If classic Pucci belonged to Capri’s dolce vita, the newer version edges toward something older, rougher, Sicilian. Emilio Pucci has been here before, the Mezzogiorno, the mosaics, that 1956 image inside the Villa Romana del Casale that always finds its way back to the top of fashion’s archive. Under Camille Miceli, postcard history stays put. The reference point isn’t the pattern anymore, it’s the atmosphere.
Grotta dei Cordari, the location of choice, is part of the ancient quarries outside Syracuse, a landscape already marked in the time of early Greek presence in Sicily. Cut deep into limestone, the space feels less constructed than revealed, as if the earth itself was opened and left that way. At a later point, it briefly held rope-making activity, a fleeting human layer against something far more enduring.
The collection was titled ‘Alba,’ Italian for dawn, Miceli-an for three very different ways of seeing the first light of the day. The designer drew inspiration from what we all just thought of, the Mediterranean’s warmest colors, Etna-tinted reds, oranges, and pinks we’ve all agreed to romanticise first thing in the morning. “It’s a genuine celebration of that pure vitality, of that irresistible desire for joy and lightness. Each dawn invites hope, vitality and the chance to see the world with a new outlook,” she told WWD. Then there’s the after-party sunrise, the one that signals a very good night rather than a new day. And then there’s the artificially serious one, like Olafur Eliasson’s 2003 Tate Modern sun, where daylight becomes installation.
Which makes perfect sense once you see the woman on the runway. She grew up in Sicily, where she first learned to read nature, color, and patterns, before moving through Morocco, Paris, and New York, each adding a different layer to her understanding of bohemian aesthetics, until she landed in Berlin’s raves, where all those references began to dissolve into each other, in my head, at least. Picture Fiamme prints, geometrical shapes, fringes, stone embellishments, knits, sheer lurex, gladiator sandals, and black leather belts. It’s a lot, but never randomly so.
