Breaking MILAN FASHION WEEK
New Gucci designer debuts as Milan celebrates youth
Fashion is always about renewal, but in this round of Milan Fashion Week it’s not just the collections that are getting a fresher-upper but, it seems, much of the Italian fashion system.
Gucci’s new designer Alessandro Michele, a brand insider little known until now in the wider fashion world, made his runway debut on the first day of womenswear previews on Wednesday, giving the historic brand a clean break from the past.
Michele’s launch is a fitting banner over a push to embed new talent in Milan, where the density of the firmly established Italian system, with brands from Armani and Prada to Versace creating a de facto Italian colony along New York’s Fifth Avenue, has made it difficult for young designers to make inroads.
In a bid to help foster new talent, the Italian Fashion Chamber sponsored a live runway competition this round among five young designers. At the same time, recently discovered young designers, such as Stella Jean and Fausto Puglisi, have quickly established themselves as an integral part of the fashion calendar.
“I am hoping this is the beginning of a new phase, accelerating the growth of the new designers,” Italian Fashion Chamber CEO Jane Reeve said in a recent interview. Reeve says her mission is to bring the young established designers and the even younger promising designers into the Italian system, and secure their loyalty. — AP GUCCI DISCONTINUITY Alessandro Michele strove for discontinuity in his Gucci debut, relaunching the brand with romantic flourishes against a hardened, urban background.
His debut collection displayed a confident break with the past, reasserting the double-G brand logo with prominent belt-buckle placings in the opening and closing looks and introducing a new motif: birds in flight.
The collection snatched elements from the hastily assembled menswear collection, a team effort, shown last month after his predecessor Frida Giannini’s earlier-thanexpected departure. There were the same elaborate poet bows on silken shirts and loosefitting suits with contrast piping, nods to androgyny for both men and women. Michele put his signature on the new collection with a pleated floral dress with a built-in cape, a crinkled leather dress in peacock blue and military-style coats with fur trim that had an antique feel. A red dress with pleated tiers was paired with flats for the perfect day-into-evening look.
Footwear included whimsical furry slip-ons, fitting for either a Hobbit or Dr Seuss character, depending on your sphere of reference, or laced-up sandals with trailing pompons. Glasses complemented the looks.
Running in just as the lights went down was Selma Hayak Pinault, who is married to the CEO of the French conglomerate Kering that owns Gucci.