A book for fashion and design lovers detailing Emilio Pucci's creativity beyond fashion, expressed through his interior design projects, rugs, and porcelain.

The brightly colored printed fabrics that twist around in a kaleidoscope created by Emilio Pucci recount an important period of Italian fashion history dating back to the 1960s.

This volume celebrates Emilio Pucci's creativity, which he expressed through his interior design projects, rugs, and porcelain, as well as in his fashion. Pucci's patterns and designs have been used in collaboration with other brands to create designer and collector objects.

Emilio Pucci focused on the creation of rugs that were presented in 1970 at the Museo Nacional de Arte Decorativo in Buenos Aires. The production of exclusive rugs continues upon the request of selected clients, whose houses have been photographed for the book. Currently, Pucci collaborates with Cappellini, Kartell, Bisazza, Illy, and many others on their interior design projects.eation of rugs that were presented at the Museo Nacional de Arte Decorativo in Buenos Aires. The production of exclusive rugs continues upon the request of selected clients, whose houses have been photographed for the book. Currently, Pucci collaborates with Cappellini, Kartell, Bisazza, Illy, and many others on their interior design projects.

About the Author:

Laudomia Pucci graduated in business and economics at LUISS University in Rome. After the death of her father,
Emilio Pucci, in 1992, she became head of the Emilio Pucci company. Suzy Menkes is a British journalist and fashion critic. Angelo Flaccavento is a contributing editor to the Business of Fashion. Piero Lissoni is one of Italy's leading Italian architects and designers, known for his contemporary furniture design.

The prince of prints. Pucci's vision and legacy

Emilio Pucci (1914-1992) had a passion for women, a visionary sense of style, and an eye for color and design. With these talents, he created a fashion house unlike any other. By the early ’50s his boutique on the Isle of Capri was catering to wealthy sophisticates, heiresses and movie stars buying his "Capri pants", silk scarves and lightweight separates. By the end of the decade, Jacqueline Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe were wearing his dresses, and by the mid-60s the label was synonymous with the gilded lifestyle of an international jetset. Today, the house remains as vibrant as ever – Victoria Beckham, Elizabeth Hurley, and Kylie Minogue are adherents.

The Pucci story is a modern epic with its roots in renaissance Italy: the brand’s founder, the Marchese Emilio Pucci di Barsento, was a charismatic aristocrat whose lineage extends back to the 14th century. It is a story of evolution: how a family company grew from one tiny store to an international brand with 50 boutiques worldwide (and a presence in 300 more). And finally, it is a tale of innovation: Pucci was one of the first brands to bear a logo, and a pioneer of diversification into interiors, athletic wear and accessories. It introduced free-moving, lightweight fabrics, pop art prints, and a new color palette into womenswear, and constantly pushed fabric and printing technologies.

Featuring hundreds of photographs, drawings, and candid shots from the archive of the Emilio Pucci Foundation, this tome captures the breathtaking elegance and drama of a unique brand. Vanessa Friedman’s text places Emilio’s achievements in the context of fashion history and provides insight into the remarkable Pucci dynasty.

The author:

Vanessa Friedman is fashion editor of the Financial Times, where she writes a weekly style column and the blog Material World. Previously, she was the features director of UK In Style and contributed regularly to The Economist, The New Yorker, Vogue, and Entertainment Weekly. She is the winner of the Newswomen's Club of New York Front Page award for specialty writing and is on the advisory council of Princeton University's History Department.

For the acclaimed photographer Boris Mikhailov (born 1938), a society's most significant paradigm shifts are often most clearly perceived in the smallest of everyday transactions. For example, in a café or restaurant in Soviet-era Ukraine, a waiter would have offered you "tea or coffee?" Today, two decades after the fall of the Soviet bloc and the ascent of western capitalism, it's "tea, coffee, cappuccino?" In his latest body of work, Mikhailov addresses this shift by focusing on his hometown of Charkow, in northeast Ukraine. Here, the consumerist invasion of western capitalism is everywhere apparent in huge, colourful advertising banners and billboards, but the promises of the so-called Orange Revolution seem to have been fulfilled for only a few.

Mikhailov writes that "only when one sees misery in a picture, does one begin to notice it in the street," and throughout the 200-plus photographs in this volume, he takes pains to neither dramatize nor ameliorate the conditions of life in Charkow; and so his tough-minded pictures present a bleak but rigorously honest portrait of Ukraine and its inhabitants.

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For Boris Mikhailov, societal changes are most clearly visible in small, everyday events. While the waiter in Ukraine would still be asking "tea or coffee?" during the Soviet era, the question today is "tea, coffee, cappuccino?"

In his newest works (2000 - 2010), Mikhailov tackles precisely these changes and captures-as he has already in "By the Ground / At Dusk" (Oktagon, 1996)-daily life in his hometown Charkow. In this collection of more than 200 colour photographs, the West is perceptible everywhere in the form of huge, colourful advertising banners, but the promises of the Orange Revolution, that everything would get better, have only been fulfilled for few.

Through palliating nothing, transfiguring nothing, Mikhailov attempts to sensitise the view of the observer. The individual pictures and scenes create a large tableau of society that tells us more about Ukraine and its inhabitants than any specialised book.

The prince of prints

Pucci's vision and legacy

Limited edition of 10.000 copies; each unique copy is bound with one of a selection of recent print fabrics from the Pucci collection.

Emilio Pucci (1914-1992) had a passion for women, a visionary sense of style, and an eye for color and design. With these talents he created a fashion house unlike any other. By the early '50s his boutique on the isle of Capri was catering to wealthy sophisticates, heiresses and movie stars buying his "Capri pants", silk scarves and lightweight separates. By the end of the decade, Jacqueline Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe were wearing his dresses, and by the mid-60s the label was synonymous with the gilded lifestyle of an international jetset. Today, the house remains as vibrant as ever–Victoria Beckham, Elizabeth Hurley, and Kylie Minogue are adherents–and recently celebrated its 60th anniversary.

The Pucci story is a modern epic with its roots in renaissance Italy: the brand’s founder, the Marchese Emilio Pucci di Barsento, was a charismatic aristocrat whose lineage extends back to the 14th century. It is a story of evolution: how a family company grew from one tiny store to an international brand with 50 boutiques worldwide (and a presence in 300 more). And finally, it is a tale of innovation: Pucci was one of the first brands to bear a logo, and a pioneer of diversification into interiors, athletic wear and accessories. It introduced free-moving, lightweight fabrics, pop art prints, and a new color palette into womenswear, and constantly pushed fabric and printing technologies.

Featuring hundreds of photographs, drawings, and candid shots from the archive of the Emilio Pucci Foundation, this XL tome captures the breathtaking elegance and drama of a unique brand. Vanessa Friedman's text places Emilio's achievements in the context of fashion history, and provides insight into the remarkable Pucci dynasty.

Author:
Vanessa Friedman is fashion editor of the Financial Times, where she writes a weekly style column and edits the Business of Fashion supplements. Previously, she was the features director of UK In Style, and contributed regularly to The Economist, The New Yorker, Vogue, and Entertainment Weekly.

Contributing author:
Alessandra Arezzi Boza is a Costume and Fashion historian, has worked as a consultant for the Costume Gallery at Palazzo Pitti in Florence and in several projects for fashion houses and their archives. Since 2001 she is the curator of the Emilio Pucci Foundation.

Editor:
Armando Chitolina worked as a design consultant and art director at Vogue Italia and L'Uomo Vogue, and image consultant for fashion houses Moschino and Mila Schön. His TASCHEN titles include William Claxton's Jazz Seen, Gian Paolo Barbieri's Equator, The Book of Tiki, Naked as a Jaybird and Valentino: A Grand Italian Epic.