The house of Pucci has turned into the last few years into the umpteenth producer of ruffled dresses and other rather useless sensual/romantic gowns with absolutely no direction.
Yet, when it was first founded, the house knew very well where it was going and what it was aiming to achieve.
A sportsman with a fascination for kaleidoscopic prints and functionally practical garments, Emilio Pucci designed not only ready-to-wear for fashionistas with their feet firmly on the ground, but he also aimed at the sky. Between 1965 and 1977 he created the uniforms for the Braniff International Airways crews and pilots and, in 1971, he designed the main motif for the Apollo 15 mission patch.
Beginning on 26th July 1971 and ending on 7th August, the ninth manned mission in the American Apollo space program featured astronauts David R. Scott (Commander), Alfred M. Worden (Command Module Pilot) and James B. Irwin (Lunar Module Pilot).
Leaving from Launch Complex 39 at Cape Canaveral, the mission landed on 30th July at Hadley Rille, a gorge on the moon resembling a dry river bed on earth, 600 meters north-northwest of the proposed target.
On the following days, Scott and Irwin explored the lunar landscape in the first car that humans ever drove on the moon, the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV), collecting samples and providing descriptions and photographic documentation of geologic features in the vicinity of the landing site, while Worden orbited the Moon to study the lunar surface.
You can read further about the Apollo 15 mission (the longest crewed lunar mission) and about its achievements and records on the Nasa site.
In All We Did Was Fly to the Moon and in Falling to Earth: An Apollo 15 Astronaut's Journey, Worden remembers how, after evaluating over 500 different designs for the crew patch, they turned to Italian fashion designer Emilio Pucci and asked him to help creating the logo for this mission.
Pucci came up with a square patch featuring three stylised birds flying in formation over the lunar surface. The three birds - in shades of Pucci blues, purples and greens - very aptly symbolised the three members of the crew.
Pucci’s design passed the test, but the crew made quite a few changes: from square the patch became circular and the colours of the birds were changed into more patriotic and sensible shades of red (Irwin), white (Worden) and blue (Scott). A lunar background showing the landing site was included, while behind the stylised birds a crater formation spelling XV - "15" in Roman numerals - was also added.
You could argue this is just a patch for a space mission, yet it should make us think a lot about the current state of the fashion industry: forty-one years ago a fashion designer would be called to create the patch for a space mission, now the best thing you can hope for if you’re a fashion designer is a collaboration with a high street retailer (yes, financially rewarding, but definitely not a great step forward for humanity...).
I have my personal interests in science and space discoveries and, not finding anything clever enough in the shops but finding the entire geek is chic trend frankly rather lame, I decided to come up with my own garments using the Apollo 15 space mission logo.
These three women’s shirts (yes, I’m making them only in women’s sizes, because the moon and the space are not just for men and womenswear needs to be slightly more intelligent as we’ve already got enough romantic frills, cute ribbons and sparkling sequins...) are the beta version results (using the printing and pressing facilities at Kutmusic’s) of the garments.
They’re all pretty basic (the dark blue ones look similar, but the sleeves are actually different, though you can't see them too well from these pics), but I quite like their uniform-like simplicity and the fact that, because of their logo, they still have a certain connection with Italian fashion. My favourite one remains the sky blue T-shirt (slightly reminiscent of Nasa's blue...) with two patches and buttons on the shoulders. To infinity, and beyond!
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wow.. nicee :)
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