Peter Dundas is the new man at Emilio Pucci, charged with making the iconic Florence-based label and its famous prints relevant for a new generation. The Norwegian designer, who also helms the French fur house Revillon, is perhaps best known for his stint at Emanuel Ungaro. There he made fans of the young Hollywood crowd with his body-conscious, boldly colorful sensibility (did we mention he once worked for Roberto Cavalli?). Today's debut collection for Pucci was very much in that sexy spirit.
The show opened with canvas military coats and jackets lined lavishly in fox fur, worn with short dresses and over-the-knee suede pirate boots or second-skin python pants. They signaled the low-high mix that defined Dundas' approach to the season. The designer carried it through even into evening, where a strapless minidress was patchworked together from faded denim and guipure lace in a swirling pattern that subtly evoked one of the house's prints.
The lack of overt Pucci references—the kind that dependably evoke the label's Capri-in-the-sixties origins—was striking. But the prints Dundas did resurrect (from a 1957 collection dubbed "Palio" after Siena's centuries-old horse race) looked fresh on slouchy cashmere long-sleeved T-shirts worn with supertight back-zip jeans. With friends like the Crown Princess of Norway, Mette-Marit, sitting in his front row, Dundas is well positioned to observe the changing lifestyles of the international jet set. Keying into the fact that these days young aristos want to look like rock stars appears to have given him a way to make Pucci timely again.
