Emilio Pucci

The aristocratic Marchese, the fighter-pilot-war-hero-turned fashion-designer-turned politician is no more, but the legendary status symbol he created lives on. There was a time (before the price of gold was freed) when a Pucci printed silk jersey dress cost more by weight than gold, and no fashionable jet-setter boarded a plane without at least one packed in her luggaage. In the sixties Pucci-Gucci led the way for all the brand names proudly displayed that followed, but many people are not aware that Pucci did as much as Mary Quant for women in helping to free them from their rigid underpinnings.

Marchese Emilio Pucci grew up in Palazzo Pucci on Via dei Pucci and after the war attended the University of Seattle. In 1947 a fashion photographer for Harper's Bazaar, Toni Frisell, took a photograph of the handsome aristocrat as he was skiing on the slopes of St. Moritz, and when the editors of the magazine printed that he had designed the sleek skiwear he was wearing himself, inquiries from interested stores poured in. Inspired by the bright flags used during the Palio in nearby Siena, Pucci designed unmistakable prints using combinations of bright and pastel colors and geometric shapes on silk jersey, a fashioned them into dresses that flattered the female figure. The dresses were light and versatile, and the international nomads who started jet-setting in the early sixties found that they could pack a lot of outfits by Pucci in just one suitcase.

Pretty soon Pucci prints appeared everywhere, on shoes, purses, luggage, billfolds, bathing suits, nightgowns, and bras and bikini underpants. Pucci even produced perfumed stationery. When Braniff invited him to design uniforms for their flight attendants he invented an original approach that included a plastic helmet to preserve the women's hairdos, and bookings on Braniff shot up. The Apollo 15 crew carried a Pucci-designed flag to the moon.

In the seventies Pucci was elected to the Italian parliament, and he also began labeling and selling the wine produced on his estate in Chianti, owned by the Pucci family since the 13th century.