I Used to Be Charming

by Eve Babitz

  And alas, the Galleria Passarella store is now the only Fiorucci Milan. There used to be another one. In 1975, when Fiorucci and Montedison went into partnership, Franco Marabelli was allowed to design a second Fiorucci store in Milan. And it was his masterpiece. The Via Torino store was a reflection of the luxury of freedom given an architect to design without necessity, with the freedom to make a space do what he wants it to do.

  Photographs of it show a glass roof like the roofs of the gallerias all over Milan; the ceilings were three stories high, and plants were hung in the open space to create a sort of Crystal Palace feeling. The store had a wonderful espresso bar, and once housed the Fiorucci restaurant, which of course had its own special tableware and served hamburgers Milanese. The restaurant and coffee bar became a meeting spot, a place for listening to music and talking, and if you got tired of the talk, you could browse around the occasional art exhibitions held there—in among the clothes. For this was, after all, a store. A store that had a full stereo setup, complete with a disc jockey, because the store did a lot of record selling; it even wholesaled records to other outlets in Italy.

  At Fiorucci, one thing nobody seems to mind admitting is that something didn’t work, didn’t make money, and was abandoned. Apparently that’s what happened to the Via Torino store. Various explanations, none of them full or complete, were offered. The store was a little off the beaten track, too far for an easy walk from the center of town where all the best stores are. The Via Torino neighborhood had declined slightly, and it had become more Sears, less Fiorucci. They had shoplifter trouble. And maybe two Fioruccis in one town, even if that town was Milan, were too much. It was a wonderful store, and served them well for a time, and they all miss it. But the future beckons. And Beverly Hills is just a plane ride away.

  The building in which Fiorucci of Beverly Hills is installed is an old redecorated movie theater, a luxurious first-run place that was plenty ornate before Fiorucci moved in. In came Franco and his team, and now it’s really gaudy. They repainted the original murals; they felt they needed brightening up. So now the oasis scenes, the elephants, camels, and palm trees have been painted in every possible rainbow combination—finally, Fiorucci has really outdone and overdone itself. It is as if these ornaments weren’t spectacular enough—so Fiorucci added a rainbow of colors. Neon lights blink to add a little more color, and the music pounds. And then there is the counter where makeup items are sold for Fiorucci faces: demonic shades of lipstick too dark for anyone except a person up to no good. Alabaster-white powder for a mime’s face. Glittering pink powder for a daring shoulder or a beckoning cleavage. Rouges and eye shadows that promise too much.

  It is almost as if it is all too much. To decorate an old movie theater with a mock-Turkish dome, to try to turn Hollywood into Hollywood. To put zebra-skin prints and sequins and rhinestones into an already overdecorated fantasy world. And right in Beverly Hills! Just off Rodeo Drive, which everybody but everybody now knows about, and comes to gawk at even if they can’t afford its silly, ridiculous high prices. It was here, in my own territory, that I found myself asking the same question about Fiorucci—and still not having an answer.

  How do they make it work? In Milan, which is so full of dreary seriousness. In Rio, where they’ve understood bright colors mismatched and carnaval craziness for hundreds of years. In Tokyo, where they have so much money they don’t know where to spend it first and anything from the West is immediately chic, even Louis Vuitton plastic. In London, where the New Youth world began, and where Carnaby Street has been defunct for a decade. And in New York, with its roller-coaster-paced cynicism and its provincial seriousness.

  The opening of the store in Beverly Hills was a madhouse. The fire department marched in and closed the opening before it opened; some little regulations hadn’t been observed properly, and the crowd of thousands outside trying to get in spelled trouble. So the opening was put off a night, by which time the press had cranked itself up about this new outrage being perpetrated on unsuspecting consumers, and so the crowds were even bigger for the second night of the opening. And the store is still open, two years later. Maybe they really could sell the Brooklyn Bridge—in puce.

  Nothing could ever be as Hollywood as Hollywood already is. And it is in the Beverly Hills shop, rather than in New York or Milan, that you realize just how heavy Fiorucci’s dependence is on Hollywood. How indistinguishable a pair of Fiorucci rhinestone-studded sunglasses or a pair of tight toreador pants is from their Hollywood originals. Hollywood shoppers, especially the ones willing to wear clothes before everyone else is wearing them, have a difficult time at Fiorucci. They’ve seen it all before, at supermarkets in the Valley, at joints on the Strip, and yet this is Fiorucci, and they’ve heard what a hit it is in New York, so something must be going on.

  I talked to Carolyn Zecca, a Fiorucci girl from way back in 1970 when she lived in Milan. Carolyn now does public-relations work freelance for Fiorucci in Beverly Hills, and I asked her about this problem of bringing coals to Newcastle. I asked her to tell me what Fiorucci really is, what its image means. Carolyn, who speaks with a clean, direct, childlike sanity, suddenly turned Fiorucci fuchsia: “What is the ‘image’ of Fiorucci? Why is everybody always asking that? I hate that word ‘image.’ It’s got to go. Next time I talk to Elio Fiorucci I’m going to tell him we can’t use that word about Fiorucci anymore. It doesn’t mean anything. Fiorucci is Fiorucci. That’s it. There is the store. There are the people. There are the clothes. That is Fiorucci.”

  Probably everybody’s favorite Fiorucci is the one in New York on Fifty-Ninth Street between Lexington and Park. Just half a block away from Bloomingdale’s. Everyone in the neighborhood calls this God’s Country. The store, which opened in 1975, is the showplace Fiorucci. It and the Milan store are the only stores actually owned and run by Fiorucci people; the others all over the world are franchises.

  The store is beautiful. It is everything a Fiorucci store should be. It’s a circus, a show, a bazaar, a meeting place for strangers, a rendezvous spot for friends. It’s a chance to look around and see what’s going on with the nutty Italians, and have a cup of coffee, and listen to the cheerful music, and get the feeling, if only for a little while, that this is the way you lead your life.

  There is even a downstairs—a wide, spacious place with low ceilings and louder music. They put the staple stuff down here, the jeans, the men’s shirts and sweaters, the shoes, the Fioruccino for tiny tots. One day while I was visiting, Diana Ross sailed in—with two kids in tow. They bought T-shirts and she was halfway through buying a pair of silver lamé boots before anyone recognized her. But someone did, and the word passed among the salespeople. One of them sped upstairs to the tape deck and put on “Stop! In the Name of Love.” Suddenly Diana Ross was there buying a pair of shoes and she was also there acoustically—so loud that she became a part of the atmosphere. We all looked up, the sound was palpable; her presence was felt. The whole place lit up in one broad smile of recognition. And then Diana smiled, and the whole world lit up. For Diana Ross is exactly the kind of person to inspire Fiorucci people—employees and customers alike. With her boas, her sequins, her glamour, and her eyelashes, she has always been a star; she never lets her audience down by appearing ordinary, not even her audience while she does an afternoon’s casual shopping.

  She was approached and greeted and thanked for stopping in by one of the salesmen, Joey Arias, who also answers to the name of Joey Fiorucci. He is called that so often that he has given up making the distinction. Joey is true Fiorucci. He is twenty-five, an L.A. boy, father a Mexican and mother a German. He was raised in downtown L.A. where he went to Cathedral High, a Catholic school. And where he was not a big hit in hennaed hair, tweezed eyebrows, and Springolators. He went to college at L.A. City, “in the arts,” but dropped out after three years because he was wasting his time, he says. He came to New York in 1976, “to celebrate the bicentennial.” And New York has never been the same.

 
Joey is a real original. He wears his hair punk style, slicked back and it is pink, or purple, or teal blue, depending on his mood or on the mood of the chic salon that does his hair free, for the publicity. (Everybody asks him where he has it done, and he is glad to give out the name and address.) His looks are outrageous. He appeared on Saturday Night Live as a backup singer for David Bowie. They all wore dresses. When I asked Joey if his mother had seen him on television and what did she think, he laughed out loud: “She loved me. She asked me to send her the dress I wore on the show.”

  When Joey isn’t working at Fiorucci, where he sells, and supervises the other salespeople, and meets the celebrities, and gives interviews, he designs clothes and performs in avant-garde rock gigs with his friend Klaus Nomi, another way-out number. In its book concession in the New York store, Fiorucci sells black-and-white “art postcard” photos of Klaus and Joey, for $5 each. They are stars.

  Practically every Fiorucci employee I talked to told me they were deliriously happy to be working in Fiorucci now, but what they really want someday is to be stars. Singers, actors, celebrity stars. Andy Warhol (who once said that everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes) is such a regular in the store that he is considered “a special friend.” Anyone who comes in more than once is already a “regular friend.”

  I felt I was onto something, this star thing, and so I went upstairs to the administrative offices to rest my feet and talk to some of the behind-the-scenes types. Did they all want to be stars too?

  Celeste Reyes is a twenty-year-old Puerto Rican girl with a face so open and so trusting that you worry for her. She works as an assistant in the public-relations department upstairs, and loves her job. But what she really wants is to be a singing star. She came to Fiorucci in a fairly typical way. As a teenager, she was hanging out at Reno Sweeney, a rock place that features new groups. One of her friends there told her that anyone who dressed the way that she dresses ought to work at Fiorucci. She had never heard of the place, but went to have a look. She was hired immediately. I asked her what it was like to work at Fiorucci and she answered, with a grin, “Oh, my life has changed completely. For instance, I would never have been allowed to get into the best discos if I hadn’t worked here. I love it here. The best part of my job is the excitement of the Fiorucci phenomenon.”

  Which is really some phenomenon. The clothes are crazy, the employees are from outer space, and the customers are no different. Or wish they were no different. Everyone is there to get a little piece of the action. Lots of the customers look like ordinary people, looking for a thrill, taking a spin through the store. Or ladies and gentlemen wanting to learn, to figure out what, if anything, they can buy to make their lives just a little bit glitzier, lots snappier, funnier. Always funnier. Or they come to look at the employees who are watching the customers look at the employees. Circling, smiling, sharing an un-spoken communication about isn’t-this-all-too-silly. And it is. What Fiorucci is selling is junky chic. And the whole world is buying it.

  BEHIND THE SCENES

  Across from the Milan Fiorucci store is a perfectly ordinary-looking office building. Inside this building, on the second floor in a space not much larger than four motel rooms, is a jumble of Fiorucci offices. Squeezed into this unpalatial territory are four departments: promotion, architectural design, graphics, and DXing.

  Nestled in a sunlit corner is the graphics department. The space is small and so is the department, only five people. They are in their early twenties and, of course, have rippling Italian names: Augusto Vignali, Guglielmo Pellizzoni, Adriano Chieregato, Sauro Mainardi, Carlo Pignagnoli. Buried in mountains of Prestype and useful ephemera these five churn out the unending stream of graphics that have become Fiorucci hallmarks. Shopping bags, posters, stickers, clothing labels, price tags, decals for windows, stationery, and fabric designs all spin into existence as “The Harder They Come” blares full blast in the background. The whole place is a good-natured visual assault. Suspended overhead on a thin wire, a brilliant lipstick-red high-heeled shoe spins, its lining bright white and scalloped like a pastry doily. Shelves are littered with French children’s books, fishing magazines, seed catalogs, and soup labels. A photograph of a sumo wrestler is tacked to a bulletin board along with a postcard of the flamboyant drag performer Divine and advertisements for armpit-hair remover and marital aids.

  It is almost a relief to spot next the office of Leonardo Pastore. He is the public-relations man who receives buyers from around the world and it is probably because of this that his office is the only one on the floor that is not absolutely awash with graphic flotsam and jetsam. His department spills over, however, with the madness known as DXing.

  In CB radio jargon DXing (pronounced dixing) means communicating across long distances and in Fiorucci, which really is a place with its own language and way of thinking, this seemed a witty thing to call the office in charge of handling research. Of course, it would be easy to complain that no matter what you call it, it’s still public relations but once inside the actual office it seems beside the point.

  Fiorucci information is gathered together, organized, and DXed to the media by Giannino Malossi, Margherita Rosenberg Colorini, and Karla Otto. Operating in an atmosphere of genial chaos, they present the Fiorucci image to the press and the public.

  Phones are ringing wildly, conversations are exploding in a flurry of languages, hands are flapping madly like fish fins. Even when Italians talk on the phone, even when they know the person they are talking to can’t possibly see them, they are still explaining what they mean with their hands. The DXing staff does not sit still, not for one minute.

  Their slapdash quarters are piled with periodicals. The latest copies of what seems like every magazine published on earth are carefully scrutinized. Slash, Interview, Elle, Lui, Marie Claire, Japanese art magazines, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Stern, Wet, Music Echo, rock newspapers from everywhere. They pore over these magazines and papers, for this is the stuff that tells someone in Milan just what is really going on around the world. And this is of the utmost importance in a country in which you must actually make an appointment to make a long-distance phone call. Anything in print that could pertain the least little bit to Fiorucci, could offer even the smallest hint of something new or different, seems to end up somehow in the DXing office.

  The Fiorucci version of a reference library extends along the wall. Here are books on pinup art and old postcards, car repair manuals, brochures about trucking, an elegant volume on erotic art, art books on Vargas, Picasso, O’Keeffe.

  The three people who spend the most time in the DXing office contrast neatly with one another: Margherita Colorni radiates ultra-ladylike charm and pleasant directness. You would tell, you would want to tell, this woman your most intimate problems. She has the look of someone who would understand anything. She wears the most subdued sort of Fiorucci with elegance and panache. It was Margherita who came up with the idea of setting up a flea market of antique clothes in the Via Torino store around 1975. It was very Portobello Road and so successful an idea that it lasted for what passes for eternity at Fiorucci. One year.

  Karla Otto is a twenty-five-year-old Dresden shepherdess in bright Fiorucci clothing. She is beautiful, all tomato-red lips, azure eyes, and whippet-colored hair. She is also smart, able to slip effortlessly in and out of German, French, English, Italian, and Japanese. At eighteen she headed for Japan because, she says, she was overcome with fascination at the whole idea of Japan and the language—the little tables, the flowers, the kimonos, everything. Once she left Germany and arrived in Japan, someone suggested that rather than teach German to earn money, she ought to become a model. Anyone with eyes could have seen that with Karla’s body, all lank and slouching, and a face of such sweetness and style, Karla was never for an instant meant to spend so much as a minute doing something as boring as teaching someone how to speak German.

  Giannino Malossi is the mastermind behind the DXing office. A serious, intense bearded young man who
wears his lighthearted black Fiorucci sweater trimmed with wistful strips of flamingo pink fiercely. Giannino is a radical intellectual who studied the humanities in college and who is mad for the Slits. He firmly believes that fashion and politics meet at every turn. He is an obsessive fan of American music, English rock and roll, and What’s Happening Right This Minute. It is Giannino who decides what tapes will be played in all the Fiorucci stores.

  One of Giannino’s pet projects is the Fiorucci Fanzine. Fanzines are those weird little publications that might be issued by some fanatical science-fiction zealot, mimeographed, stapled by hand, and mailed to other science-fiction zealots. Sometimes fanzines aren’t about science fiction, they are about rock in San Bernadino, or about Kristy McNichol.

  For Fiorucci, the Fiorucci Fanzine is “a moment of communication and information.” To people outside Fiorucci, the Fanzine is a cross between a broadside, a poster, and a road map. It is a periodical of flexible content, published pretty much according to whim. There is no ironclad publication schedule. Fanzine appears when the spirit moves the DXing office to conjure one up, though in general you can count on one to appear whenever a new Fiorucci store opens. When the Beverly Hills Fiorucci opened in 1978, Fanzine No. 1 Speciale Los Angeles was given away free in Fiorucci stores worldwide. On the cover, overdeveloped young men were shown clutching surfboards as they trotted across the sands of sunny California. Inside, a newspaper-style guide to “Electroluminescent Los Angeles” dipped lightly into the pleasures of Venice, Disneyland, Watts Towers, freeways, Hollywood, the Valley, and flashy street art.

  From his tiny overcrowded desk in the DXing office in Milan, Giannino Malossi, a twenty-eight-year-old information junkie and music fanatic, manages to know practically everything.

  “New wave is passé,” he told me in passing, one afternoon as he was plotting Fiorucci’s musical path through the next season.