Alessandro Michele has shaken up things immensely in his Gucci Fall 2016 menswear collection. It’s just a simply different. A different philosophy, a new way of looking at things.
Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele has shaken up things immensely in his year at the helm of the Italian fashion giant. After his 70’s inspired Gucci Cruise Collection he stayed with a 70’s look for the Gucci Fall 2016 collection, creating a product assortment and presented in a giant red-lit hall–just like the reception area in the Overlook Hotel in Kubrick’s The Shining. Somehow, there’s something creepy in his beautiful creation.
His runway-realized memories speak of a happy boyhood but served in a sinister way. Walter Albini for instance. The spirit of the designer, who defined Italian fashion in the 1970s as successfully as Gucci did, could be detected in the visual excess of an Art Deco-y lurex pattern that Michele cut into a track suit (and laid over a Snoopy sweatshirt). It was a highlight of the rich seam of Las Vegas that threaded through the collection. It may not actually be so, but Michele’s affection for the Sinister Subtext would surely incline him to the City of Ultimate Sin, where too much will never be enough.
Some grumbled that Michele’s Gucci was more of the same, but that was precisely the point. Michele’s aesthetic is about addition, not subtraction. All forms of human life are there. A floral tapestry that becomes coats and suits, crocheted capes and hats that suggest a loving hand, and cosy pyjamas with floral embroidery, preceded a white t-shirt and a plain pair of pleated pants, the bottom half was jeans tucked into socks with studded loafers, knitted hats have whimsical ears, or fantastical monster faces; detective capes come in striking red, rich fur and classic plaid.
Clearly, Gucci show was decomposed into an ensemble of fragments. History repeats. The past is never over. Gucci is then and now, it’s just a simply different. A different philosophy, a new way of looking at things.