Interview to MYDA grillz - an all Italian success

Established in 2014 in Milan but operating all over Europe, MYDA is the first Italian company to deal with grills and dental jewelery, combining the most advanced dental technology expertise with the famous artisan jewelery in Italy.

Matteo Pappalardo has undertaken dental technics, and as he learned traditional school teaching, he was thinking of doing something different with the skills he was gaining. Through the creation of grillz there is reversing in the indispensable relationship between dental technician and dentist. Normally, it is the dentist to choose, according to his own criteria, to which dental laboratory entrust the creation of the artifacts that he will have to use, while in the grillz case the opposite occurs: thus giving more emphasis to the figure of the technician that too many time, has been a victim of devaluation in the dental field.

After completing the studies, Matteo begins working in the lab and at the same time creates Milano Grillz Inc - the first Italian company to deal with dental jewelery - and, shortly after the birth of this new reality, meets Simone Tucci and together they choose to give a more solid and consolidated structure for this innovation in jewelery. It is the birth of MYDA.

"(...) MYDA is born from the will to bring in a particular product in Italy that many of us have been accustomed to seeing but never to live in person"

The creation of this kind of jewel is extremely technical: a first stage begins with the dental implant detection, performed by the dentist, and from this sculpture it proceed with the physical creation of the jewel in all its parts, design and realization. MYDA is characterized by the high standards of its production techniques that have recently put it in the same way as one of the world's best grillz maker.

We have had the pleasure of talking to Simone about this cultural phenomenon in all its facets, from the historical analysis to its implementation in the Italian market.

#1 Tell us about MYDA, what is it born?

When we were younger, we watched the videos that went on MTV and throughout the hip hop scene there were fairly glamorous jewels, among which there were also grillz. While we were used to considering "normal" items such as necklaces, bracelets, or earrings - though very brilliant - the idea of making precious teeth was a totally new and revolutionary thing for the environment from which we arrived and for the cultural environment in which we grew up. This is the genesis that has prompted us to bring to Italy a product that has nothing to do with our culture - except as a compromise in the dental field for those who could not afford more expensive materials. Today, our mission is to translate grillz into all environments like other jewels, and the feature of removability plays in favor of this because it shares with the rest of the jewelery the possibility to be worn on the basis of a particular outfit or an image's choice.

#2 This is a unique project in Italy. How did you enter the industry?

As I said, we are the first in Italy to deal with grillz and this has led to dealing with commercial dynamics that in "normal" activities often do not occur. The most significant features are mainly three: to represent demand and market contemporaryity, the regulatory vacuum related to the typology of our products and to address the cultural stereotypes associated with the "golden tooth". Coupling the use of precious metal to theeth might remind to someone something vaguely gipsy and cocoon but, with new generations and foreign contaminations, this missconcept is slowly changing ... the situation is common to that of tattoos a few decades ago: a new and trendy thing that everyone starts to want but no one is clear about how it should be done.
The total lack of critical awareness about the product inevitably leads to errors of assessment.

#3 That of grillz is a well-known and very popular phenomenon in the black culture of the early '90s, can you clarify which are its cultural derivations?

If we refer to grillz as a mass phenomenon, the image most commonly contextualizing these jewels joins the United States, black culture and the 70s, but the use of decorating the teeth has much deeper and widespread roots. If we take US as a comparator tool, dental jewelery intersects, as often happens, aesthetic and medical reasons. In hip hop, where ostentation of the status has always been an important feature, the use of grillz has widespread quick and in the 1990s it found enormous diffusion thanks also to the appearance of grillz makers later became extremely famous as Paul Wall, Jhonny Deng, etc.

#4 And from a more historical-anthropological point of view? What are its origins?

In recent years scientists have denied the widespread idea that the custom of decorating and treating the teeth with gold was born with Egyptian culture, claiming that in Italy this art has its appearance by the hand of the Etruscan people. The first finds date back to 1800, but the discovery was not published until 1999 with Marshall Joseph Becker's publication of the Etruscan Gold Dental Appliances: Three Newly Discovered Examples, where 20 sets of female teeth dating back to 700 BC were analyzed - which have interlaces of fine gold threads inside them. It was a way of describing a high social status. Same situation in Central America with the Mayan populations, or the Viking villages of Northern Europe or, still, in the present Philippines, where in the 17th century some missionaries operating in those places described more than 100 words used by the indigenous population to intend gold as a metal or as dental decoration.

In the following centuries, the use of gold at a dental level has had shifts all over the world, but has remained for many an element of strong folklore and traditional connotation. The archetypal that link grillz, USA and hip hop 90's are to be reflected in the fact that in those years the focus was on the videos of overseas broadcasted on our music channels, but the phenomenon is very much elder.

#5 In the contemporary scene, do you think that the grillz qualifies itself as an object of worship or as a future generational trend?

We are convinced that grillz is not a passing trend, as this has been demonstrated in the US, and that with time it will become a normal jewel to wear at will. Currently, in Italy, the public is shifting attention to this product, and the phenomenon is growing. The motivations are undoubtedly attributable to the diffusion that certain kinds of music are having in our country, but we believe that we also contributed through the conveyance of an image of the least aggressive and more characterizing grillz. Its expression potential is in many ways comparable to that of a necklace, the possibilities of personalization are in fact numerous, and this very aspect makes dental jewelery fit for very different "pockets" and tastes. If you exclude particular diseases you can say that anyone can wear a grill; if you follow the due diligence the jewel does not create any kind of problem.