One afternoon in the Autumn of 1979 a 17-year old Canadian science student stepped into the Fiorucci store on New York’s east 59th Street during a brief vacation.
The experience encouraged Douglas Coupland to ditch physics and embrace art on his return to Montreal. Decades later - now an author, an artist - he reflected on that first time at Fiorucci: ‘(It) was like one beautiful little crystallization of everything you wanted adulthood to be. It was sexy, it was pop, it was fast, it was kind of electric.’ The artifact that had such an impact was the one thing he could afford: a postcard image of Twiggy with kohl eyes, pigtails, dressed in the leopard print once synonymous with Elsa Schiaparelli that Fiorucci made its own.
The following year there was an earthquake in Italy. Not on the scale of the Messina Strait tragedy, but a rumble south of Naples that registered 6.89 on the richter scale. For those shallow enough to notice - me for one - there …