THE STORY OF ELIO FIORUCCI
(Perhaps) What you don’t know about the life of Fiorucci, the fashion genius who revolutionized style.
It’s May 19, 1983, eleven o’clock at night, and a crowd is packed at the doors of a building on West 54th Street, between 7th and 8th Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York. A flyer rests on the city’s smog-stained sidewalk, trampled by countless footsteps. It’s the lineup for the party happening inside that venue, the legendary Studio 54. On that piece of paper, there’s also the name of a DJ who would forever change the course of music: Madonna.
Across the street, far from the excited crowd, stands a man watching the scene. The street is closed due to the sheer number of people. “If I go in, they’ll sit me at a table, bring me bottles of champagne, and I’ll spend the whole time talking and laughing with whoever stops by to greet me.” The man decides to stay outside, soaking in a spectacle he wouldn’t be able to see from inside. Famous people in line, half-naked women carried on shoulders through the crowd, provocative outfits, glossy colors, and limousines arriving with steady regularity.
That man watches the scene and smiles. “Elio!” someone calls out. “They’re waiting for you to cut the cake. We’re celebrating your brand’s 15th anniversary, and you’re not showing up?!”
Fiorucci. Today, just saying the name is enough to conjure a vivid world of neon, lights, plastic, art, fashion, and revolution. But where does this story begin?
THE BEGINNINGS
Elio Fiorucci was born in Milan on June 8, 1935, into a happy family with four siblings. They all lived in the Lombard city, where his parents ran a slipper shop near their home. At the age of 8, Elio experienced the horrors of World War II. The Fiorucci family decided to flee Milan and move to the green countryside. It was there that Elio had his first encounter with beauty. He realized that even in the midst of violence and destruction, there could be room for creativity and leisure.
By September 1945, the family business resumed. Italy was a powder keg of creative potential that had been stifled first by fascism and then by war. At 16, Elio began working in his parents’ slipper shop. He enjoyed working with the public. He had an uncanny ability to read people with precision and understand what was happening in the world. He noticed that there was still a wealthy bourgeois class that, after years of darkness, was eager to start anew and indulge in their desires. Slippers became his first outlet for creativity. For Elio, they weren’t just shoes but expressions of a creative act that deserved attention. This marked the beginning of his passion for fashion.
With the arrival of the 1960s, Elio recognized that he was living in the right historical moment. To anticipate trends and styles in Italy, he traveled frequently to London. He often visited Carnaby Street, immersing himself in crowds of stunning young people, and the iconic BIBA store, which would profoundly influence him for the rest of his life. This was a new era, a new language created by the youth for the youth, where fashion became a powerful tool to subvert the rules and social norms imposed on them.
The 1960s heralded a revolution, and Elio understood it better than anyone else, inspiring a new lifestyle. “Fear creates mediocrity,” said Oliviero Toscani, a motto that Elio adopted as his guiding principle.
THE FIRST STORE
In 1967, Elio Fiorucci was ready to open his first store. He chose Milan, specifically a space in the Galleria Passerella. To bring his vision to life, he didn’t hire an architect but instead enlisted a sculptor, Amelia Del Ponte. He understood that his store shouldn’t just be a piece of architecture but a container—completely white, something unimaginable at the time. A store that would constantly change, a place where people could have fun and soak up a great atmosphere. It wasn’t just about clothing. In fact, Del Ponte created something closer to an art gallery than a traditional shop.
All the shop assistants wore miniskirts—an army of tall, slim, beautiful models strolling through the space, moving between floors with bright smiles. Lights, music, youthfulness. Passersby couldn’t help but wonder, “What is that store with the music coming from it?”
Fiorucci wanted exactly that. His stores became venues for exhibitions, performances, and incredible events. What Elio was doing was inventing a new way of living and expressing oneself through fashion. It's no coincidence that in 1968 he created the Pill Plane Gadget —a plastic bracelet where women could mark the day of the week to take their birth control pill. He designed this at a time when the pill was legal in Italy, but advertising it was illegal.
The message of this new generation, which Fiorucci came to embody, was that art, fashion, and design could drive societal renewal. In no time, the store in Galleria Passerella became a gathering hub for like-minded individuals.
Two key aspects of the Fiorucci brand stand out. First, Elio chose not to adopt a fixed, singular logo. Instead, he used various symbols that evolved over time and adapted to different contexts. The angels became the most iconic example of this, showcasing an irreverent aesthetic that evoked childhood nostalgia. Second, he rejected the concept of a rigid art direction. Fiorucci gave his creatives the freedom to experiment without restrictions. Anyone stepping into his offices felt they were entering a vibrant, controlled chaos, much like the experience of visiting his stores. But for Elio, recklessness always triumphed over fear.
SUCCESS AND REVOLUTION
After Galleria Passerella, Fiorucci introduced Italy’s first concept store in 1974, located on Via Torino in Milan. It was a unique space featuring a fountain, a home goods section, a jeans department, a record store, an American restaurant, and even a newsstand. Fiorucci’s spaces became true platforms for the free expression of every art form. For instance, John Cage and Franco Battiato performed multiple concerts inside the Via Torino store, keeping it open until 2 a.m.—a rarity in Milan at the time.
His stores became unique meeting places where people could connect and identify with one another. Fiorucci transcended marketing norms, inventing the idea that you could leave his stores without buying anything and still feel like you’d had an experience.
In 1975, Fiorucci opened a store in London. Then, in 1976, he chose 59th Street in New York for his fourth store. For its design, he enlisted Ettore Sottsass and Andrea Branzi, the most renowned postmodern architects of the era. "Do whatever you want. The only thing I want is a coffee machine," Elio told them.
The space quickly became a cultural hub for Americans. Inside, there was even an Italian restaurant. People visited not just for the products but for the art, the music, the parties, and the events. His New York store became a sexy, vibrant hotspot.
Even Andy Warhol became a regular "customer" of Fiorucci and wrote in his diary: "I went to Fiorucci, it has everything I like, it's all colorful, everything is plastic." So enamored by it, he decided to host a book signing for his Interview magazine there. Warhol and Fiorucci would become two figures who influenced each other. One day, Warhol invited Fiorucci to his home, and Fiorucci asked him, "But why do your paintings always look so modern, no matter where I look?" "It's simple," Warhol replied, "I use neon colors." From that moment on, Fiorucci’s stores were always designed with an abundance of neon lights.
Many critics at the time recognized that Fiorucci used American culture as a way to reflect on contemporary society.
In the 1980s, Fiorucci’s revolution reached its peak with the creation of women’s jeans, specifically the Safety Jeans Buffalo model, the first stretch denim jeans for women. Fiorucci’s first encounter with jeans came through the Hippies living in Ibiza. The girls there all wore Levi’s jeans, which were faded because they went into the sea with their pants on. Elio noticed that when the pants got wet, they tightened around the waist, highlighting the hips. He realized the secret was to make jeans that fit women’s measurements from the start.
For this mission, Fiorucci called upon Mario Morelli, a designer who worked for Valentino at the time. Fiorucci went to him, hired him, and told him his mission was to make women's jeans that would hug the body. "No, Fiorucci, with this fabric, you can only make work clothes. The fabric is too stiff!" Elio wouldn't give up, so they started working on it, remembering the Hippie girls of Ibiza. "Let’s wash the jeans the way they used to wash them in the sea." After multiple washes, the result still wasn’t right. Then came the breakthrough: "Let’s move the crotch two centimeters forward." Those who worked for Fiorucci at the time recall that the first girls who bought the jeans would lie on the floor to zip them up, but once they stood up, they were amazed. In an old interview with Calvin Klein, when asked, "Who invented jeans?" he said, "I have to be honest, the first time I saw them was at Fiorucci in New York."
LAST YEARS AND LEGANCY
Fiorucci was a pioneer in everything. Not only in fashion, but he also decided to invest in music and nightlife, opening Studio 54 with other partners, one of the most famous nightclubs in New York. It was an old television studio, and the setting was impressive. For example, in the center of the main room, there was a huge spoon of cocaine, falling from the moon, filled with fake white powder that was actually glitter. The nightclub would be closed four years later for drug trafficking. Elio Fiorucci represented that magical and wonderful era, but also a tragic one, full of the dangers it managed to create.
His passion for art exploded in 1983 when he decided to have his store in Galleria Passerella decorated by Keith Haring and the Little Angels. Three nights of work, a table full of wine bottles, and here was everything necessary to make history with something unique that had never been seen before.
In the 1990s, Fiorucci began to face a crisis, with several attempts at acquisition, but with no significant results. In 2003, Elio left his famous company and created a new brand, LOVE THERAPY. He passed away at 80 in 2015.
"No, don’t call him a designer, Elio Fiorucci was a sociologist, he was a psychologist of fashion, a visionary traveler who taught society to feed on beauty. With his creations, he wrote a treatise on fashion, invented Made in Italy, and with him, the Fioruccini were born, a social category that transcends status and politics," Oliviero Toscani, a close friend of Fiorucci, described him.
Perhaps these words are the best conclusion to this piece on Elio Fiorucci, an article in which I tried to explain what the collaboration between art, fashion, and many other fields can create.
Here at Spaghetti Boost, we understand this very clearly. If you'd like to learn more about Fiorucci’s life, I recommend visiting the wonderful exhibition currently on display at the Triennale in Milan.
All photos are: Elio Fiorucci - Ph. Delfino Sisto Legnani - DSL Studio © Triennale Milano
Alessio Vigni, born in 1994. He designs, edits, writes and deals with contemporary art and culture.
He collaborates with important museums, art fairs, art organisations and is an external consultant for the Fondazione Imago Mundi (Treviso). As an independent curator, he works mainly with emerging artists. He recently curated SNITCH Vol.2 (Verona, 2024), Dialoghi empatici (Milan, 2024) and the exhibition SNITCH (Bologna, 2023). His curatorial practice investigates the relationship between the human body and the social relations of contemporary man.
He writes for several specialised magazines and is author of art catalogues and podcasts. For Psicografici Editore he is co-author of SNITCH. Dentro la trappola (Rome, 2023). Since 2024 he has been a member of the Advisory Board of (un)fair.
