List representative: “How to change”

This article appeared in Vanity Fair #32-33 on newsstands through August 16, 2023.

Summer List of Representatives it’s about experimentation, pollution, exploration. The Palermo duo formed by Dario Manjaracina and Veronica Lucchesi are losing their skin. “The representative in recent years has been a popular leader, very flamboyant, the protagonist of hymns and choirs,” he says, “today, instead, we are looking for something more personal.” Dario and Veronica have returned to their natural hair color, both of them brown, they don’t have a summer tour and they are working on new songs. “In this season full of live performances, we have chosen silence,” she continues, “we are like sponges: we absorb the energy of others and try to understand where our versatility will take us.” To accompany them on this journey – between Paris, Palermo and now Monopoli – there is always Valentino, with whom the duo has a special relationship, and the scents of a family. Born in Rome.

What is your relationship with perfumery?
Dario: “I always liked to recognize them in others. One above all, that of my father, unmistakably.”
Veronica: “My roots are in the smell of lavender, which was always on my grandmother’s skin.”

What does this summer smell like instead?
D: “At the moment it is a child with clear eyes who looks at the world. And speaking of roots, I revived the habit of my grandmother, who always kept the shutters in the house ajar in the summer. She was always dark and cool.
Q: “The primordial smell of milk and cookies also comes to mind, but maybe because in this heat I only like to have breakfast. My summer, however, is the summer of a tramp. I feel an urgent need to lose control.

And in the freest season, by definition, how do you do it?
D: “Freedom is not asking yourself what freedom is.”
Q: “In the meantime, live, leave the definitions of the house locked in the closet. I am still slowly building my freedom in relationships, in the way I live. So right now I’m going in search of a little control, but I’m very aware that freedom also consists of listening to the other.”

Current desires and fantasies?
Veronica: “Conquer the world.”
Dario: “I really have a great desire to travel”
Veronica: “And also play without limits. We have visited many festivals abroad lately, we would like to take our music outside of Italy.”

What inspires you in this moment of silence?
V: “I feel a very strong desire to go and discover those parts of myself as an artist that until now I did not attach importance to. It’s like I’ve got a bull’s eye on the sides of myself that I’ve been hiding in the past. I evoke a different kind of femininity, loneliness and intimacy that never existed in the past.”
D: It’s like we’re looking for new characters to tell our stories. And these characters are more like us, or rather, correspond to the feeling of this new stage.

The soundtrack to this transformation?
Q: “The new Blur album and any Cranberries song.”
V: “He always motivates me Handcuffs from Beyoncé.