Making waves: Giacomo Balla and Emilio Pucci

Emilio Pucci emerged as an international fashion force in the 1960s with his bold and brilliant, streamlined outfits for the active woman. Delving into Pucci's first career as a bomber pilot and Fascist aviation hero, this article demonstrates his unacknowledged debt to the fashion theories and textile designs of the Futurist Giacomo Balla. Pucci was linked to Futurist aeropittura of the 1930s by the common culture of Fascism, aviation, and the cult of speed. Though Futurism was tainted by its affiliation with Fascism, in the post-war years, the works of Balla and others were kept in the public eye through exhibitions and their influence on a younger generation of modernist artists. In the same period, Pucci began to produce his vibrant eye-popping textile designs, which elaborated the proto-psychedelic imagery of wave-like swells, spinning vortexes, and exuberant floral arabesques developed by Balla between the World Wars.