Michele keeps taking Gucci beyond the pale
Gucci is the fashion success story of the decade – a rare multibillion euro-a-year brand that sells clothes as well as bags and shoes. However clothes, let alone accessories, are something Alessandro Michele, the brand’s creative director, seems anxious to avoid discussing. “Fashion is not only about what you wear or a way to generate money,’’ he said yesterday at a press conference that seemed more like a critical thinking seminar than the usual post-show chat. “It’s a way to augment an idea of who you are or want to be.” Someone asked him whether he thought we were post-gender, given his cross-dressing models. “I think we’re post-human,” he replied. He had just been rereading A Cyborg Manifesto, Donna Haraway’s 1984 essay in which boundaries between sexes, animals and humans break down. “It’s about being and becoming.” Three years ago, when he first dressed men and women in the same clothes and make-up it seemed radical. Now his whey-faced models in their oversized unisex tweed blazers seem pretty mainstream. Nick Cave, the musician, attended the show with his 17-year-old son, who wore a candy-pink velvet Gucci trouser suit: the dream, millennial Gucci customer.
Feminine flourishes in the show included a silk scarf wrapped around the sleeve of a taupe patent mac and grosgrain trimmed cardigans. As for the disembodied heads some models carried in the crook of their arms – replicas of their own faces – were these a macabre new Gucci bag? Michele was more interested discussing theories of hybridisation. “I think we should all be hybrids. It’s a very interesting way to live your life.”
The catwalk set was an operating theatre with piercing white light. It meant the craftsmanship could be seen in breathtaking clarity: from the way the sleeves on a raspberry tweed jacket dissolved into sequins to the dense, tiny cross stitch on a blanket coat. He views himself, he says, as Dr Frankenstein. “All designers are… we transform the body.”
Mary Shelley’s novel is not his only historical reference. Michele’s Gucci is steeped in Romantic and Gothic notions of beauty but increasingly styled to look dystopian: a black ruffled wool midi dress over a draped scarf, worn with thick patterned tights and pumped-up trainers, or calf-length checked skirts worn with clashing scarf-print anoraks and patterned trousers.
East London meets Silicon Valley meets Upper East Side. Headwear included stripy or lace balaclavas, baseball caps and turbans.
“I don’t really understand any of this,” said one journalist.
Is Michele the intellectual who can’t help churning out huge commercial hits despite himself, or simply someone who understands that mystery sells?