A new dating craze sweeping across the land of Casanova suggests that Italian men have lost their appetite for the chase. Thousands have rushed to join the dating service, based on text messages and a number emblazoned on T-shirts, and avoids the pitfalls of fumbled chat-up lines and the risk of a humiliating rejection.

It works like this: for €38 (£25) you buy a T-shirt, from one of 250 shops, with a nickname and number printed on it, which together form a code — Cayman 232, for example, Emily 14 or Fancy 005. The organisers issue you with a membership card bearing a secret password, enabling you to register online with the scheme’s website, www.shyno.com.

Next step: you see the girl or boy of your dreams wearing one in the street, on the beach, in the disco. You make a note of the code and send an admiring text or video message to the website, which passes it on to him or her, with your details and your own mobile phone number. The object of your desire can then respond, or not.

“If he or she gets in touch, then the rest is up to you,” said Mauro Falcinelli, the scheme’s Rome representative. “Simple, anonymous, discreet — and romantic. If you see a coded T-shirt and are dazzled by its contents, you just try your luck.” He insisted that Italian men had not lost their macho instincts, but said that times had changed. “Young women are wary of responding to approaches by strangers. Romance has become a risky business.”

The Shyno service is the brainchild of Simone Giancola, 28, a medical student frustrated by his inability to contact a beautiful woman whom he spotted on a boat across the water. “I saw this stunning girl on a sailing boat, quite the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in my life. The boat had a number, and I thought, ‘If only the number of that boat was a telephone number’. Then it came to me.”

The scheme began after a trial in a nightclub, when 1,000 free T-shirts were given out. Within a week they had generated 14,000 text messages.

More than 20,000 T-shirts have been sold since Shyno was started late last year, and Mr Giancola expects to have 200,000 customers by the end of this year and a million within three years.

Sixty per cent of customers are women.

The scheme is being advertised on Italian television, featuring Elena Santarelli, a blonde TV showgirl and actress currently starring in the hit film Commediasexy. The adverts (shot in Cuba) show her wearing a tight yellow T-shirt and roaming, mobile phone in hand, around a club with decor in the style of the film Sin City.

On the walls are “hunting trophies” — not stuffed elk or deer but young men in coded T-shirts, all of whom look delighted to have been captured.

“Speed dating has been overtaken; blind dates and lonely-hearts ads are a thing of the past,” La Stampa, the Italian daily newspaper, said. “This is the future of the eternal game of seduction — ideal for metro-sexuals who have lost the instinct for the chase and prefer to be the prey instead.”

Shyno is considering extending the dating scheme to car numberplates. “Think how many times you pull up at traffic lights and exchange glances with an attractive person in the car alongside you,” Mr Giancola said. “We Italians sometimes wind down the window and throw across a folded piece of paper with our phone number on it. How much simpler to take a note of the numberplate and see if its owner is registered.”

Cut to the chase

— Speed Dating men and women swap partners every three minutes until each has met everyone. Couples can exchange details

— Gallery Dating Art-loving lonely hearts can meet over a buffet at an exhibition, swapping personal cards provided by the organisers

— Wine Dating Blind dating and blind tasting combine as couples spend ten minutes discussing the identity of the wine they are drinking

— Date Walking A mixed group of walkers enjoy a long stroll, meeting each other while doing so. Organisers facilitate an exchange of details

— Supper Clubs Traditional dinner dating enjoying revival

Sources: Times archives

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