Gucci's Cool Cruise On Rome's Highest Hill

Rome - Gucci took its cruise 2009 collection to the top of Rome's highest hill, the Gianicolo, on Tuesday night, where under umbrella pines and before an audience of Hollywood, politico honchos and coolly haughty Italian aristos, designer Frida Giannini staged probably her best show to date for the house.
 
The elite event staged in the charming Villa Aurelia also celebrated the 70th anniversary, and major overhaul, of Gucci's iconic Rome boutique on tony via Condotti. Iconic because the store's opening connected Gucci with the Hollywood heavy hitters in town to shoot movies in Cinecitta, Italy's great film studio and to enjoy the Dolce Vita.

Before an audience that included Claire Danes, her boyfriend Hugh Dancy, Rome Major Gianni Alemanno, Maria Grazia Cucinotto and enough local princes and countesses to form an aristocratic regiment, Giannini sent out a collection that cleverly mixed flirtation and elegance, the kind of clothes your cool big sister would wear if she were a princess with a rock groupie history.

Gucci gals for this coming resort season will hit the beach side terraces in mega wide, boyish flared pants, held up by thick rope belts, lots of Romanesque fantasy print tops, and flirty open necked shirts, all topped by snug cricket blazers with Gucci logos.

For evening, the ghost of Ozzie Clark whispered into the collection with billowing sleeve silk dresses in animal prints, and when the sea air gets chilly some brilliantly cut skinny leather biker jackets, boasting a new Gucci Rose tattoo insignia.

A cast of top catwalkers, including Natasha Poly, Maricarla Boscono and Lily Donaldson, clutched patent tortoise bags and totes with hefty metallic hearts, all of them saying loud and clear "best seller."

Powered on by the best soundtrack of the Giannini Gucci era, featuring the runway cut of the moment, Santo Gold's "Les Artistes," it was a crisply coolly fashion moment and marked a new step in this designer's career. In a wo