Pucci perfect

A model wears a creation from Pucci collection at Milan Fashion Week. Picture / Reuters

Although summer sun's still wishful thinking, there is a way to introduce a touch of hot Mediterranean colour into our lives - by wearing Pucci in all its rainbow-hued, psychedelic exuberance, from head to toe.

It's a time-honoured formula, good enough for Marilyn Monroe - who collected Pucci and, legend has it, was buried in one of the house's designs - Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Kennedy and just about every other self-respecting member of the jet-set in the 50s and 60s.

Joan Burstein, the visionary buyer and proprietor of hip British fashion store Browns, has been wearing Pucci for almost half a century.

"I did meet Emilio Pucci once," she says. "It must have been in the 1950s, when I first wore his clothes. He was a very distinguished, fabulous-looking man."

Burstein was far from being the only person to fall for the patrician Pucci's charms. "I have kissed the hand of every beautiful lady in Europe," declared the aristocratic designer, who hailed from Florence and founded his fashion house in 1948.

Emilio and his wife, Cristina, moved in the same glamorous circles as their moneyed clientele so it was only natural that the designer's talent was discovered on the ski slopes of St Moritz. In 1947, Diana Vreeland, then editor of Harper's Bazaar, saw a photo of a woman at the resort wearing a Pucci design. It wasn't long before Pucci was worn by everyone who was anyone.

Emilio died in 1992. In 2000, the French luxury-goods conglomerate LVMH (Moet Hennessy-Louis Vuitton) bought a majority stake in the company, which the chairman Bernard Arnault saw as ripe for revival.

In 2003, French designer Christian Lacroix took the helm at Pucci, and the label's profile soared.

Soon after his appointment, Lacroix told Vanity Fair that he remembered Pucci clothes as a child: "The girls were all covered in psychedelic flowers, had long hair and short, short dresses. At the time, I wasn't conscious that it was Pucci style, but my generation was always so impressed with colour and prints, and my mother and girlfriends were all in Pucci copies or genuine Pucci."

Fast-forward more than 40 years, and we are again gripped by colour and prints, so it's not surprising that Pucci is enjoying another moment in the sun. Sales last year almost doubled and revenue has quadrupled.

Pucci is one of the fastest-growing luxury brands in Europe, with estimated sales of about 30 million ($77.4 million). Those who worship at the altar (multi-coloured) of Pucci can indulge not only in clothing but also swimwear, bags, shoes and even gumboots. These last are stamped "Emilio", just like everything else the label turns out, in a replica of the late master's own signature.

Joan Burstein was the first buyer in Britain to stock Pucci. "The first pieces that we bought were the multicoloured leggings, and they became hot, hot, hot," she says, citing the colour, "the gorgeous colour", as the secret of Pucci's success. Pucci is now the label that any self-respecting It Girl wears "because prints are big. We've had so much black with the influence of the Japanese, and people are fickle".

The label doesn't come cheap but it is beautifully made and imitations pale by comparison, quite literally. "It's well-nigh impossible to copy colour and print like that," Burstein says.

Emilio Pucci used to come up with new designs each season, but Lacroix works with existing design and colour, updating to suit modern needs. "It's quite strange," Burstein says, "but everybody doesn't see colour the same way."

Whether you love or loath Lacroix' maximal aesthetic, no one would dispute his gift as a colourist. "He's definitely given another lease of life to Pucci."

The last word should go to Laudomia Pucci, Emilio's daughter. As image director, she is central to the business. "There's a happiness and an optimism about Pucci, and Christian Lacroix shares that," she says. "He is adding a new dimension, a new proportion for this century."

- INDEPENDENT