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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Giorgio Ghiglione

Girls, boys, art, pleasure! Italy’s paninaro subculture rides again

‘The music we listen to, the outfits we wear, they are iconic and this aesthetic will continue to exist’ … Paninari in Foglizzo, Italy.
‘The music we listen to, the outfits we wear, they are iconic and this aesthetic will continue to exist’ … Paninari in Foglizzo, Italy. Photograph: Marta Clinco

On a sultry June afternoon the tables of a snack bar in Foglizzo, a small town in northern Italy, fill up with a dozen men riding motorbikes and dressed in colourful apparel. It’s a gang of paninari: a quintessentially Italian, once-dominant youth subculture.

Today, paninari are well into their 50s, and the group we meet in Foglizzo, as the town was celebrating its yearly courgette festival, are no exception. But despite the grey hairs and extra pounds that come with age, they still look smart in their typical paninari outfits, sporting Timberland boots, cowboy style belts and flashy sunglasses.

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