Demna was struck by one of her songs in 2011. But it took 13 years to collaborate with her, Mina, the designer tells the singer’s son, Massimiliano Pani. The result is Balenciaga Music, a project that comes out this month. And which reveals what they have in common…a surprising collaboration between two giants: Demna and Mina. Or rather: a tribute to the legendary singer. This is Balenciaga Music x Mina, a Balenciaga capsule collection dedicated to the Tiger of Cremona, whose launch is scheduled for September 19th. Accompanying it is an exceptional playlist with 50 songs chosen by Mina, for a total of three hours of listening. On this date, L’Amore Vero will also be pre-released in a limited edition, the first extract from the singer’s new album, due out in November. A historic date, therefore, which marks the first time in which Mina officially collaborates with a fashion house for the production of merchandising, and in which she has published new music in partnership with a brand.
Below, we tell you the details exclusively in the conversation between Massimiliano Pani, son and producer of Mina’s records, and the Georgian designer.
Massimiliano Pani: There are many fashion designers who venerate my mother. But I know that you, Demna, consider yourself a particular fan, a high-ranking priest of this cult. How did this great passion arise?
Demna: It all started in 2011, one evening in a bar-restaurant in Veneto. One of her songs was broadcast on the radio, and, struck by the extraordinary emotional charge that that beautiful voice was able to express, I asked my Italian friends: who is this singer? I wrote down her name, just four letters: Mina. Then, when I got home, going online a universe opened up to me… Before I knew it, I found myself totally obsessed with it. You could say I started stalking your mother on YouTube (laughs, ed.). I immersed myself in her live performances, in her albums… She was simply the right interpreter for that period of my life, during which I was looking for a means in music to give voice to the melancholy and sadness I had in my heart following the breaking of an important relationship.
Massimiliano Pani: Your three favourite Mina songs?
Demna: Definitely E poi, a song that served as the soundtrack to that emotionally somewhat difficult period; a song whose lyrics I promptly studied, discovering that it spoke precisely of the end of a love and betrayal. Then Città vuota, characterised by a poignant melody and lyrics that evoke a profound sense of loneliness and nostalgia; finally Bugiardo e incosciente, a masterpiece that I include in almost all my playlists, which tells us about the moving border between love and hate. This is one of the greatest qualities that I recognise in Mina: giving body to pain and sadness and transforming them into sublime beauty.
Massimiliano Pani: Your admiration is reciprocated, my mother has been following your work with great interest for some time, which she considers audacious and pioneering, characteristics in which she most likely recognises herself. Which is why, when she received news of your desire to pay homage to her with this Balenciaga project, she immediately accepted willingly.
Demna: And so we started working remotely, as is increasingly common today. I jotted down some ideas, Mina proposed others; we then exchanged some material by post and I can’t tell you how excited I was when unwrapping her package, I glimpsed the handwritten signature of this very elusive diva. Together we decided to create a special limited-edition T-shirt, with her iconic face on the front and the impressive complete list of her 106 albums on the back.
Massimiliano Pani: Compilations excluded?
Demna: The T-shirt label, as you know, will be equipped with an NFC (Near Field Communications) chip which, activated by a compatible device, unlocks L’amore vero. This innovative technology, allowing you to exclusively offer listening to one or more songs, paves the way for new, promising forms of interaction between fashion and music, which we have experimented with in the past with BFRND, Archive and Jay-Jay Johanson. Sunglasses could not be missing from this capsule, the accessory that over the years has become one of the most distinctive features of Mina’s look. The continuous shape of the black lenses is inspired by her iconic eye makeup. Her signature is laser engraved inside, along with an exclusive QR code which, like the tag on the T-shirts, gives preview access to L’amore vero.
Massimiliano Pani: Much has been written over the years about her iconic Ray-Ban Aviator. A tool to protect her privacy, it has been said, of which she is notoriously so protective, and at the same time to give her character an aura of mystery. Not everyone actually knows that glasses for my mother, far from being a quirk or a mere style choice, are first and foremost a necessity: since she was a girl, in fact, she has suffered from severe myopia, especially in one eye. Imagine that on television she was forced to do everything by heart, because without glasses she couldn’t read the teleprompter, or simply orient herself. When she entered the scene, there was often a studio employee under the camera to guide her: “Take four steps, turn left, three steps turn right” because she couldn’t see anything. Imagine the difficulty…
Demna: Come on!
Massimiliano Pani: She knew how to mask this physical defect with a great presence of mind. By incorporating (prescription) sunglasses into her style, she has succeeded over the years—fashion magic!—to transform that weak point into an element of strength.
Demna: Then there is the precious playlist that Mina created for this collaboration…
Massimiliano Pani: Not a collection of her successes, as one might believe, but pieces chosen by her from those she particularly loves and listens to most often. A fascinating journey into her musical world, in which you can find everything: from Vivaldi to Bruno Mars, from Cole Porter to Aerosmith, from Battisti to Sinatra. The compilation includes only two songs performed by her. In addition to L’amore vero, there is This masquerade, a jazz standard she reinterpreted.
Demna: One of the most striking things about Mina is the ease with which she moves into completely different musical genres.
Massimiliano Pani: As you well know, my mother is not a singer, but many different singers who coexist in the same person. Her musicality, moreover, is not a typical pop singer’s one. Even before being a singer, Mina is “a musician who sings”. The rock singer usually listens to rock; funk singer listens to funk. She on the other hand, as this playlist shows, is omnivorous and insatiable, she listens to everything. And when she decides to do a cover, she usually does it Comme il faut, with immense respect for that specific musical genre. This is his greatness: being able to invariably be the right interpreter in every genre she tackles. I don’t say this, the great musicians say it. When asked who the greatest singer of jazz standards is today, the famous American jazz musician Kenny Barron replied: “she is an Italian singer… who is not a singer of jazz standards. But she is the best of all. Her name is Mina.”
Demna: Another of her superpowers is that she has managed to stay in touch with the new generations.
Massimiliano Pani: Spotify recently published the ranking of the most listened-to singers on the platform in Italy. At the top you find Annalisa, Elodie, the two singers of the moment, and Mina. If you think about it, it’s an incredible achievement. They have evening television, social networks: she, on the other hand, does the opposite, living in absolute confidentiality, away from the spotlight, for almost half a century. Anyone else, let’s face it, would have ended up forgotten. And despite everything she is always in contact with the public, even with the new public, that of the TikTok generation. The recent collaboration with Blanco was born precisely from him, who wrote to my mother to propose that we do a piece together. He was nineteen at the time. She found it very nice, and so she accepted.
Demna: How do you explain this extraordinary success of a singer now in her eighth decade of life with such a young audience?
Massimiliano Pani: Beyond her voice, I believe that very young people, even today, admire her as an icon of courage and creative independence. After all, she was a very courageous woman, as demonstrated by her bold and experimental artistic choices, her withdrawal from the public scene at the height of her career in 1978, her ability to face scandals linked to her personal life with strength and dignity—all manifestations of an indomitable spirit and an ability to constantly reinvent oneself. When she realised that television was changing, she decided to dedicate herself to something else. She was the first to create her own record label to defend her artistic autonomy. She often used her public image to break the mould and challenge the social norms of the time, demonstrating a constant commitment to reinventing herself and surprising her audience, twenty years before Madonna and thirty years before Lady Gaga.
Demna: If in my eyes Mina represents the quintessence of Italy—there is no one else, in my universe, who represents Italy more than her – it is precisely because in her I see an extraordinarily courageous woman, who throughout her career has been able to dare like few others. In this I feel very similar to her… who knows if it is due to the fact that we were born on the same day, March 25th!
Massimiliano Pani: I didn’t know!
Demna: Courage is a quality that I strongly associate with Italy, think of the history of art: how many rules have been broken by great Italian artists over the centuries, to impose new ones on the entire world. Which is the motto of my life: giving myself rules for the sake of breaking them, one after the other.
Massimiliano Pani: I would then add the obsessive attention to detail, which is responsible for the greatness of so much Italian excellence in so many sectors. As a singer, she is an absolute perfectionist; she always approaches the pieces she interprets with respect, studying them for a long time to understand them. Then maybe she goes into the studio, sings it only once, and the first time it’s good. This is particularly evident in her television performances: what emerges from her first appearances is an extraordinary professionalism. What is most impressive, watching those videos from the 60s, when she was only 22 or 23 years old, is the ease with which she accompanied the greatest sacred monsters of the time: Alberto Sordi, Totò, Vittorio De Sica…already so young, her personality was overflowing; it is surprising to see how being next to those giants, mature men and consecrated artists, seemed so natural to her, as if she already knew she was their equal.
Demna: Among the traits that I associate with Italy, there is irony. Mina often interprets dramatic songs, but an ironic streak also frequently emerges, a sophisticated sense of humour and an all-Italian lightness. In a tabloid I read about the time a fan found a way to call her at home…and she responded by pretending to be the cleaner.
Massimiliano Pani: I confirm, my mother is a very ironic woman, as she has demonstrated by playing with her image. She was one of the great beauties of her generation, so much so that Italian girls in the 60s and 70s wore makeup and did their hair like her. Then she got bored of that image and started transforming into a monkey, an alien, a bodybuilder, even a little duck…this is because, like many intelligent people, she also enjoys making fun of herself.
Demna: I would conclude with the constant search for beauty that distinguishes her career, even in the unusual. A characteristic in which I really recognise myself, because in my work I have always looked for beauty in places where no one expects it to hide.
Massimiliano Pani: This is particularly evident in the iconic covers of her albums, characterised by constant aesthetic research: think of that of Rane supreme, where she merges with the body of a bodybuilder, that of Caterpillar, where she imagines herself as a Boterian woman, or that of Leggera, where she appears as a sprinter crossing the finish line.
Demna: A true artistic heritage, already exhibited in art museums, which makes her one of the first musicians to deconstruct and reconstruct her person through visual art. When I came across the cover of Salomè, where she shows up with a beard, I was literally left speechless…what audacity, I said to myself, what a pioneer!
Massimiliano Pani: And then, certainly, the search for beauty in music. Mina still seeks beauty in music at 360 degrees, in all its manifestations, without ever getting tired, with the joy of a little girl who was given her first turntable. Because there is an almost unlimited quantity of beauty in music—if you have the eyes to see it, of course, or rather, the ears to listen to it. And with that jewel of an ear that she has, God only knows how much beauty she feels… and how much fun she has!
This article is translated and was originally published on Vogue Italia.
