The world and creativity of Elio Fiorucci seen from the inside and recounted by those who took part in his fashion adventure.

The fashion and stores created by Elio Fiorucci in the late 1960s were a great creative hotbed for the following decades, anticipating many of the trends that emerged later and the ideas of the next generation of designers.

Elio Fiorucci's innate curiosity led him to explore the unknown, to broaden his vision towards new currents of freedom of expression, beyond the borders of his country, in search of other energies.

This book recalls his new, joyful, mocking, free realm, and the conception of unconventional clothing that upset the rules of the bourgeois, conformist world of the 1960s.

It is a choral fresco, told through the letters of those who worked with him, including absolute beginners, professionals who knew him and shared his passions, family, and friends: architects such as Antonio Citterio and Michele De Lucchi, photographers, artists (Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, who decorated the entire Milan store in 1983), singers, and actors who attended his stores and parties. Direct testimonials come from the likes of Biba (Barbara Hulanicki), Oliviero Toscani, Donna Jordan, Terry Jones, Italo Lupi, Alessandro Mendini, Paul Caranicas and Joey Arias. The book also features a preface by Janie and Stephen Schaeffer, the current brand owners. "Dear Elio is a paean, a love letter and an ode to the store, its founder, and the insanity that ensued once you passed through those doors. Shopping was almost a performance art, especially at Fiorucci, whether you were selling, browsing or buying. That decade was also a time of rapacious and almost addictive consumerism fed by a generation that dressed for every occasion whether daytime or evening and Fiorucci was the place to be seen. There was no such thing as too outrageous-day or night!...His story is told by so many of those who worked for him and with him whether in the USA or in Italy and there is nothing retold that doesn't bring a smile to one's face as this was not cutthroat retailing as we know it today. Dear Elio is a chronicle and a biography of a true merchant prince. It is also a primer and manual for retailing, whether staffing, merchandising, buying, or displaying." —NEW YORK JOURNAL OF BOOKS