A hymn to nature, to life, to air. Gucci‘s 100 years are celebrated with a ceremony that smacks of re-foundation, but “Gucci’s long history cannot be encapsulated within a single inaugural act”. Like every existence, its destiny is marked by a long series of interminable births and continuous celebrations, as the Spanish philosopher María Zambrano writes.
Alessandro Michele omaggia il passato con la volontà di “divenire altro”, l’eredità infatti può essere ripensata perché il “passato non è mai consegna inerte e ripetizione immutabile: anzi, implica necessariamente l’idea del movimento”.
Starting from this concept, the creative director of the Italian fashion house has forced those static rules of creativity through actions of creative “hacking”, incursions and metamorphosis, so as to be able to fully understand the past by dropping it into the contemporary world and rewriting its history.
Both the men’s and women’s Gucci Aria collection was presented yesterday with a digital show that mixed the formula of the runway show with that of the short movie. The video was directed by Michele himself and Floria Sigismondi, as was the soundtrack remixed by Lawrence Rothman, opening with Gucci Gang by Lil Pump and closing with Gucci On My Bag by Mier.
A birth that repeats itself endlessly, always new, this represents Gucci Aria, an endless regeneration that establishes a re-foundation, an evolution.
The past is the base, the foundations on which to design the future that “as Benjamin would say, to do so, it is necessary to change it by tracing it, in its unfolding”.
Michele pays homage by reinterpreting Tom Ford’s legacy from which he takes the red velvet suit; he gives new life to the equestrian inspiration that represents the beginnings of Gucci’s history; the Flora print, created by Vittorio Accornero in the 1970s and revived by Frida Giannini that takes us all the way to the up to the experience of hacking Balenciaga by Alessandro Michele, in which the logos of the two maisons cross and intertwine.
The looks represent precisely this research: “I plundered the nonconformist rigor of Demna Gvasalia and the sexual tension of Tom Ford; I dwelt on the anthropological implications of what shines, working on the sheen of fabrics; I celebrated the equestrian world of Gucci transfiguring it into a fetish cosmogony; I sublimated the silhouette of Marilyn Monroe and the glamour of old Hollywood; I sabotaged the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie and the codes of male tailoring”.
This presentation represents a genesis, a new birth that frees Gucci’s entire imagery, which lives on new life: “I therefore celebrate air as a sacred principle of interpenetration, fusion and connection: a principle of existence infused with the chemical enchantment of leaves. To these creatures, my praise. To their being fragile and vulnerable. To their ability to renew themselves and come back to life after winter has passed”.
Photo by Kevin Tachman
