But a quick flip to yesterday’s Wall Street Journal reveals that the six-decade-old fashion house has been on a quest of Madonna-esque proportions to reinvent itself as an “It brand” — read: shill themselves out to celebs — and Biel’s flank-revealing number is proof positive that their modern-day makeover is working.
“I hate the stereotypes of Pucci, the psychedelic pop,” said Laudomia Pucci, the daughter of Emilio Pucci, who founded the brand. “[Designer Peter Dundas] has shaken that up.”
Guess when your well of well-off Palm Beachers dries up, one must either adapt or perish. And the succession of starlets who’ve been snapped in Peter’s Pucci lately — Zoe Saldana, Kate Hudson and Biel — seem a good omen for the brand’s transition into the mainstream… or is that mainland? But as a post-nip tuck Kenny Rogers can probably attest, there is a point at which an attempt at youth becomes an unrecognizable disaster. “I want to make people think of Pucci as a woman, not just as a print,” Dundas said. But wasn’t the Pucci woman a woman who wore print?
