EMILIO PUCCI: The Astonishing Odyssey of a Fashion Icon, fascinating man's interesting life well told

EMILIO PUCCI: The Astonishing Odyssey of a Fashion Icon
TERENCE WARD and IDANNA PUCCI
St. Martin's Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$17.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: The Drama of War and Postwar Italy Through the Life of One of Its Most Celebrated Icons

When people think of fashion designer Emilio Pucci, it is of his bright, swirling colors and easy, freeing fabrics, and everyone from Sophia Loren to Jackie Kennedy donning the eye-catching dresses that personify La Dolce Vita. What few know about Pucci, however, is that before creating his world-famous fashions, he played a critical role in the war against the Nazis, risking his life to smuggle out to the Allies one of the most important documents of World War II.

The authors bring to life Italy’s darkest and brightest days, with the extraordinary Emilio Pucci at its center. Italy at the end of the war was broken, and Florence, which the Pucci family had called home for seven centuries, lay in ruins. Pucci returned home bruised in body and soul, having endured trials that would have broken many, but, like Italy itself, rose from the ashes, and went on to design some of the most exuberant fashion of all time. He helped usher in a new era of creativity in Italy, which again became a mecca of fashion, art, design, film, and more.

A host of supporting characters—including Mussolini’s daughter and Allen Dulles, and, most importantly, the timeless city of Florence and the mythic island of Capri—enrich this compelling narrative that will draw readers of all kinds, from war and history buffs, to fashionistas and fans of espionage thrillers along with the millions of readers who devour books about Italy and her many charms.

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My Review: Born in the Kingdom of Italy midway through World War I, Pucci was in the prime of his life during WWII becoming a flyer in the Royal Italian Air Force; he was an aristocrat, deeply in the circles familiar with Mussolini and was his daughter Edda Ciano's BFF. He was responsible for the Ciano Diaries reaching Allied hands and Edda Ciano escaping the Germans' tender ministrations as the daughter of a traitor to the German cause. (Husband Galeazzo not so much; murdered by the Gestapo.) Pucci was himself tortured by the Gestapo as a follow-on consequence of being involved with Edda and her family. No great revelations were given by him, apparently.

It interested me that Idanna Pucci, his niece, co-created the story told herein. Pucci's daughter Laudomia maintains the Pucci archives; her mother Cristina is still living; how is it neither of them chose to write this fascinating story? It's possible the Idanna Pucci, being their elder, simply had more perspective; and she is an author of four decades' standing and her husband Ward (ten years her junior) slightly less duration at twenty-plus years. The couple have also produced documentaries.

It is clear Pucci deserves this attention because he was always somewhere interesting as world events unfolded. Never central, but frequently spotlighted, as he was after the frankly horrifying 1966 Florentine floods when he was instrumental in getting the US fashion industry as well as the general population to volunteer in the monumental cleanup as well as donate money and material aid. It is no exaggeration to say the assistance provided at his behest changed many Florentine lives.

Pucci's stamp on the pop culture of the 1960s was immense, as well. His color palette and choices of fabrics for his collections were widely emulated. He was well-enough known that my kid-self knew his name. I saw his work knowingly, because Braniff was my mother's preferred airline and their stewardesses (it's what they were called in those days) proudly discussed their suits as designed by Pucci. It accords well with the 1937 Reed College graduate's entire life spent in very classy social life...he designed the Reed College ski team's togs...and reinforces the perception of him as a member of a global elite.

It was a very interesting read that felt less like a biography (despite its chronological organization) than it did a family chat. If I'd been invited to an Easter feast in Palazzo Pucci, this is the kind of knowledge I'd've expected to come away with. Only here it's in depth and extensively footnoted.

Fashionistas, Italian and WWII as well as 1960s culture's history buffs are strongly encouraged to get themselves a copy. I suspect the most disappointment will be felt by the fashionistas, as that genre's devoted readers are not always terribly interested in name-dropping outside their area of fascination. Pucci being who he was, a staid local politician as well as a trendsetting designer, there are many diversions from purely the fashion world. It is, I promise, worth all y'all's time to venture a bit outside the boundaries of subject-matter interest. On all sides of Pucci's fascinating life's activities.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ASTRID BRICARD, romantic generational saga *not* a romance

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ASTRID BRICARD
NATASHA LESTER
Forever/Grand Central Publishing
$30.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Three generations. One chance to prove themselves. Can the women of the Bricard fashion dynasty finally rewrite their history?

French countryside, Present Blythe Bricard is the daughter of famous fashion muses but that doesn't mean she wants to be one. She turned her back on that world, and her dreams, years ago. Fate, however, has a different plan, and Blythe will discover there is more to her iconic mother and grandmother than she ever knew. New York, 1970: Designer Astrid Bricard arrives in bohemian Chelsea determined to change the fashion world forever. And she does―cast as muse to her lover, Hawk Jones. And when they're both invited to compete in the fashion event of the century―the Battle of Versailles―Astrid sacrifices everything to showcase her talent. But then, just as her career is about to take off, she mysteriously vanishes, leaving behind only a white silk dress.

Paris, 1917: Parentless sixteen-year-old Mizza Bricard has made a to be remembered on her own terms. Her promise sustains her through turbulent decades and volatile couture houses until, finally, her name is remembered and a legend is born―one that proves impossible for Astrid and Blythe to distance themselves from.

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My Review: The Battle of Versailles, 1973, has long been a subject of great interest for me. Many things shifted as a result of this event, not least the French conception of US fashion designers as lesser lights, or derivative copycats riding the wave of French chicté and eternal design leadership.

At stake was far more than bragging rights...the international luxury-goods market was even then worth billions. As the event progressed, it was clear that the New York contingent was well and truly a creative design force on its own, handing the French designers their first effective challenge for world leadership...and the profits therefrom.

What former L’Oreal executive, and current New York Times bestseller, Natasha Lester did that was truly inspired was to remodel several real peoples’ lives to better present a generational saga of the fashion universe of the twentieth century. The heavily made-up Bricards, from World War One Paris to twenty-first century world citizenship as they arise and create beauty as well as havoc, represent an amalgam of factual individuals and business dynasties.

Driven, high-powered people seldom make good parents. The Bricards, to a woman, were not good parents as they sought to achieve things other people really could not even see. They were, like the real folks their lives were based on, frequently abused emotionally and taken advantage of financially and creatively, as the hunger for glory is the outward-facing surface of money-hunger. What raises this above the run-of-the-mill story of sexist betrayal is that the men perpetrating the thefts are not the men the Bricard women love, but the ones who run the businesses that the women stand as public faces for, and the mass of media types in search of a hook to hang the story they want to tell...not the story of the Bricards, but "The Story of The Bricards"—if you get my drift.

Author Lester is a very well thought of storyteller, and she has a genuinely interesting story to tell here. Her focus on the Bricards and their creative ambitions and abilities led her not to tell a story, even in part, that was of great consequence indeed: the Black models whose performances on the catwalks of this hugely consequential show broke, at last, the color barrier in fashion. True, it was not part of the Bricard story as written, but I felt it could and should have been.

That misfire, and Author Lester’s serviceable, but never more than that, prose, led me to give the book what seems an ungenerous under-four-star rating. I read the book with pleasure, but was always aware that a very big part of the real story it is based upon was just...missing. In today’s world, not telling the whole story involving Black creatives is more troublesome than at any time in the past. It isn’t as though this reality is some specialist knowledge, the kind of knowledge that only a scholar would reasonably be expected to have...after all, *I* know it.

So, while this is a reading pleasure that will involve and entertain readers of what I don’t know what else to call except the cringe-y label "women’s fiction", it comes with some big asterisks for the standard 2024 reader.