Pucci's Creative Director: Hold the Basel!
Today, Matthew Williamson, the creative director of Pucci, is at Art Basel, where he wrote a bloggy update for The Moment, part of the Times’ new T Magazine Web site. And since he’s the head designer for a label that reminds us of fruit salad, 1960's airline stewardesses and people from Miami, what better place to scribble some thoughts! Having arrived in the tropical climate apparently turned Mr. Williamson’s creative Pucci juices on high. “[I]t’s amazing how inspired I feel in Miami,” he writes. “I really love this place. The people, the shops, the art, the bars and clubs. It’s such any energetic place.”
The British designer writes, “I travel a lot, and I am still jetlagged from a trip last week to Tokyo to celebrate the 60th-anniversary of Pucci,” he says, adding: “Let’s just say it’s been a tough few days.”
What’s more, he’s a few weeks late designing Pucci’s Autumn/Winter 2008 collection! So Mr. Williamson has no choice but to have at it in the Miami heat. “I have to say, it feels strange designing fur, cashmere and leather by the pool at the Shore Club with the sun beating down on me,” he writes, acknowledging that things could be worse. After all, he gets to party a little while he’s down there. He went to the opening of the new Florida Room at the Delano (designed by Lenny Kravitz), where he got to chat with his friend Ben Pundole, who works with Amy Sacco at Bungalow 8. Next up: “a really fun dinner with Laudomia Pucci and Anastasia Barbieri, my stylist for Pucci, who also works at Vogue Homme and French Vogue.”
There’s not much talk of the art fair itself—aside from a shout-out in the last paragraph—so maybe the whole affair is just a blotto Condé Nast orgy after all. Whatever the case, Mr. Williamson is currently forcing himself to be “a good boy.” So it’s off to the pool, he writes, where he’ll “pretend it’s winter.”
