TURIN’S SHROUD OF MYSTERY
As Aussie Sheldon Riley makes the final of Eurovision, there’s much focus on the outrageous costumes, writes KATHY McCABE
AUSSIE pop singer Sheldon Riley has handled a technical glitch to book his spot in the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest grand final. Riley - who shot to fame on The Voice reality show, performed his deeply personal song Not The Same. His microphone stand failed to pop up at his position at the top of the staircase at the performance’s dramatic big reveal when he was removing his chain-mail mask. “It was quite the f …-up,” he said, laughing with the Australian media continge nt in Turin, Italy after the show.
“My staging is very complex … I don’t care, I got through and it won’t happen again.”
The 23-year-old singer made the top 10 in the second semifinal to realise his childhood dream of representing Australia in the final of the world’s biggest singing competition.
Riley’s elaborate costume has been a feature this week amongst other performers’ flower beards, alien wolf heads and disco cowboys as the 2022 Eurovision parade has rivalled even the most bonkers outfits on a fashion week catwalk.
For more than six decades, the singing Olympics has been as synonymous with costume drama as it is with power ballads and pop bops.
Riley is rocking one of the most elaborate stage outfits in the Turin competition, designed by Melbourne couturier Alin Le’Kal.
Weighing 40kg and with more than 100,000 handsewn Swarovski crystals, pearls and ostrich feathers
and a 3m cape, the white ensemble took more than 2200 hours to create.
“I love it; getting a reaction was why I started
this … there’s four people behind me holding it as I walk down the corridor. And they’re real Swarovski crystals so when you see it under the light, they sparkle like Dami’s (Dami Im) did,” he said.
The singer’s styling team, Kobi Bokshish and Lucy Sylvester, have been in fashion heaven at Eurovision. The pair were big fans of the facial flora worn by a mysterious member of Georgia’s rock band Circus Mircus. “I could see (Australian fashion brand) Romance Was Born doing that,” Sylvester said.
All the focus on the Norwegian “aliens” Subwoolfer has been on their canary yellow headwear rather than their comedic song Give That Wolf A Banana.
Bokshish believes the outfits overwhelm their vocal performance: “They remind me of some medieval sex party where everyone is wearing masks; but you don’t know who’s singing.” Sylvester said the mystery of their identities worked because “everyone is asking who they are”.
The style team cite San Marino’s disco cowboy Achille Lauro as one of their standout pop looks of the 2022 line-up. His see-through body suit and opera gloves scream rock star.
“I love it! On the street, I would say no, but on him, I say yes!” Bokshish said.
There is a lot of black and white on the Pala Olimpico stage this year, so any burst of colour has dazzled under the state-of-the-art Turin lighting.
One of the acts creating a cacophony of competing outfits is the Moldovan collective Zdob si Zdub & Advahov Brothers.
But Bokshish isn’t a fan of the brothers’ suits. “The first thing I thought was curtains,” he said.
UK artist and TikTok star Sam Ryder and his pop bop Spaceman will rescue his country from its Eurovision doldrums – they have sat at the bottom for the grand final results for the past two years – but his sparkly embroidered suit set against a crystal cage doesn’t get the nod from Bokshish.
“He needs dark hair for that suit. He looks like Kurt Cobain dressed as Michael Jackson.”
THE 2022 EUROVISION SONG CONTEST GRAND FINAL WILL AIR ON SBS FROM 5AM SUNDAY.