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Something special happens when you stumble upon a fashion brand that, through every hem and button, just gets you. Unfortunately, these days it seems the industry only allows for a few cult favorites to stick around for a certain number of seasons. Thus, the icons come and go, their key contributions to our closets being passed on from one vintage boutique to the next. But when they come back, as in the case of the nonpareil Fiorucci, their return feels just as big as their entrance.
Beginning with a coffee table book that illustrates (and recaps) its wild, 50-year legacy, the iconic brand that was introduced to us by way of its New York store on East 59th Street is poised for a successful relaunch. We stake that claim, of course, amidst an ongoing obsession with fashion nostalgia, from its heyday in the '70s and '80s, to its fall into administration just shy of the '90s. With a foreword by Sofia Coppola that sets up 192 pages of pure fashion fun, the archival photographs, posters, and graphics sum up just how influential Fiorucci was. Of Coppola's memories of the brand, she concedes: “My life has never been the same again."
But perhaps no one could put the experience of visiting the Fiorucci store in 1979 so perfectly quite like Canadian novelist and author Douglas Coupland: "Fiorucci was one of the last institutions that made you want to become an adult as quickly as possible, but only after setting fire to the small town that spawned you, and after you’d watched it burn in the rearview mirror." It's safe to say there are some fashion brands built for the masses, and others, well, weren't made for townies.
Now helmed by Janie and Stephen Schaffer, a couple who bought the brand in 2015, the label is ready to revive its reputation of offering skin-tight, leopard-printed, larger-than-life clothes that glorified all of the best parts of getting dressed. Name a fabric and they'll put their signature Fiorucci twist on it: stretchy denim, neon spandex, patent leather, sequins, and more, all draped across a slew of dancing, twirling, ultra-tanned bodies.
“The Fiorucci stores were once described as being like ‘nightclubs with the lights on’," joint CEO Janie Schaffer said in an official press release. "And this anniversary book perfectly captures the characters, the fashion, the art and the passion of a brand that we are now taking into the 21st century." Click through the slideshow ahead for a preview of Rizzoli's latest fashion coffee table hit, and while you're at it, go get yourself a pair of Fiorucci jeans. You can thank us in 20 years.
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