Paninaro
Paninaro (plural: Paninari) is a subculture that was born in Milan, Italy during the early 1980s at a fast food restaurant called Al Panino (in English: At the Sandwich). The subculture was famous for its apolitical nature and its twin obsessions with fashion and the Americana, contrasting sharply with the hyperpoliticized 1970s. It developed along with the vapid hedonism of the 80s, fostered by Reaganomics, Thatcherism and deregulation liberalism, reinforced by the diffusion in Italy of privately-owned television channels which transmitted messages of consumerism and a fetishitic urge of self-affirmation through status symbols.
The typical Paninaro look might be Timberland boots or deck shoes, El Charro jeans rolled up to ankle height, belts with texan- or western-style big buckles, Best Company sweatshirts, bulky Dolomite or Moncler jackets and brightly colored rucksacks.
In their heyday they were lampooned in the Italia 1 comedy show Drive-in by Enzo Braschi, who played a character depicting the shallowness of the subculture and its unending vulnerability to newer trends and fads of the 1980s (New Romantic, Dark-Goth, Rambo-like, and so on...). Braschi later dropped the character after a season in which he appeared in military uniform relating his experiences in the then-compulsory service in the Italian Army (then a rite of passage signalling detachment from the teenage years).
The movement was also diffused in some European countries, and is celebrated by the Pet Shop Boys in the song Paninaro.
Italian Paninari spoke their own slang, roughly comparable to the dialect of American Valley Girls.