The Instagram Celebrating Rich, Glamorous Milanese Grandmas

When Vogue fashion features editor Ellie Pithers stumbled across Pasta Grannies – a short online film series of Italian “nonne” who make traditional pasta by hand – she sparked a social dive around the Mediterranean’s most fabulous grandmothers. If you’re not already familiar with Sciuraglam, the Instagram account profiling Milan’s glamorous older women, then be prepared to lose a significant amount of time scrolling down its feed.

“I didn’t have a real reason to start it, I just fell in love with these iconic women in Milan,” the man behind the account, Angelo, tells Vogue of what encouraged him to start capturing the city's keen fashion followers on his phone in December 2016.

Angelo, a dental student from south Italy, wishes only to disclose this small bio on himself. “Nobody knows my real identity apart from some of the women I photograph, and I would love it to stay this way,” he shares. “I didn’t start this to be famous. I want the account to be focused on the women, not me.”

At first, he showed the pictures to his friends out of shock at how different the lifestyle Milanese women enjoyed in comparison with those in his hometown. “I used to capture two women at a time, and say, ‘I wish we were them, because they are beautiful, and their lives are so much easier than ours! They go to grocery stores, dressed in Gucci or Prada, and we just go to university!’”

Fellow students admired the grandeur of Angelo’s growing community of grans, and so he started mapping out their locale. “They are always in the centre of Milan, because they are rich,” he laughs. “If I go to Bar Luce [the Wes Anderson-imagined establishment in Fondazione Prada] there are always women there having coffee.” Accordingly, the account name refers to “Scuira” meaning “rich woman” in Milanese dialect.

It’s not the Gucci logos that signal a woman out as a Scuiragram subject, but the “inner beauty” Angelo sees in them. “I really can’t describe it, beauty is beauty,” he muses. “And they have to wear something that I would wear if I was a woman.”

Angelo began to see an upwards spike in followers as the nieces and nephews of the women started finding his images of their relatives on Instagram. “In the beginning, I uploaded some without consent, but the family loved them, and we became – sort of – friends,” he continues. When Italian “influencer” and brand consultant Gilda Ambrosio found the account, journalists started contacting him in droves. “I didn’t think it could have this success,” he says sheepishly of his fan base. “I didn’t know how people would react to these women”.

Though dentistry is still a priority (he is in year four of six) he admits he’d like to branch out into photography full time. “I’d love to shoot younger people and editorials… for Vogue! I know I’m dreaming big.” With a growing 121k follower count, Sciuraglam is firmly out of hobby territory already.