ON WHEELS
The best seat for seeing Rome is the one on a motor scooter. And now that Italy's sportswear-designing marchese, Emilio Pucci, has turned his talents to scooter clothes, some of the best-looking sights in Rome are the sightseers themselves. Since scooters are getting to be almost as popular as pizza in the U.S. (an estimated 250,000 are buzzing around America at this very moment), Emilio's ideas for scooter-riding are likely to turn up on U.S. streets and highways any day now. Most of the clothes, in keeping with the covered-up look approved for city streets by Italian officialdom, are ingenious combinations of skirts and trousers, such as harem-draped divided skirts or balloon-legged pantaloons. More readily acceptable for America's new scooter clubs will be the marchese's new one-piece shirt-and-shorts combination (opposite) that is waistless and beltless, offering the last word in scooter-riding comfort.
Sightseeing in Rome's Piazza Navona, Susanna Artero consults her guidebook in front of Bernini's famous River Fountain. She wears shirt and harem-draped divided skirt of Florentine-patterned cotton. Emilio designs his own prints as well as sports styles.
Crossing Piazza de la Signoria in Florence are Model Candy Marias, in Emilio-designed pantaloons and floppy hat over printed bandanna, and Marchese Emilio Pucci himself in this year's lop summer fashion for Italian gentlemen—all white from head to foot.
Pausing in the gardens of the Villa Borghese to watch the polizia a cavallo water their horses, Anna Filippi (left) shows one-piece shorts with no market waistline, and Susanna Artero one of Emilio's shirt-and-shorts combinations. Bold prints are repeated on accessories such as scarves, belts. Designs originate in traditional Florentine banners and architectural details.
Riding to work "side saddle" in the manner of Roman girls, Anna Maria Papisca models a wool shirt coat, cut very much in the style of the shirt dress thai brought success in America to Designer Pucci four years ago. The gray coat is stitched with red at the edges to dramatize the shirttail cut of the hem and typical shirt cut of the sleeves and collar.
Perched in front of the giant foot of a Borromini statue at the Piazza Campidoglio in Rome, Anna Filippi models yellow cotton slacks and shirt with a skirt of contrasting print, which is attached to a belt. This is one of the most popular ways of covering up in compliance with edicts forbidding women to appear in slacks and shorts on Rome's historic streets.
FIVE PHOTOS