What does the man whose designs have been worn by Lauren Bacall, Sophia Loren, Issac Hayes,
Barabara Walters, Elizabeth Taylor and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis have to
do with china?
Emilio Pucci turned his considerable design talents to making porcelain for Rosenthal.
He designed the Piemonte pattern as well as decorative porcelain for the company.
Rosenthal, well known for commissioning accomplished designers from other fields to come
up with a new way of looking at porcelain, chose to work with the fashion king to produce
this 1960's pattern.
While Pucci is justly famous for his wild prints, the rage in 50's and 60's, he also
designed a variety of other things. For instance: a Vespa, ski clothes, police uniforms
for the city of Florence, matching jewelry for pets and owners, rugs, sheets, towels,
a Lincoln Continental, lingere (including a girdle), handbags, uniforms for flight
attendants, both for Braniff and Quantas (the Quantas outfits included a matching
bikini, presumably for use after the flight landed) outfits for Barbie, an emblem
for the Apollo 15 space mission and possibly the outfit Marilyn Monroe wore to her grave.
In between designing all of these things and more Pucci found time to be a member of
Italian parliament, a fighter pilot, date Mussolini's daughter and make wine. Pucci
was born in 1914, he died in 1992. In October, he will be honored with the Dallas
Fashion Award. He was once quoted as saying "I am the first member of my family
to work in a thousand years".
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