Careless Whispers

Italians call it ‘Sprezzatura,’ a carefully arrived-at careless look. I call it styling for sex!

In the cobblestoned lanes of Rome, I discover a city carelessly in love with love. Carelessness over coffees, over stolen kisses next to abandoned fountains, over half-naked men escaping married women’s hatches, and the occasional over excited old man letting loose a sultry string of words at a woman walking by. They take their cappuccino standing up here, and they start drinking before the sun bids them goodbye. At no point do their oddities seem contrarian; just reckless and hopelessly stylish. Almost like a bunch of stuff tossed up in Rome, falling all over, but instead of creating a mess, looking carelessly sexy, like bed head or smeared mascara or the teasing trespass of a concealed love bite.

I soon realise it is this imprecise exactness that makes them so irresistibly sexy. Imperfect perfection. Style, in clothes, in mannerisms, in the lilt of the hand as it twiddles the cigarette, in the poise of the lips, in the languish of the legs, in the tuck of the shirt that is almost perfect, but for that wrinkled infilare just above the butt, and those sunglasses protecting against moonshine and streetlights; style that looks so casual that it looks careless like everything else here. But it most definitely isn’t. The Italians have a word for it. They call it sprezzatura—a studied, or meticulously arrived at carelessness. I call it styling for sex appeal.