year, that city was the most beautiful place on Earth. Those were the best times of my life.»
But it was in Milan that Corona would refine his taste and experience firsthand the good life - the one of fashion and luxury - and it all began with a small shop on Corso Buenos Aires. «When I was young and had earned my first money, and when I started hanging out with Lele Mora, I would spend everything in Corso Buenos Aires at this tiny little shop, barely two meters wide, run by a guy named Claudio Antonioli. I spent all my money there, buying the clothes he recommended.» But even if Corona moved within fashion through, as we’ve seen, almost a dynastic route, he was never really seduced by brands. «Luxury never really interested me, except for watches and cars,» he tells us. «I was the first in Italy to have a Bentley and to become a symbol of Bentley. I must have had five or six of them,» he remembers. «Bentley, Rolex and Moscot sunglasses. Back then there was only one store in Italy that had them. You know where it was? In Naples. It was the only one with the license. If you wanted to buy those glasses in a physical store in Italy, you had to go there. When I was arrested - there’s that famous photo of me in handcuffs wearing Moscots - they put the glasses in their shop window with a sign.» The accessories, no doubt, were expensive and carefully chosen, but beyond these key details, it was Corona’s overall look that made a lasting impact. «Today’s rappers, the ones who came out in 2021 or 2022, wear football team tracksuits. I’ve been wearing those since 2002 or 2003: adidas, Nike, Manchester, Celtics. If you look at the photos from all my arrests, I always have a football team tracksuit jacket. Why? Because The Sopranos taught us that’s what you wore. Remember Sergio Tacchini?» Hard to forget, indeed.
«They don’t really know what social background I come from. Because I come from a bourgeois family, but most of all, I come from a father who was considered the greatest creative genius in Italian journalism.»
Fabrizio Corona’s is at once one of Italy’s most well-known stories, and one of the least truly understood. There’s a dark, hidden side that tells of everything Fabrizio was before he became Corona, or rather Corona’s, a side often lost within the folds of a character who is undeniably controversial, playing a role he assigned to himself, yet one that society helped stitch onto him. Throughout the long conversation, as he moves through memories of childhood and his approach to the fashion world first, and to media and communication later, Corona is always in control. There’s not a single phrase, expression, or anecdote that doesn’t contribute to building the myth of the public enemy number one. With infinite layers, a deep passion for beauty and aesthetics, all shielded by an innate nonchalance. Fabrizio Corona may well be the villain - as he defines himself - but he is a far more complex villain than we’re prepared to reckon with.
CREDITS:
Photographer Antonio De Masi
Stylist Antonio Autorino
MUAH Carolina Antonini
Ph. Assistant Antonio Sanasi
Interview Francesco Abazia