High expectations about Italy's most famous music event, the 66th Sanremo Music Festival opening Tuesday through Saturday, appear to have had an effect in at least one area of showbiz - fashion.
With popular showman Carlo Conti vying to glue as many Italians as last year to the television screen for the music extravaganza - alongside co-presenters Gabriel Garko, a television actor, comedian Virginia Raffaele and Romanian actress and model Madalina Ghenea - the looks paraded on the stage of Sanremo's Ariston theater will be a key attraction.
Presenters were gearing up to showcase sleek suits and groovy outfits as well as the traditional lineup of eye-catching frocks and sex-bomb slithers that are so much a part of the Sanremo storyline.
Conti, who is presenting the event for the second consecutive year, kept an average 10.8 million Italians tuned to RAI public broadcaster to watch the festival last year, its highest ratings in a decade.
For the 2016 edition, he will once again make a classic fashion statement with his go-to brand - Salvatore Ferragamo, from his home town of Florence.
Italian TV sex symbol Gabriel Garko will also be playing it classic with Roman tailor Battistoni.
Garko will be wearing different suits on the five days of the festival, each inspired by a movie icon - Marlon Brando, Sean Connery as James Bond, Cary Grant, Marcello Mastroianni and Paul Newman.
All five actors were dressed by the tailor based in Rome's Trinità dei Monti during the heyday of Italian cinema in the 1960s.
Garko's suits will be tailor-made in a new luxury fabric made with diamond fiber, called "diamond chip".
On the women's front, comedian Virginia Raffaele, known for her skillful parodies and imitations ranging from contemporary Italian starlets to politicians, will be donning looks from different brands, her stylist Susanna Ausoni has said.
Outfits will range from a tuxedo to a sexy miniskirt by label Jenny.
The comedian "wants to dare," said Ausone. "She loves fashion and will try to turn Sanremo into her occasion, also in terms of looks".
Meanwhile Ghenea, who starred in Paolo Sorrentino's latest movie Youth, has announced she will be parading as many as 15 different outfits throughout the festival.
They will all be gowns "befitting" the Sanremo stage, which represents "a dream for me", she has said.
Designers will include Alberta Ferretti, Vionnet, Lebanon's Zuhir Murad and Romanian designer Cristina Savulescu.
Overall, many performers will be taking the stage in unique outfits produced by brand names for the occasion, like singer Noemi's 1970s outfit designed by Bianca Gervasio as an homage to Janis Joplin.
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