Peter Dundas gives good mood board. His latest was a collage of glam-rock icons: Ziggy Stardust, Marc Bolan, Brian Eno, Bowie, and Deneuve together at the time they were playing moviedom's most fabulous vampires in The Hunger, which just happens to be Dundas' favorite film. Glam's vampish allure inspired Pucci's pre-fall collection with its sparkle, its sheen, and its saturated nocturnal colors, but it was equally glam's cool boy-girl thing that was reflected in the lean tailoring.
"It's a step away from the bohemian," Dundas said. "I wanted something more bourgeois, grown-up, urban. We're bringing Pucci to the city." Literally, in fact, with the opening of a Manhattan flagship later this year. So Pucci's tawny hippie goddess was transformed into a chic androgyne in her cropped jacket and cigarette-leg pants. "But with an untamed past," Dundas added. Hence the fishnet stockings and patent T-bars under those pants. Perish the thought that bourgeois means boring in Dundas' revision of the Pucci woman.
With this collection, he actually went further than ever before in staking his claim to Pucci's future. Emilio himself never used lace, but Dundas has made guipure into a new house signature. Here, it was reinterpreted as a print, in pants and a top, say, with a décolleté of real lace. Then, in a master stroke of reverse thinking, a classic Pucci print was recreated in Swarovski-sprinkled guipure.
Emilio never used lamé either, but it was another staple of Pucci's pre-fall. "It's a nice way to do Pucci prints," said Dundas of a full-skirted look that had something of a Russian folk feel about it. "Tsarina," he called the print, and in a simple floor-length lamé T-shirt dress, it looked absolutely Oscar-worthy. The folkloric feel carried over into the Hussar frog fastenings on velvet and tweed jackets and the sweater dress with the dense patterning of a Berber tapestry. When that dress turned, it was backless. That's the kind of glam that will always rock.
