Vanity Fair | Elisa Maino: «Il bacio che verrà»
COLOR / FUJIFILM X-Pro 2 | FUJINON XF56mmF1.2 R
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This interview, curated by Lavinia Farnese, was published in the Vanity Fair issue on newsstands from 22th May 2018. All photos are by Federico Allocca.
The photographic project sees the collaboration of KIKO Milano and Converse.
The concern of Elisa Maino, in her 15 years, is that, from whatever age you look at it, you don’t judge her before you have every element to understand her. So, every social or web star that you nominate, widens her eyes, pauses, and after a silence in which she does not hide all the uncertainties she has about you, she asks: “Do you know what it is? Who am I talking about? ». It goes very fast.
Born in 2003 under the sign of Capricorn in Rovereto, in the province of Trento, she grew up in Arco, a village near Riva del Garda so small and closed that it is not enough. «Always felt in a glass bell: fifteen thousand souls, the same every day». One afternoon she approaches her older brother intent on online games: “Show me how it works, this Internet that everyone demonizes, that nobody here understands”. It is total attraction. She wants to create videos, put them on the net. She can, but on agreement with his parents (mother surveyor, father employed): that she is with her best friend. “Two better than alone.” It is June 21, 2015: with Samantha Zanella they show up in a canal. They do things like blindfold and guess foods: “It’s capers, not chocolate.” Three months later they reach a thousand subscribers: “It seemed a sensational goal to us.” It was just a game, but it already aspired to something else. The paths soon split. Elisa loves make-up, for one Christmas they give her an iPad and she opens a digital window only hers from her room.
Today she is the most followed muser in Italy: over three million followers, in the world top ten of Musical.ly., “A 15 seconds per minute clip app in which gestures are mimicked, danced, sung, recited using the lip in lip-sync “. What it means is soon said: record collaborations with Warner Music and a novel published by Rizzoli. Title, #Ops: «Which is a hashtag, my way of reacting to the carelessness of spilling the water while studying, a song by Mr. Rain, but above all the acronym of a phrase from my grandmother, before I die: “Now you can forget me” ».