TO TAKE A STAND AGAINST THE RECENT REINTRODUCTION OF ANTI-ABORTION LAWS IN THE UNITED STATES, ALESSANDRO MICHELE CREATED A BELTED GOWN EMBROIDERED WITH A FLOWERING UTERUS. OTHER PIECES FEATURED THE SLOGAN “MY BODY, MY CHOICE.”
Claustrophobic, unsettled and a little discombobulated. That’s how I felt walking into the darkened, mirrored “thunderdome” that Gucci built for its Fall 2019 runway show. The roof, the floor and even the tiered bleachers were distractingly mirrored. As the show opened, the surrounding Lite-Brite-like walls fired off blinding spears of light timed to the beat of an ominous drum. Then a gang of fiercely-morose-looking models appeared wearing spiked face masks and collars, metallic ear cuffs and stylized knee pads. The sombre mood was heightened with the soundtrack—a mix of jungle sounds, angry barking dogs and the 19th-century religious carol “Gabriel’s Message.” But what was Alessandro Michele’s message?
According to the show notes, Michele—who always layers a touch of highfalutin but zeitgeisty ideology into his work—was inspired by the writings of Hannah Arendt. The late German political philosopher is known for her work on totalitarianism, but she also mused on the power of masks to enable us to be our true, freer selves. “The mask, in fact, lets us show ourselves as we please and play our acting role as we think is best,” Michele wrote in the show notes. “It’s the possibility to choose how to exercise our freedom to show ourselves through a powerful filter that constantly selects what we want to share about us and what we want to conceal instead.”
Michele used the designs in his 2020 Cruise collection—which he described as an anthem to personal freedom—to lobby for women’s reproductive rights at a time when some U.S. states were reintroducing anti-abortion laws. “Nobody should have the right to decide about the freedom of choice of any human being,” Michele said before the show. At Valentino’s Fall 2019 show, Pierpaolo Piccioli brought a more poetic lens to his exploration of freedom. He emblazoned poems from Greta Bellamacina, Yrsa Daley-Ward, Robert Montgomery and Toronto’s Mustafa the Poet onto the garments and even had their words printed on accessories (page 124). In the foreword to On Love, a booklet of poems Piccioli compiled for the show, he wrote: “Poetry is the most intimate expression of freedom. Because freedom is what we all need now.”
On that note, we dedicated this month’s The Draw to freedom—whether that’s in how we define ourselves, as is the case with Krow, the world’s first transgender male supermodel (page 100), or in how the Sober Curious movement gives us the freedom to think about why, when or if we drink (page 106). In “Free” (page 110), fashion editor Eliza Grossman styled the season’s key pieces, while Nathalie Atkinson describes the historical emancipating influences behind these designs. Take the simple pocket: “[Historically] the paranoid patriarchy denied women built-in clothing pockets, (rightly) suspicious that sartorial convenience would lead to female agency,” writes Atkinson. Michele and Arendt would have described that as a form of sartorial totalitarianism! I’m not sure if I had my hands in my pockets as I left the Gucci show, but I do recall savouring the pleasure of feeling the warm sun on my face while relishing a moment of free time—a moment to simply be.