By the late 1970s, the direction of stylistic influence had reversed, and the Fiorucci store in New York City become famous for the foreign fashions it introduced to the United States.
[1] As a leader in the globalisation of fashion, Fiorucci scoured the globe for underground trends, introducing a newly affluent mass market to styles such as thongs from Brazil and Afghan coats.
[1] Advertising for these jeans usually featured a woman's buttocks in skin-tight denim, or in one case obscured by pink fluffy handcuffs, whilst the company logo was two cheeky angels modelled after Raphael's cherubs.
The launch party saw the Theo Adams Company transform L'Escargot, London's oldest French restaurant, into a world of disco, hedonism, and horror.
[6] The new shop also had a performance area, a vintage clothing market, and a restaurant,[6] and was financed by an investment from the Standa department stores, part of the Montedison group.
In 1976 Fiorucci opened a store in New York City, down the block from Bloomingdale's on East 59th Street between Lexington and Park Avenues in Manhattan,[6] with the goal of introducing the brand to American trendsetters during the disco age.
Customers such as Cher,[1] and Terence Conran[1] rubbed shoulders with Jackie Onassis[1] and Lauren Bacall;[1] they might also see drag queen Joey Arias serving the King of Spain,[7] author Douglas Coupland absorbing the store's pop culture,[8] or Calvin Klein and Gloria Vanderbilt buying jeans.
Other employees included Madonna's brother, Christopher Ciccone; Terry Jones of i-D magazine; Oliviero Toscani, who shot many of the famous Benetton ads;[1] and interior designer Jim Walrod.
[1] In May 1979, the artist Kenny Scharf had his first solo exhibition in the New York City store, titled "Fiorucci Celebrates the New Wave" and featuring his colorful, retro-futuristic "Estelle Series."
[6] Ever on the pulse of the times, Fiorucci sponsored the reunion of Simon and Garfunkel in The Concert in Central Park on 19 September 1981, attended by 400,000 people or more, and on the bill for their birthday party in 1983 was a then-unknown Madonna.
[12] Despite thriving sales, the company was dogged by poor management and had to close the New York store in 1986; Betsey Johnson has suggested "Fiorucci was the most happening place.
[14] In January 1996, after a plea bargain, Elio Fiorucci was given a suspended jail sentence of 22 months for inflating the value of invoices to increase the value of the company to Carrera at the expense of his creditors.
[1] Commentators such as Kim Hastreiter were sceptical that it could recapture the buzz of times past, given the increased competition in mass-market clubbing gear from the likes of H&M and The Limited.
[1] Meanwhile, the brand continued to thrive in Europe, and regained some of its former notoriety in 1995 with a poster campaign for its jeans featuring a naked woman's buttocks and pink furry handcuffs, which became instant bestsellers.
In 2015, the year Elio Fiorucci died, the brand was sold by the Japanese trading house Itochu to Janie Schaffer, an ex-CEO of Victoria's Secret, and her business partner and former husband Stephen.
Brazilian band Mamonas Assassinas, in their song "Pelados em Santos", has the narrator mentioning buying Fiorucci pants and Reebok shoes to his beloved in Paraguay, a haven for counterfeit products.
Argentinian band Sumo, in their song "La Rubia Tarada", mentions "posh faces, crass glances and men fitted in Fiorucci" in a description of a high-class aspiring, unauthentic youth culture.