Iconic fashion designer Elio Fiorucci was found dead at his Milan home on Monday, sources said. He had turned 80 on June 6. Relatives alerted emergency services after he failed to answer the telephone at the weekend. He was "in good health" but may have succumbed to a sudden illness, the Fiorucci press office said. Fiorucci's typical offerings, combining Italian taste and a London spirit, were made up of bright and fluorescent colors, T-shirts printed with angels, and plastic-based accessories. This son of a shoe shop owner born in 1935 was one of the great made-in-Italy innovators, whose pop style at democratic prices caused a revolution in clothing beginning in the 1960s.
His first store opened in Milan in 1967, where he sold his soon-to-become iconic T-shirts printed with Victorian angels and hearts in fluorescent colors as well as brightly colored gadgets, accessories, food and beverages. The store became a gathering point for counterculture youth drawn to the accessible glamour of a designer who adopted the "peace and love" hippie slogan as his own. Stores in London and New York followed. The midtown Manhattan store designed by Ettore Sottsass opened in 1976 and became a meeting place of New York artists and intellectuals, drawing a young Madonna and with Andy Warhol choosing it as a location for the launch of his new magazine - Interview. In 1977 Fiorucci organized the grand opening of what was to become another Manhattan and global landmark - the disco Studio 54. Cut to 1982, when Dupont invented Lycra and Fiorucci mixed it with denim, giving birth to the first stretch jeans. This was followed in 1983 by the launch of the Flashdance esthetic, for he was the first to design and sell brand-name leggings, legwarmers, sweatshirts, and all the accoutrements that had became instant objects of desire after the movie about the ambitious dancer/steelworker won the hearts and minds of a generation of teenaged girls. The visionary designer in 1990 sold his company to Japanese company Edwin Co. Ltd., but 11 years ago founded a new brand called Love Therapy which is still successful today. In an interview with ANSA just before his 80th birthday last month, the designer said two key words that he saw as nearly obsolete should be brought back into everyday conversation: waste and empathy. "Our excesses reflect negatively on planetary balance, limiting everyone's resources," Fiorucci said. "Let's try to translate the rules of harmonious living into a code of fair sharing...let's put our duties towards animals, nature, the environment, our neighbors, in black and white," he said. "That way we will automatically discover the meaning of empathy".
"I am saddened by the loss of...a free spirit, a creative talent that embodied the industriousness of his native Milan while spreading the Italy brand around the world - with grace, curiosity, and passion," Premier Matteo Renzi said.
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