Century of Chic
One hundred years on, Gucci continues to reinvent itself to be at the forefront of fashion. Here’s what you can expect for the Italian brand’s centenary celebrations
For Alessandro Michele, Gucci’s creative director, the Italian house’s 100th anniversary was befitting of a, well, hack. The centennial collection, titled Aria, saw 94 looks sent down the runway in a mash of the Italian fashion house’s codes, past and present, with, somewhat surprisingly, its Kering conglomerate French counterpart, Balenciaga. The result? The Hacker Project. Think: classic Gucci elements peppered with some of Demna Gvasalia’s greatest hits, such as his hourglass suit jacket emblazoned with both houses’ logos (unsurprisingly, a hit on social media).
“In this sense, Gucci becomes for me a hacking lab, made of incursions and metamorphoses,” says Michele. “[It is] an alchemical factory of contaminations where everything connects to anything.” Indeed, taking references from a myriad of places and eras and refashioning them into
contemporary cultural statements is something Michele has driven at Gucci, translating his passion for eclectic vintage references and antique accoutrements into assemblages of pan-decade garments. At Gucci, he has mainstreamed genderless codes, and effectively captured the zeitgeist with his signature geek-chic androgyny.
All these elements were brought to a glorious, celebratory high in Aria, a show befitting of a centenary collection. The film begins outside the Savoy Club, a nod to London’s Savoy Hotel where founder Guccio Gucci first got his inspiration to start a luggage business. Set to a soundtrack of bangers that wax lyrical about the fashion house— starting with Lil Pump’s Gucci Gang (a strong testament as to how the brand has infiltrated popular culture)—models saunter down a runway replete with flashing cameras. The 15-minute film culminates into the back of the club that opens to an Edenic landscape, where white horses and peacocks frolic as the models slowly float up towards the sky, a metaphorical marker of a dawn of a new century for the fashion house.
If the runway was a glittery affair, the advertising campaign, featuring Kristen Mcmenamy and Italian rock-band Måneskin, posits itself as an afterparty, where inhibitions loosen and are captured by a series of erotically-charged images set within the Savoy Hotel. Shot by Mert & Marcus, it is a nod to the notoriously racy advertisements of Tom Ford’s Gucci era.
And the centenary year continues to be a busy one. Keeping with its constant reinventions, the maison has introduced yet another cabinet of curiosities: a fresh new lifestyle launch, featuring an array of playful and useful items: colourful notebooks, paperweights, pencil cases, to satin silk pyjamas and games—which will certainly add some much needed exuberance to our post-pandemic lives. Originally launched at a special pop-store at the Via Manzoni 19 in Milan, Gucci Cartoleria has now come to Singapore shores. But as with anything in Alessandro Michele’s Gucci universe, expect that added bit of magic: flying notebooks, self-playing chess sets and haunted items, in an Alice in Wonderland inspired twist. What’s more, look out for the Italian newly renovated MBS flagship, due to be open later this year, as well as the introduction of its e-commerce website in Singapore.