Pictures of the beauty contests of the 1950s, kept in the archives of the Corriere, tell with cheerfulness and involvement a world full of hopes, in which beauty might become a road to a different life (Giovanna Calvenzi). The last is called Cristina Chiabotto, from Turin, blonde and slender: like the others she faced the jury, the catwalk and the rite of transformation into a potential beauty queen, with black swimsuit, make-up and hairstyle. With a play of portraits, Luigi Gariglio’s pictures tell this transformation, Miss for a day: calm gaze, tense lip or a serious shadow hiding fear and expectation, and the faces of the people who built the 2004 contest, in a long tradition that every year crowns a new Miss Italia (Alessandra Mauro).