Pucci’s Fashion Experience; Alexander McQueen’s London Show; Mother of Pearl Launching Sustainable Capsule
The Pucci Experience: While practically synonymous with beach holidays, Emilio Pucci has roots in the mountains, too — a fact the Florentine house will bring to life in St. Moritz this winter.
A fashion “experience” has been scheduled for Dec. 8 to 10 at the glamorous Swiss ski destination, WWD has learned.
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“The main idea is to emphasize the position of Pucci for wintertime,” said artistic director Camille Miceli, who unveiled her first designs for the storied Italian brand last April in Capri, the jet-set island where founder Emilio Pucci opened his initial boutique in 1951.
Pucci, who died in 1992, was known for his athletic prowess and was a member of the Italian Olympic ski team in 1932. In fact, he was “discovered” as a designer while skiing and by chance met fashion photographer Toni Frissell, who asked to photograph his ski outfit. As legend goes, when she discovered he had personally designed the collection, she asked him to make some women’s skiwear, which was later shown in Harper’s Bazaar, and a career was born.
He began designing skiwear out of jersey fabrics in 1947 and opened his house in 1949, which quickly became famous for colorful, graphic motifs.
Miceli is still shaping the program for St. Moritz, but will surely conjure many Instagrammable moments as she did in Capri, where models lounged on towels doing synchronized leg lifts, and guests participated in yoga classes, lunches and dance parties.
A seasoned creative who was accessories creative director at Louis Vuitton before joining Pucci last September, Miceli said she prefers to “show things in a different way and surprise people. We are a resort and lifestyle brand: We show the clothes in a context.”
Pucci also unveils collections on a see now, buy now calendar, with deliveries timed as monthly drops. The company, controlled by French luxury giant LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, recently rebooted as a resort-focused brand, with Miceli characterizing her clothes as easy to wear, easy to pack and versatile enough to take a woman from “morning to night.”
She said the collection to be unveiled in St. Moritz would include party dresses and gift items, given that its timed to the holiday season, along with ski and resort elements.
Miceli noted that St. Moritz, while in Switzerland, has a strong Italian flavor, given its proximity to Milan, Como and Bergamo. — Miles Socha
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London Looks: The Kering-owned British luxury brand Alexander McQueen continues to showcase outside of the fashion week system, and it will turn to London this fall to reveal its spring 2023 collection.
The spring 2023 Alexander McQueen collection will be shown after Paris Fashion Week on Oct. 11, following the brand’s mushroom-inspired fall 2022 collection shown in New York in March.
This will be the second time that the brand to stage a runway show in London since the COVID-19 pandemic. The brand showcased its spring 2022 collection on the rooftop of a car park in East London last October.
Sarah Burton, the brand’s creative director, said at the time the decision to show in London was a result of that coming together.
Prior to the pandemic, the brand was usually shown during Paris Fashion Week.
“We listened to the rhythm of our own studio, and how we’ve been working as a team, it made sense to do it here, to be here, and to do the show at this time,” she said.
The brand has also experimented with video and print publications on new products and collections launches.
Alexander McQueen tapped award-winning visual artist Sophie Muller on a short film that brings pieces from the brand’s spring 2022 collection to life when the pieces from the collection were hitting the stores earlier this year.
For the pre-fall 2022 season, the brand issued a 160-page zine documenting the creative process of 12 artists who were invited by Burton to express their working practices, each inspired by a look from the women’s collection.
The company has also been making strides in the sustainability space. Last year, it became the first luxury label to work with Vestiaire Collective on the platform’s Brand Approved program, which allows McQueen clients to sell their clothing to Vestiaire in exchange for credit notes to be spent in the McQueen boutiques.
The company has also been donating deadstock fabrics to universities and organizations, as well as working with stylists who encourage clients to don old-season pieces. In 2020, Harry Styles wore a look featuring McQueen deadstock fabrics made by a University of Westminster student.
Last year, the brand threw its weight behind A Team Arts Education, a community youth organization in East London that works to help young people enter the arts and create paths for design careers. Over the coming year, Alexander McQueen said it will support A Team Arts Education financially, and further extend the existing workshops and classes that it began as part of a pilot program last year. — Tianwei Zhang
Naturally Beautiful: British fashion label Mother of Pearl, worn by celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow and Saoirse Ronan, is launching a sustainable summer capsule, “Naturally Beautiful,” that features some of the brand’s signature styles made with the wood-based and biodegradable fiber brand Tencel.
The launch of the collection coincides with the 30th anniversary of Tencel.
The collection is accompanied by a series of images shot by Mary McCartney and is inspired by her book “The White Horse,” which captured the beauty of her white stallion Alejandro. In the shoot, models wore pieces from the capsule and posed with some of the last shire horses of Hampton Court.
As part of the anniversary, a series of prints of those images in three different sizes, ranging from 195 to 395 pounds, will be available to purchase in a limited-edition run of 100 on the Mother of Pearl website.
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Amy Powney, creative director of Mother of Pearl, and brand ambassador of Tencel, said “McCartney’s book ‘The White Horse’ has been an inspiration to me and I wanted to capture that same intimate and spontaneous essence in a campaign.”
She added that for each print sold, 100 percent of the profits would be used to raise money for McCartney’s chosen charity organization Mind, which provides advice and support to empower anyone experiencing a mental health problem, as well as for their equine project “Real Horse Power.”
McCartney, who was chosen to photograph Queen Elizabeth II in 2015, said Powney and Mother of Pearl are leading the way in “combining amazing aesthetic in design with real mindfulness and sustainability.”
“She takes on this challenge, and in my opinion, is a pioneer that others should be looking to for inspiration,” McCartney said of Powney. — T.Z.
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