I Used to Be Charming

by Eve Babitz

  I knew it was just my color; I bought it; I just had to. In two minutes, I was already looking beautiful. But not only beautiful—I was looking effortlessly amusing. Ann bought a tiny turquoise tube top. She put it on and she also looked beautiful—and effortlessly amusing.

  Coming back down to earth, as we stepped out onto one of the richest streets in the world, I looked up at the sky, a nice proud loud blue, and I wished that Elio Fiorucci could have seen us: the sky and me and Ann. We were happy, and I know he, if only for a moment in his busy, conservative businessman’s life, would have been happy. Luckily, there was someone else there to appreciate us. A guy driving by in a truck called out as he passed, “Hey, beautiful, where’d you get the hat?”

  My heart gladdened to a loud violet. The light changed to green, and Ann and I slinked across the street. Her new tube top was so turquoise and my new hat was so violet. We really showed up.

  “I think we should go there again tomorrow,” Ann said. We had found a way to look beautiful every day.

  Fiorucci is selling glamour. He is selling Hollywood to the world. He is selling disposable, flamboyant razzle-dazzle. Jungle-siren leopard- skin Sheena outfits, costumes of what you’ve always wanted to be when you were too little. And now you’re big enough. He is selling pearls and rubies and sequins and satins. Dress-up Raymond Chandler silver screen ladies of romance, broken hearts, dramatic entrances, and tragic farewells. He is selling them to Brazil and Italy and France and New York and England and even to Beverly Hills itself.

  Fiorucci is selling the future. Everything seems at home with the premise that this is the future we are living in and we’re on the next galaxy. Before we left earth, we scooped up as many remnants of our civilization as we could. We managed to bring along the 1950s and rattlebrained fabrics designed with fields of boomerangs and flying rectangles on them in colors like pink, charcoal gray, and kelly green. We managed to capture some of the 1940s with shoulder pads, peplums, and skirts below the knees. The 1960s are there, represented by a rack of actual antique clothes from the previous three decades, as well as clothes designed to make everyone look like romantic costumed extras: cowboys and Indians and whores of Babylon. And from the 1970s there are jeans. The only square fashion item in the store. But then Fiorucci redesigned jeans and made them chic. Before Diane Von, and Gloria, and Calvin, and Yves. Long, long before.

  Fiorucci is the whole twentieth century in one place. The atmosphere is electric. The music is selected by a specialist who keeps on top of such things as which group and which wave of music is now. And the tapes are played so loud they seem part of the interior design. In fact, once when I was taken through the Milan shop when it is closed to the public from 12 noon to 3 p.m., the store with no music felt decidedly bereft, like a lover stranded all alone without someone to dance with.

  Neon blinking on and off, too-loud music, the momentum kicks you into outer space when you enter a Fiorucci store and the atmosphere is kept rolling right along by the fashions, the salespeople, and the fellow shoppers. The salespeople are striking representations of the Fiorucci “line.” They will streak feathery varicolored patches into their hair which must first be bleached a dead empty white and only then tinged with moody blue, electric green, or Matisse cerise. Even a modest Fiorucci employee in ordinary, less pronounced styles—perhaps in simple too-tight jeans and a bulky sweater hanging down almost to the knees—when seen from behind with ebony hair laced with patches of one of these bright and cheerful crime-against-nature hair tints, can make an unsuspecting first-timer at Fiorucci feel like the world has passed her by forever and she’ll never catch up. And for the first-time person to come up alongside another Fiorucci shopper wearing fuchsia construction overalls, an acid yellow and black striped T-shirt, and a purse made of crinkly transparent plastic with Marilyn Monroe’s face stamped on it, it’s clear that what is happening here is not just the obtrusive rock and roll culture or the dizzying upheaval of the blinking lights—it’s the Fiorucci people themselves. They aren’t like normal people. They aren’t living on the same planet. Not even in the same galaxy. And certainly not in the same time slot going on outside in the rest of the world.

  There are some Fiorucci employees you just can’t help but stare at. Like the young guy in the New York store who goes around in the tightest black leather pants and the blackest turtleneck sweater and who at first appears to be built like a flamingo, with legs that are simply too long for a young man of his proportions. It turns out he’s walking on the highest pair of high heels, the kind one is used to seeing in comic-book illustrations of the wicked dragon lady.

  Or perhaps one will be caught up musing over one of the fresh, young, gorgeous girl employees of Fiorucci like the two leaning against the counter across the floor. One is wearing fake snakeskin cowboy boots dyed pale yellow, pale-yellow cotton shorts with little strawberries embroidered on them here and there, and then a demure little Swiss-girl smocked cotton blouse in palest aqua. Her colleague is wearing an outfit of scarlet zebra-skin fabric that looks like it’s made out of reconstituted plastic wrappers and designed for street wear in Rio at carnaval time. Both girls wear the exact same shade of lipstick: Fresh Blood.

  The one in the flying-down-to-Rio outfit is blond enough to pose for a Breck shampoo ad, if she would only wash her face. The one in the sweet pale yellow is a very black, black girl who looks like an Ethiopian princess. Both of them talk as if they’re from the Bronx.

  The floors in Fiorucci shops are wood, light hard oak. Light fixtures are naked. Being inside Fiorucci is like being someplace before it’s ready. Fiorucci practically invented high tech, or at least they were the first to go commercial with it. Early in the 1970s, the first stores, designed by the Fiorucci in-house architects and the graphic-arts department, pioneered the clean, spare, industrial look that is now so vogue in shops everywhere. Though at first the idea of using laboratory beakers as drinking glasses and industrial metal shelves in your bedroom for your marabou negligees may seem like this-time-they’ve-gone-too-far, sooner or later one must admit that at least high tech works: it doesn’t fall apart the way most things do. Not even—and in Fiorucci this is a real plus—from stage fright. For everything in Fiorucci is on stage. The lights are often turned up very bright; one is invited to peer as closely as one wants at every detail, one is almost forced to. Unlike other high-priced shops where a kind of supernatural calm is imposed by soft wall-to-wall carpeting, soft music, and restrained flattering lighting and even the racks must appear discreet, Fiorucci is selling energetic, adrenaline-driven jokes.

  What America sells is itself: American know-how and Coca-Cola. What Milan does is sell you what you already have, only better. In Italy, everything is designed, even bathroom fixtures; everything is a work of art. So it really should not be a surprise that it was Fiorucci of Milan who finally came up with a way to sell America back to America, to sell American jeans that cost three times as much as Levi’s but are so well designed—or redesigned—that once anyone tries them on, that is that.

  In 1977, Fiorucci was featuring four main items in its line: jeans, sweatshirts, T-shirts, and windbreakers. L.L. Bean in high gear. Gianfranco Rossi, who is Fiorucci’s executive vice-president in charge of business and who now spends most of his time in New York commented, with a smile, on the line: “It was American. Only now it is designed right. Now it is Fiorucci of Milan.”

  The Fiorucci phenomenon. Take an old idea, redesign it, sell it back. Or better yet, take an old idea and recycle it into a new one. In the color spectrum of human endeavor, there are those at the indigo end who wish that everything would be ultimately stationary and last forever. And then there are those opposite at the bright-red end who believe that a day without ninety-seven fresh ideas is a day without sunshine. At Fiorucci, old ideas and new ideas are woven into fresh patterns and turned into flying carpets that sometimes shoot by so quickly that they are forgotten almost before they have happened.

  Elio Fiorucci, president and
guiding genius, and everyone who works for him, is constantly vigilant day and night, keeping a close eye on teenagers and anyone else they see who is the least bit interesting. They are looking for any new idea, any imagination in style that might possibly be incorporated into the Fiorucci look. The fastenings on a child’s snowsuit. The spirit of a seventy-five-cent paper birthday tablecloth. Everything is constantly changing at Fiorucci. That’s the appeal. The success of Fiorucci is that if you ever become hooked, you’ll need to come back all the time, if only just to look.

  Employees are given their head to travel around the world; they are shopping for ideas new enough for Fiorucci. When Elio Fiorucci hears that Milanese friends are about to embark on a business trip or vacation to Tahiti or South America, he takes them aside for a hushed impromptu conference and instructs them to keep their eyes open and send back anything, any little thing they see that might be of interest, to them, to him, to their children, anybody.

  People who work for Fiorucci two years in Milan are encouraged to move to a Fiorucci somewhere else and stay two years to gain a new language and more friends; that way they’ll have more access to new ideas. Even people who quit and go to work elsewhere seem to gravitate back after a year or so, using the knowledge they gained working in “the outside world” to enforce and strengthen Fiorucci with the very latest in business advances, research, and design.

  Unlike some companies, Fiorucci does not harbor wrathful resentment toward people who leave; instead Fiorucci seems to regard anyone who ever worked for the firm as family, welcome always to return home, but please bring new ideas of course, for new ideas are what Fiorucci is all about. Everything needs to change—and often.

  It’s all part of the Fiorucci phenomenon, whatever that is. The Fiorucci phenomenon—the concept, the image—is almost impossible to pin down. If you don’t understand and have to ask, you’ll never know. It’s like asking someone to explain a peach.

  But people do know. If they care about fashion, if they’re between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five and they aren’t complete sticks-inthe-mud, if they read fashion magazines, if they live in New York or Beverly Hills or Boston or Tokyo or London or Rio, they know. Even if they don’t live in those places or read those magazines, they know. Whenever something totally outrageous comes along in fashion these days, people always think it is something from Fiorucci, even when it’s not. There is a new adjective in the fashion world: things are described as being “very Fiorucci.”

  And then there are always the stores. If you still need a definition, go into one of them; they’re like photo emulsions. If you’ve got the ability to pick up from the negative, you pick up. Some people just don’t. But even people who don’t like the stores, or can’t understand them, can always pick up something, a vibe, the music. And then, through that one thing you kind of get plugged into a network. Even the straightest, squarest person can find one little piece of merchandise or one little design detail to like. And then the whole thing just opens up for them. Suddenly it is all very familiar, and very Fiorucci.

  Incredibly sexy young women who sing rock and roll onstage or get photographed for magazines wear Fiorucci, just as incredibly sexy older women at chic discos wear Halston and incredibly sexy Las Vegas bombshells wear Bob Mackie.

  Celebrities arrive in limos to buy Fiorucci. Halston patrols the aisles to check out how the other half dresses. Andy Warhol is a friend of the store, a regular. Diane von Furstenberg and Jackie O buy their T-shirts at Fiorucci. And fourteen-year-olds hang out there. Wherever there is Fiorucci, there are kids.

  To define a fashion outlook that appeals to rock stars, socialites, teenagers in from the suburbs, punks, and upper-middle-class fashion watchers is perilous. Elio Fiorucci himself refuses to enter the fray. As far as he is concerned, he says, “Fiorucci is either accepted or rejected.” It doesn’t matter which. They keep coming, and everybody has a good time. Controversy sells plastic evening dresses, and jeans. People are curious about what is going on out there in the future.

  Picasso once said, “I make things first, others follow me and make them pretty.” The creator or originator of ideas doesn’t have to be the one to smooth off the corners and soften the edges; he is too busy doing more important things. Something of this philosophy also belongs to Fiorucci; many new ideas are presented first in Fiorucci stores, where they cause an outrage. Months, or years, later the same ideas appear in other stores, made pretty and even bearable by the passage of time.

  To some who loathe Fiorucci and reject the entire place as a sordid example of fashion hype at its least appealing, the notion that they’ll be wearing (perhaps in vastly toned-down shades and vastly toned-up fabrics) the very designs that Fiorucci is splattering all over his windows in multiples seems a terrible truth almost too depressing to think about.

  “I go into that store,” one fashionable New York woman says, “just to get myself ready for the outrages I’m going to have to endure in two years. Because I know once it’s in Fiorucci, it’s coming, and there’s no getting around it.”

  Interestingly, the Fiorucci phenomenon is criticized and rejected for reasons that are hard to explain.

  “Fiorucci is very Carnaby Street and out-of-date,” one young man told me, “and it’s very directional.” Which means, I found out with some difficulty, “everybody else will be showing it next year.” Fiorucci is directional, and you either like that or you don’t. So we arrive back at the original Fiorucci paradox. It is out-of-date and also the coming thing.

  Two other frequently heard criticisms of Fiorucci may help confound the issue. More than two people have said to me: “Fiorucci is terrible now. Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too popular.” A complicated idea. And the other common, convoluted criticism: “Everything in Fiorucci is just cheap junk. It’s like a dime store—everything costs two dollars. And everything is so expensive there. They’ve got a hell of a lot of nerve charging those kinds of prices.”

  Obviously, ever so obviously, Fiorucci is the newest wave.

  FIORUCCI HISTORY

  The history of Fiorucci begins in Milan, Italy’s large northern industrial city. If it were in America, it would be called Detroit. Since it is in Italy, the citizens, wrapped up in lives of industry, factories, and business, apologize for not being artists. They regret that necessity forces them to be practical. However, like people in all northern industrial cities, they are happy—happy as clams—to be producing and selling products and spending from dawn until dusk immersed in phone calls, meetings, and strategies. Milan may be only the second-largest city in Italy, but the Milanese think it is the most important city, the real Italy.

  Originally, Fiorucci was a small shoe shop on the Corso Buenos Aires; it was owned and run by Vincenzo Fiorucci, the father of Elio. In the early 1960s, people with money and snappy Italian taste had their suits tailored and their shoes made especially for them in Milan. The cobblers in Milan, men like Fiorucci the father, made hand-carved wooden models of your feet and kept them forever, so that they could always make shoes for you that fit perfectly and looked exactly right. Even today the Milanese still can’t help referring to Fiorucci as “you mean that shoe store?”

  In 1962, Elio Fiorucci, then twenty-seven, armed with three pairs of brightly colored plastic galoshes tied to a string, took a cab to the editorial offices of Amica, a weekly Milan fashion magazine, and inspired the editors to publish a photograph of these galoshes, telling where they could be bought. Like a hit single, the galoshes became an overnight sensation all over Italy.

  And perhaps Elio Fiorucci’s entire success was based on that simple transaction, for in a nutshell it included all the things Fiorucci ever does. First, he risked taxi money. Second, he knew that the particular galoshes he picked would strike magazine editors as news rather than as items in need of advertising. The magazine gladly parted with free space and a photograph. The galoshes became editorial material for the magazine. And last but not least, the galoshes themselves (which Fiorucci
had imported and cornered the market on beforehand) were so cute, nobody could resist.

  To this day, it is strict Fiorucci policy never to advertise. Fiorucci is news, not commerce. The simple idea remains a constant of the whole Fiorucci operation.

  In 1967, Elio Fiorucci opened the first Fiorucci clothing store in Milan. In those days, it was just a one-room shop. Today, it is three floors of pulsating shopping space, located in one of Milan’s many gallerias, the Galleria Passarella.

  Gallerias are an early invention of Milanese merchandisers; they are the first true shopping malls. The largest and most beautiful galleria is the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, built in the tradition of the Victorian Crystal Palace. The ceiling is wrought-iron curlicues and glass and is five stories high; the sunlight from above makes the loggias faintly radiant, a look that is distinctly religious. Which is all together appropriate, because merchandising is religion in Milan. Whenever one reads guidebooks to Milan, the four most important things one must see are: (1) Leonardo’s Last Supper, which keeps fading and which they keep touching up; (2) La Scala, Milan’s opera house and major claim to the arts; (3) Il Duomo, Milan’s elaborate white marble cathedral, a religious fantasy dripping with loops of icing like a Viennese wedding cake; and (4) the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele.

  The shortest route from La Scala (Art) to Il Duomo (God) is through the Galleria. Once you’re in the Galleria, it is easy to forget where you were originally headed. You may lose yourself to shopping. The marble hallways, the baroque sidewalk cafés and the fabulous shops prove that Milan is well and prospering and has its priorities straight.

  The Galleria Passarella is a secondary galleria across the street and down the block. The Passarella is not nearly so grand as the Emanuele, but it is more modern, caters to younger, hipper customers; after all, it is the same Milanese “in the blood” merchandising tradition that built it.