A change of pace

Forced from their studios under lockdown, leading designers describe how they learnt to embrace the quietude of home, taking the time to rethink the future of fashion itself.

A CHANGE OF PACE

Leading designers describe taking the time to rethink the future of fashion itself.

Alessandro Michele – Gucci

“Something was changing inside me,” says Alessandro Michele, recalling his premonitory days between the autumn/winter ’20/’21 Gucci show on February 19 and Italy’s lockdown on March 9. His collection confronted fashion with its own overload, presenting a voyeuristic view of the backstage preparations, in lieu of a runway. “I was thinking about my position; why I need to show all the time.” In 2015, Michele’s multibillion-dollar Gucci makeover catapulted him into an incessant loop of fashion shows and red carpets. Suddenly, confined by the coronavirus outbreak to his apartment in Rome with his partner Vanni, he experienced an awakening. “I felt like a monk,” he says. “I was travelling in my imagination, all by myself. It’s the first time in a long time I was really by myself.”

With his princely locks in pigtails, like a Pippi Longstocking of the Early Renaissance, Michele lost himself in the writing and knitting that, he explains, felt “like a prayer”. He visited online auctions and added to his art collection, and, as the days turned into weeks, he sang and reconnected with the guitar playing that gave him rock-star dreams in his teen years. “Harry said: ‘I will try to teach you more.’ Jared said: ‘We must play together!’” Michele smiles, referring to Styles and Leto.

On his terrace, Michele saw nature in a new light. “Like my roses, I wasn’t moving. I was just there, waiting. It was beautiful.” He felt rooted in earth. “I thought, what have we done? We’ve been so stupid and crazy and completely blind.”

Inspired, Michele composed a future philosophy for Gucci: fewer shows, more sustainability. “I will always need the beautiful work of human beings. I am sure that my reason for being on this Earth is the creative research of beauty. I can’t stop,” he vows. “But I want to be more connected with the Earth.” We should never forget lockdown, he says. “We can’t say that it’s all the same, because it’s not. We went through something powerful. Maybe, for the first time in this technological era, we felt connected with god. And god is the Earth.” Anders Christian Madsen

“I will always need the beautiful work of human beings … But I want to be more connected with the Earth”

Pierpaolo Piccioli – Valentino

Every evening in quarantine, Pierpaolo Piccioli and his family could hear the singing of locals echo through the streets of Nettuno. In his native Roman coastal town, the Valentino designer spent his days painting, sketching his collection, and cultivating a Mediterranean dandy ‘do. “During the lockdown, I decided to be radical,” he proclaims, unveiling his manifesto for a new era. From the way he cuts his clothes to the values they embody: “I want to be more radical. Creativity has to be the leading force in a fashion house and that’s what it’s going to be. In the past, marketing and branding were more important than creativity. And I don’t think that’s right.” Piccioli called upon more than 20 of his famous friends – from Adut Akech to Mustafa the Poet – to photograph themselves for Valentino’s autumn campaign. In place of paying them a fee, the brand made a hefty donation to the Lazzaro Spallanzani Hospital in Rome. When the Black Lives Matter movement took to the streets, Piccioli sensed in it the hope he wishes to convey. “Being different is a value. We are connected by emotions. Through a brand, you can create a community that shares those values,” he says. “I want to be more radical through our communication.” ACM

Silvia Venturini Fendi – Fendi

Bound by the duty of dynasty, Silvia Venturini Fendi has worked diligently for the family business since her teenage years. “When I was a little girl, we had three months’ holiday,” she recalls. “I went back to that same state of mind.” Quarantined in the compound shared by the Fendi family on Monte Mario in Rome, surrounded by her five grandchildren, she felt “like a little girl” again. “I wanted to abandon myself to this condition,” she says. “No plans, no duties. Those long days lying on the sofa …” Venturini pauses. “Then the news took you back to reality.”

She regressed emotionally, too. “Like a child, you let your feelings go wild. You go from laughter to tears.” As for the kids’ schoolwork, the mindset was similar. “I left it to the parents. I never loved school and I don’t like it now. I took care of their ephemeral culture: games, cooking, dance lessons, the garden.” At the end of lockdown, the Fendi quarantine had expanded to more than 20 family members. Early on, Venturini decided to terminate her resort collection, permanently. “I’d like to stop it and extend the main collections,” she explains. “One show a season is more than enough.”

This month, she’s staging an intimate co-ed show in Rome, reflective of the reinvigoration she experienced in lockdown. “Our consciousness of time has been very strong. You want things that survive you.” Now, Venturini’s fashion desires are “simple, pure and delicate: something made by hand with love and care, which you can wear all your life.” In a summer of change, she is committed to carrying on using Fendi for good. “We have a privileged platform and it’s important that we use it. I will continue to do so, in an organic and real way.” Positive industry change, she says, will come. “I have to be confident because of those little children that were playing with me in my garden.” ACM

Nicolas Ghesquière – Louis Vuitton

Nicolas Ghesquière is in a good mood. Last night, in light of Paris’s mayor allowing restaurants and cafes to reopen, he enjoyed his first dinner out in months. “You know how important cafes are to Paris?” He teases. “This is a big deal! It’s a sign that we can live again.”

In the days leading up to lockdown, Ghesquière was in California, but managed to get one of the last flights home to Paris and hunkered down just outside the capital, in his home of 15 years, with his dogs and a few friends for company. “I rarely have time to enjoy this house, but I actually got to plant a row of trees,” says the designer, who can’t remember a moment when he has stayed in one place for so long.

“Having time suspended made me realise that I don’t want to return to a crazy schedule with lots of travel. I think this situation has made everyone think differently. The industry wasn’t working; those conversations have been there for a long time before the pandemic,” he says, adding that he wants to create support for smaller brands, to “make sure we’re creating a space for everyone. One of the great things to come out of this is a sense of solidarity.”

And what does creativity look like after the threat of Covid-19 eases? “If you think about times of crisis in the past, they were always followed by moments of creativity,” he notes. “I want to propose something that is relevant, different and new, that is something I won’t compromise on, but likewise, the level of functionality is very important, now more than ever. I’m also more concerned about the people around me; the way we produce and manufacture things, the impact that has, I want to be even more responsible. And,” he adds, perhaps more than anything, “to enjoy my friends and family; to FaceTime my 99-year-old grandmother more.” Sarah Harris

“One of the great things to come out of this is a sense of solidarity”

Riccardo Tisci Ð Burberry

There was a moment at the beginning of the pandemic when Riccardo Tisci knew things were serious. His eight sisters – all based in Italy – came to a rare, unanimous decision in their WhatsApp group: coronavirus was going to severely impact the world. Not long after that, Tisci travelled to stay with his 92-year-old mother near Lake Como, in the family home that his parents built together. It’s a house with remarkable sentimentality for Tisci: when, in 2005, his mother ran out of money and feared she’d have to sell, it’s what prompted him to sign with Givenchy. “I didn’t want to sign because I was young, I was punk,” he says, laughing. “I wanted to do my own label, but when they told me how much they wanted to pay me … well, I said I’m going to do it because I can buy the house.”

Since that time, he’s only spent Christmases there – so the chance to spend weeks cloistered in its confines with the woman he describes as the love of his life “was a dream”, he says. In the mornings, he’d work, designing a collection that he describes as his most personal yet for Burberry, and in the afternoons the two would garden and cook together, or sit at the kitchen table as he recorded stories of her life. As lockdown eased, his sisters would walk through the town in their pyjamas so they could all eat breakfast together in the garden. “It was really one of the most beautiful times I had in all my life,” he says.

But besides that sense of idyllic togetherness – a spirit of unity that translated into the Black Lives Matter protest marches he later attended, first in Italy, then in London – the period offered opportunity, Tisci realised, to reassess the pace of his industry (“it was getting stupidly crazy,” he sighs) and consider the broader issues at hand. The past months have “traumatised the world, and made everyone stop and think”, he reflects. “How many people have been killed over the past 400 years? How many people have been killed the same way as George Floyd? But finally, the world – not only the black community – has taken the time to understand. George Floyd, he couldn’t breathe. When people died from coronavirus, they couldn’t breathe. It’s a sign. Humans have to start breathing and reacting in more of a quiet, thoughtful way. And I think fashion needed a big shake. Now, there is no way back” Olivia Singer

“It’s a sign. Humans have to start breathing and reacting in more of a quiet, thoughtful way ... Now, there is no way back”

Miuccia Prada – Prada

If the events of 2020 have divided us into optimists or pragmatists, Miuccia Prada identifies with the latter. “I hate the cliche that, after coronavirus, we’ll all be saints. We will be as we were,” she asserts. “We should take this opportunity to change – but change will not happen without a great deal of effort from everyone.” It’s an arrestingly honest sentiment and one that likely speaks to Mrs Prada’s position as a cultural oracle. In fact, even amid this year’s unpredictability, she maintained her reputation as the prophetic voice of fashion. Only weeks before the world went into lockdown, she appointed Raf Simons as her co-creative director in an effort to promote progress within the industry. “It is absolutely time to rethink these systems and structures that have come to define us,” she said in February. Recent months have only proved her point.

Now, she says, from her home in Milan, two things are clear. “One: I only have questions, of many kinds, and I am searching for answers. Mainly, how a luxury company operates within the wider construct of social, political and economic issues. Second: that I’ve had time to really work and enjoy the pleasure of doing what the core of my job is – making clothes for people.”

Fashion’s frenetic pace has been debated time and again, and even its most lauded designers are not immune to its demands. (“Another show, another spectacle, another event … I already told people

I feel like I’m doing a different job,” she says, laughing.) But perhaps more fascinating is how a woman whose personal identity has long been embedded within the political realm, but whose public role is designing and selling clothes, is now reconsidering “how you can coexist between making a successful company and democratic thinking”, she says. After all: “Everything is political. Politics is the basis of my thinking, the basis of reality, the basis of everything. Politics is not fundamental, it is reality.”

That was the impetus behind establishing the Fondazione Prada back in 1993: to create a separate space within which she could explore issues from racial prejudice to gender constructs. When it came to her brand: “I never wanted to make any kind of political or social declarations – even if they are at the core of my thinking – precisely on purpose,” she explains. “I always thought we should be very careful in expressing ideas, because when you say something as a company, you have responsibilities if you want to be honest and not opportunistic.” But, as coronavirus came to disproportionately affect marginalised demographics, and the Black Lives Matter movement was amplified, designing clothing that reflect her liberated ideals, while allowing the Fondazione to more explicitly explore their nuances, no longer felt sufficient.

“Changes in time have made me wonder how far a luxury company can deal with these issues,” she admits. “I have to rethink my thinking. Somebody wrote: ‘Go home and do your homework,’ and that’s the point. Let’s study. Every time someone asks me something, I say, ‘study.’ And I say to myself: ‘Study more. Think more.’ We’re not there yet, but I have a direction for my thoughts.” As the world and its industries grapple with institutional racism, generational disenfranchisement, the onset of a recession and the impact of a pandemic, acknowledging our failings and collectively moving forwards is of paramount importance. “I hope everyone is trying to go in the right direction: maybe fewer pieces, even more value,” Prada reflects. “I have hope in general – because how can you live without hope?” OS

“I hope everyone is trying to go in the right direction: maybe fewer pieces, even more value”

Jonathan Anderson – J.W. Anderson and Loewe

“I feel like the world is spinning like a hurricane and we’re just in the middle of it all,” sighs Jonathan Anderson. On the morning we speak, British politicians are in the midst of a frenzied conversation about the statues of slavers installed across the country, and newspaper headlines are debating the merits of their maintenance. “We’re in this moment where we’re wondering, do we look at history? Or do we draw a line in the sand?” notes Anderson. “What I’ve been thinking for a little while is that we need to learn from it, and then ask: ‘how do we prevent that from happening again?’”

It’s a subject that has long fascinated the designer. The collections he presented in February revolved around examining the post-war aesthetics of the 1920s and 1940s: flapper dresses, the New Look and clothing that, after a period of upheaval, “was about entering the room with impact and confidence”. Now, in an industry struggling to navigate the turbulence of our own era, “clothing can be used as a social, gender, race or political weapon”, he attests. Materially, that is manifesting as clothes divided between exploring the realities of classicism and fantasy. But he has also been considering the very role of an industry embedded in the lives of anyone who gets dressed in the morning. “I think we’re going to have to be able to take our hand out and offer it to someone else to help pick them up – whether in the community or the workplace,” he says. “Maybe clothing in the future is going to be about helping, in terms of bigger picture things. And who would have thought that, out of the First World War, you would have ended up with the Roaring 20s?” OS

Olivier Rousteing – Balmain

Between fighting the pandemic and supporting the anti-racism movement, Olivier Rousteing saw one common denominator: “Togetherness,” he says. “We learnt that we need to be together.” After spending lockdown alone, the Balmain designer can attest to it. “I was thinking, should I get a boyfriend? Or a cat, or a dog? But my friends said it wasn’t easy having a partner during quarantine.” Left to his own devices, Rousteing phoned his grandparents, and turned to his six million Instagram followers for interaction. ‘’My grandparents lived through the Second World War, stuck in their houses, not knowing if their families were safe. At least we had our phones.”

In his spacious Paris home, Rousteing says he had no reason to complain. “I discovered my washing machine,” he says, laughing. “And I don’t know how to cook, so I ate zucchini and eggs for two months. I lost 10 pounds. That’s superficial, though. Other things were more important.”

His collection this September is rooted in Balmain’s post-war period origins. “There’s something emotional about the vision of Monsieur Balmain at the time: how to come back stronger after a crisis.” Half of it will be made sustainably, “What’s going to be important for tomorrow is not only how you present fashion, but how you made it,” he predicts. “It will need to stand for more than fashion. Then, you’ll see which designers and magazines are relevant.”

A beacon of inclusivity in the industry, Rousteing marched for Black Lives Matter in Paris in June. “I hope everybody understands it, and that they’re not just jumping on it as a trend,” he says. “When I started pushing diversity in my shows and doing campaigns with hip-hop stars, and fashion was questioning it, it felt really weird. I felt that fashion should be avant-garde.” Now, he says, change is on the horizon. “People’s reactions six years ago were completely different to today. It’s a completely new world, and thank god. It took a long time.” ACM

“Clothing can be used as a social, gender, race or political weapon”

Maria Grazia Chiuri Ð Christian Dior

One night in lockdown, Maria Grazia Chiuri and her daughter Rachele Regini put her haute couture wardrobe to good use, dressed to the nines and danced around her apartment in Rome. “The girls did fashion looks every day,” the Christian

Dior designer says, recalling Regini and a friend, who joined them in isolation. “It was a great reminder for me that people react differently.” It marked an uplifting moment for Chiuri, who was sensitive to the crisis’s impact on gender roles. “The women I spoke to were exhausted,” she says. “Working from home is ‘beautiful’? Absolutely not. Women spent mornings in front of the computer and afternoons helping their kids with schoolwork. They also had to cook and clean.”

When the pandemic broke out, Chiuri was in Puglia planning a Dior resort show that would soon be postponed. But, having mobilised artisans from around the region, she felt a responsibility to see the collaborations through. “In Italy, the economic disaster was immediately clear. Italy is tourism and fashion,” she notes, acutely aware of the domino effect of unemployment on a progressive society. “Should I sit in my apartment, cry and watch a film? No, we have to do something.” In late May, after working via video calls for weeks, Chiuri returned to her ateliers in Paris determined to keep the wheels of her collections spinning. “Dior employs 7,000 people, so you feel that you have to do something.” Amid post-pandemic proposals for change to the pace of fashion, she’s listening to calls for sustainability. “But we also have to think about giving people work,” Chiuri says.

“We are creating sustainability that can work for a big brand like Dior,” she explains, referring to environmental measures taken by the house. But for Chiuri, who oversees some six collections a year, slowing down isn’t an option. “A designer who works for a brand like Dior can’t be precious,” she says with a shrug. “When Mr Dior made this brand, he restarted an industry in France that was destroyed after the war. He was important not only because of the New Look, but because he gave work to people who’d lost everything,” Chiuri reflects. “We can’t think about the past. We have to think about now.” ACM

“Dior employs 7,000 people, so you feel that you have to do something”