One dress, one story: when Gigliola cinquetti first sang "Non ho l'età"

1964, Copenhagen, Denmark.
​On the stage of the Eurovision Song Contest, an Italian girl, Gigliola Cinquetti (born 20 December 1947), sang the Italian song "Non ho l'età", wearing a dark navy or black sleeveless A-line dress of knee length, with the Sabrina collar (named after Audrey Hepburn's film of the same name, designed by French costume designer Hubert de Givenchy, who created most of Audrey's wardrobe for that film). 

Gigliola was 16, and her song was just like her: pure, innocent, dainty, about a young girl who wants to love but knows she is too young to love and needs to wait. With this song, Gigliola not only won thunderous applause from the audience and the championship of the contest, but also the rare honour of being the first and only artist in Eurovision history allowed to greet her audience a second time.

1993, Tokyo, Japan.

On the other side of the world, Gigliola Cinquetti sang this same song, her hair now loose and wavy, her voice much deeper and more mature — she was already a world-famous singer, and no longer young.

Even the dress she wore was completely different, just like she herself was. 

Other than the A-line silhouette, everything else had changed: instead of black, it was white; instead of the very high Sabrina collar, it was a deep V-neck; instead of sleeveless, it had 3/4-length sleeves; and it was much longer, falling almost to her ankle.

What did not change, was that she still carried the same subtlety and elegance on stage, as she had almost thirty years earlier.

The song itself was very simple — a teenage girl's chaste philosophy of love — which sounds rare today, in an age when everything needs to happen right now, but which may have seemed just as unusual when Gigliola first sang it, in the era of the miniskirt and sexual freedom.