Gucci, the revival

The first fashion show of Alessandro Michele at the head of Gucci was a huge challenge. After the loss of speed of the Florentine brand in 2014, the ship Kering attempts a bet: change the artistic direction betting on a stranger, but a connoisseur of the House, founded in 1921. Alessandro Michele has been working for Gucci for almost thirteen years and is piloting accessory lines. The hippie prophet-looking Rome native creates the 2015-2016 Fall/Winter men’s fashion collection in only five days. A miracle whose hopes for success are largely fulfilled: its androgynous silhouettes embrace the time as they jostle it, wearing baroque costumes, moccasins fur or romantic tops, stirring the image of the intellectual arty and that of the eccentric bohemians. The collections, all more extravagant and abundant than the other, are linked together, borrowing retro inspired inspirational seventies, from from East China or the very artistic Florentine Renaissance. Because this is the key to success: tap into the very essence of the fashion House while instilling a great wind of renewal.

Be gucci, be yourself

Anticipating the future too, as with these post-human Gucci cyborgs carrying their second full-face head for the 2018-2019 Fall/Winter fashion show or this 2017 Fall/Winter #Gucciandbeyond campaign for which alien-mannequins take by force the Instagram of the brand. The Gucci silhouette? that of the actor Jared Leto, Michele’s double-mode spiritual and muse of the Gucci Guilty perfume. An androgynous silhouette that plays with a unisex fashion sometimes blurring the tracks between genres. A total Gucci look? Without hesitation, combining the pieces of different seasons, enhanced with signature creations: the double G belt, the green-red-green Web band, Princeton bit mules and bestiary motifs galore. The idea? Express one’s own personality, define an un-normed beauty, and defend the fluidity of genres. Thus, when Alessandro Michele decides for the Milanese fashion week of 2017 to organize a mixed show, or to cast only black models for his pre-fall collection of the same year. Same when he chooses Hari Nef, famous supermodel advocating for the transgender cause, as muse of the House perfumes, alongside Petra Collins, young photographer and feminist icon. Because isn’t Michele’s creed to simply be oneself? ‘If the brand is so successful, it’s precisely because they allowed me to really be me,’ he explained, like an oracle, to Numéro last April. Who said that fashion was superficial?

The gospel of a fashion guru

More fashionable than ever, the flourishing Gucci - now the second largest luxury brand in the world - sees the faithful enamored gathering around the world. The Creator’s flamboyant, eclectic and inclusive universe is the good word that the world of millennials - and the others too - was waiting for. Ultra- connected, ultra-informed and committed to diversity, the Y generation vibrates to the collective and tirelessly seeks meaning. Sincere and inhabited by a creative faith, the «jeweled» creator, like a shaman, speaks to souls and transforms Gucci into a key element of pop culture. This Italian renaissance fanatic plays with cultural references as well as with social networks shaping a mythical and demythified Gucci: Sir John Everett Millais’ ecstatic Shakespearean Ophelia is wearing a Gucci dress gilded on for the 2018 spring-summer advertising campaign ‘Utopian Fantasy’, when the ‘Wonders Market’ watches enter the dance of the ironic ‘memes’ Internet for #TFWGucci (‘That Feeling When Gucci’). A skilful way to break the codes of a luxury frozen in its inaccessibility and to attract the favors of an initiated public. The opulent Gucci is adorned with a new golden age.