Formidable (or maybe not) those years. There are those who remember them with nostalgia and those who turn up their noses in front of the paradise for a few, lucky, intimate, transformed into a great stage of the star system. Whether it is that of supermodels and Oscar-winning actors and directors or the more local one of tronists. In fact, the first decade of the 2000s, just yesterday, marked the pop turning point of the Costa Smeralda, not surprisingly, which ended up at the center, in 2006, of the summer cinepanettone "Vita Smeralda" with Jerry Calà.
But even before the image, and perhaps not unrelated, there is a substantial turning point that decrees the end of an era, that of the Aga Khan: in 2003 the prince-founder sold the package to the American Tom Barrack's Colony Capital which includes the hotels of the group and 2,400 hectares of land covered by the controversial Master Plan that was never implemented. Thus begins the Barrack era which will last exactly nine years, until the sale to Qatar, and which sees a restyling of the hotels and yet another project, still on paper, of new settlements in the form of villages around the stazzi. Social life, previously reserved for private parties, becomes a stylistic figure of the Costa Smeralda.
These are also the years of Flavio Briatore and his Billionaire, born in 1998, and who sees his glory years in the early 2000s. The luxury, previously hidden, becomes ostentatious, starting with the name and the opening parties of the venue, with kilometer-long lists of more or less excellent guests, end up in all the newspapers. The undisputed star of the new millennium on the Costa is Naomi Campbell, at the time engaged in a stormy relationship with Briatore, who passes from a party on the “Force in blue” yacht moored in Porto Cervo to another in her boyfriend's club. But she is not the only supermodel to be photographed in Porto Cervo and surroundings: in 2000 there was Claudia Schiffer, and then Cindy Crawford and in 2005 Eva Herzigova. Many of these characters appear in the volume "Costa Smeralda, 50 years of Dolce Vita in Sardinia" that Tom Barrack, shortly before selling his share package to the Emir of Qatar, wanted to celebrate the half century. The presence of Hollywood movie stars is more discreet, in those years Steven Spielberg (who is mainly on his yacht) and Denzel Washington, Bruce Willis, Sharon Stone and Rob Lowe pass through Porto Cervo.
LELEMORISM
On the Italian front, on the other hand, they are the years of Lele Mora, so characterizing that they defined them, not benevolently, as the years of lelememorism. The people of Mora, tronists and letters, are permanently settled in the large Villa Bianca of Cala Granu but in the evening they move between the Billionaire and the Pepero, the Sopravvento and the Smaila's. Mora himself recalled those years in an interview published a few years ago in the weekly magazine Chi. «The inauguration of the season at the Billionaire - he says - was like the first one at La Scala, being there meant counting, being someone. If you weren't there, you weren't anyone ». Cavalli's party «had become an event that we organized from year to year. Press and TV from all over the world filmed and talked about the Costa Smeralda ». And then there were the parties in the villa of Cala Granu, with the snow on August 8 or “Parisian brothel” style: «At the entrance - says Mora - one hundred girls in loincloths and one hundred bare-chested toy boys received guests. A festival that the Costa Smeralda still remembers today ». And then the sunset: «They called me the king of trash. Lelememorism ruined everything but I gave lots of people to work by giving dreams ».