BEAUTY: Clothing--Gucci

The last time I posted a Gucci show was their performance art presentation in an operating room, here. I like what Alessandro Michele has done for and at Gucci (its second revival after Tom Ford rescued it once before in the 90s), but...well, I don't know why I don't post about their shows more often. It's not that I don't like what he creates...it just feels, I don't know, more of the same. But I hasten to add "the same" is interesting.

So this Fall-Winter '22-'23 collection at Milan Fashion Week feels like it covers familiar territory even though the house collaborated with sportswear brand Adidas to incorporate the classic trefoil, three-stripe design on suits, capes, and shirts. Regular readers  know I am not a fan of the whole "athleisure wear" trend, so it is not the Adidas logo per se that interests me but the juxtaposition of the sport logo onto double breasted suits that is fun. I like the incongruity of it.

The first many collections Michele created for Gucci looked like French gender-fluid teens raided the closets and storage trunks of their grandparents and came out wearing a crazy patchwork mix of 70s and 80s fashion, a look that Michele himself has refered to as "attic chic." While this collection might still have a bit of that sense, it feels like it hangs together a bit more. But don't misunderstand: there is a wide variety of silhouettes here from tight, pegged trousers (some in leather!) to voluminous trailing trousers to culottes. Above it all stands the suit, well tailored, and presented in track suit colors, corduroy, or Punk-styled with studs and spikes. And it is nice to see that Michele is still a champion of prints that look as if they came off  a British sofa from 1975 (looks 24 and 35 among others)...and it is delightful. Note: Gucci is dedicated fur-free so the trim you see on coats, capes, and suits is faux. Thank you Gucci, for your commitment to a fur-free product.

https://www.gucci.com/

Gucci's Cyborg Operating Room

Regular readers know that I always cover the men's fashion season every winter and summer, starting with London Fashion Week, going down to Italy, and then ending in Paris. But I just have to share the recent Gucci runway show at Milan Fashion Week for women (which showed looks for men as well, something more and more designers are doing...and I have mixed feelings about combining the men's and women's shows, but that is for another post). Designer Alessandro Michele has been at the creative helm of Gucci since 2015 and has taken the luxury brand in a totally different, eclectic, quite quirky direction. Collections look like gender-fluid teens raided the closets of grandparents and came out with a crazy patchwork mix of 70s and 80s fashion, with some global influences thrown in for good measure--a look that Michele calls "attic chic." "Gucci has revolutionised its identity," says Justin O’Shea (previously here), buying director for e-commerce fashion brand MyTheresa. "It sounds easy saying it, but to actually achieve this is one of the most remarkable fashion moments in history. And the best part about it is that it was done with beauty and innocent, unbridled conviction."

But for the most recent Gucci Fall-Winter 2018 show, Michele worked with the ideas of post-humanism, trans-humanism, fantasy, and hybridisation. The show was set in a sterile and well-lit operating theater, a metaphor for how people today construct their identities—a population undergoing self-regeneration through the powers of tech, Hollywood, Instagram, and Gucci. "We are the Dr. Frankenstein of our lives," said Michele. "There’s a clinical clarity about what I am doing. I was thinking of a space that represents the creative act. I wanted to represent the lab I have in my head. It’s physical work, like a surgeon’s."

For this collection titled "Cyborg" (Michele says the reference had been taken from his reading of the feminist philosopher Donna Haraway’s 1984 "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century"), models walked down the runway with exotic animals like snakes, and geckos...as well as a mythical baby dragon. Other models carried frighteningly realistic replicas of their own heads and one had a literal third eye on her forehead. These special effects were made and implemented by Makinarium, a Rome-based visual effects factory that has created effects for the likes of film directors Ridley Scott and Danny Boyle.

https://www.gucci.com