Pucci: now with septum piercings and selfie sticks

New Pucci creative director Massimo Giorgetti called this his ‘pilot episode’ – a teaser collection of ideas he will be fine-tuning throughout the coming seasons. At MSGM, he has built a youth-led brand around a print-fuelled collision of colours and textures with a kind of comic strip ‘pow-bang-boom’ quality to it, and he injected wild hyper colour in the same vein into his first Pucci presentation, shown at Pitti in Florence. But these were all shades from the Pucci palette, just amped up that little bit more into an energetic, upbeat and slickly sophisticated statement signalling that the house’s aristos are heading into the street, with nose rings and a newfound attitude.

“Respect for the past as the essence of progress, no nostalgia attached,” the collection notes read, and this echoed through every corner of Giorgetti’s production. The show space was quintessential Florentine renaissance, but the room was stark and naked, filled only with a stage framed by industrial fluorescent lights. Whimsical Pucci archive prints were reworked through a modern lens (the witty and famous ‘Tourists in Florence’ motif now comes with selfie sticks) and applied to clean silhouettes, scarves morphing into dresses and technical fabrics that gave everything a shiny, new feel.

“An energetic, upbeat and slickly sophisticated statement signalling that the house’s aristos are heading into the street, with nose rings and and a newfound attitude”

In a tribute to Florence and the vast Pucci heritage (the Pucci dynasty still reside in the family palazzo overlooking the Duomo), Giorgetti brought the Florentine lily to the foreground, shaping it into a new logo that lent an ornate, opulent feel to the club-like acid hues and laser cut lace. Elsewhere, there was a dialogue between a craft-like, feathered vibe, and a 60s kind of futurism that ebbed through the modernist shapes and square-toed shoes. Where Peter Dundas had drawn on megawatt sex and legs, this was a more eccentric, clashing aesthetic, harnessing the subtle Pucci irony that has always resided within the house prints.

Watch a teaser trailer for the presentation below: