PATTERNS OF CHANGE

Artistic director Camille Miceli uses Pucci’s past to inform its long-overdue revival. DANA THOMAS meets her in Milan.

- DANA THOMAS

If there is a woman in fashion who embodies all that a Pucci print evokes—perpetual modernity, Euro chic, absolute joy—it is Camille Miceli, a defiantly ageless 50-year-old Franco-Italian Parisienne, who, in her 35year career, has worked side by side with—get this— Azzedine Alaïa, Karl Lagerfeld, Marc Jacobs, John Galliano, Raf Simons and Nicolas Ghesquière.

Last summer, the powers that be at LVMH—namely chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault; his daughter Delphine Arnault, board member and executive vice president of Louis Vuitton; and LVMH Fashion Group chairman and CEO Sidney Toledano—made the judicious decision to hire Miceli as artistic director of Emilio Pucci. “Camille was considered for Pucci for her creative qualities, her vision and her ability to inspire her team,” Delphine Arnault writes in an email. “I always thought she would be an ideal candidate to lead a house creatively at some point. And when the opportunity of Pucci presented itself, it felt so in line with who she is, this joyful, colourful person, that it only seemed like a perfect match.”

Miceli’s first capsule collection for the Milan-based brand was unveiled on 28 April in “an experience”, as Miceli describes it, on Capri, the Italian island where the company’s founder, Emilio Pucci, Marquis of Barsento, opened the first Pucci boutique in 1951.