The Legacy of Alessandro Michele’s Gucci
Photo courtesy of Elle
Gucci’s Fall/Winter 2015 Ready-To-Wear show opened with a sheer, textured long-sleeve shirt tucked into a high-waisted, long, pleated, bright red skirt. The skirt was secured with a black leather belt that featured two golden Gs side-by-side as the buckle. A formation of white flowers stuck to the shirt’s collar and a long pendant peeked through the sheer fabric. The model’s hands were adorned with gaudy chunky rings, and her feet were tucked in black-soled, flat sandals with two furry straps. In one look, Alessandro Michele established motifs that would define Gucci for the next seven years. Here, the eyes find an exaggerated preppiness constructed to devalue what is refined in prep. Michele created an artificial approach to the natural by introducing playfulness in the most closed sectors of society. He was committed to the ambiguous and androgynous and the desire to throw anything and everything—whether vomit-inducing or euphorically beautiful一together in the name of extravagance and more importantly: Camp.
“The essence of Camp is the love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.”
In 2002, Tom Ford, the creative director of Gucci at the time, invited Michele to the brand to work on accessories. Michele was appointed creative director 12 years later, succeeding Frida Giannini, and served until the end of 2022. His work represented a dramatic break from his predecessors, moving from strict, sexy sophistication to silly, unseriously serious sophistication.
“What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in feminine women is something masculine.”
Michele encouraged his subjects to let go of their style by playing with boyishness and girliness, throwing out their rigid ideas of masculinity and femininity. He slowly shifted away from the model of separate gendered ready-to-wear shows to single all-encompassing shows for each season. The models were dressed in a way where every point of gender converged. A central motif of his Fall/Winter 2017 show was a two-horned nose piercing resembling a futuristic mustache. For one male model, the masculine piercing was countered by a long flowy feminine robe of golden snakes consorting with lily pads.
“Things are campy, not when they become old - but when we become less involved in them and can enjoy, instead of ‘be frustrated by, the failure of the attempt.’”
For a 2021 campaign entitled Seductive and Secretive, a handful of philosophical texts were held by the models. Two of these, Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation are in a complex conversation about the changing nature of art throughout history. Benjamin proposes that the ability to reproduce art en masse through mass manufacturing techniques liberates art’s status as only for those in high social and economic classes. On the other hand, Baudrillard laments this departure from the uniqueness of art through mass reproduction, suggesting we are getting further away from what is authentic by allowing copies of reality to become our reality. This conversation is relevant to Gucci as the styling of Michele’s shows transcends history. Michele is repeating and representing fashion history in a way that fashion history could never have imagined.
For example, the 2017 Resort show held in Westminster Abbey presented an ahistorical take on British heritage. One model walked in a dress composed of Victorian ruffles covered in a kitschy blue pattern that recalls untouched fine china cabinets. This regality was followed by a Vivienne-Westwood style British punk look that featured acid wash jeans and a T-shirt depicting two monkey-cat-owl creatures, a nod to British royalty’s similarities to Elizabethan fairytale beings. The answer to Benjamin’s and Baudrillard’s disagreement is perhaps this melting pot of eras that brings art to a new frontier. One focused, not just on remembering, but also reinvention.
“Camp is art that proposes itself seriously, but cannot be taken altogether seriously because it is ‘too much.’”
Gucci’s Fall/Winter 2018 collection was the definition of doing too much. References for the looks were split between diverse cultural realities and myths. On one side, models were adorned in headdress gowns that looked as if they came from a Persian princess’s wardrobe, a headpiece modeled after a Chinese style of hip-and-gable roof known as Xieshan and a turban style traditionally worn by Sikhs. The other side featured models holding replicas of their decapitated heads to their hips, a baby dragon and Gucci’s trademark king snake. The closing look fixates the eye on an additional eye attached to the model’s forehead and reveals a frilly, sleeveless pink dress covered by a transparent Gucci-labeled dust bag.
Spring/Summer 2016 was another instance of Michele doing too much. Outfits that were already bright and composed of clashing patterns were layered with neckerchiefs and belts made to look as if they came straight out of children’s cartoons. A child’s wish to enter the television screen is realized in styling that blurs the boundaries between reality and animation.
“[Camp] relishes rather than judges, the little triumphs and awkward intensities of ‘character.’”
Michele brought several iconic staples to Gucci that redefined the brand. For example, eyewear, present at almost all of his shows, often consisted of very large, wide, square bifocals. He gave the beige monogram print on leather goods a new life by treating it as a canvas for naturalistic references to tigers, bees, king snakes and flowers. Even sneakers were an important part of Michele’s Gucci, as they added a way to ground elegance in a more familiar reference. The Gucci Ace, an archetypal white tennis sneaker with Gucci green and red stripes, has become a staple of the brand particularly because of its numerous variations. From replacing the white upper of the shoe with the monogram pattern to embroidering Ed-Hardy-esque flowers all over the shoe, Michele has created a blank canvas sneaker that can be painted in an endless number of ways.
“It is the love of the exaggerated, the ‘off’, of things-being-what-they-are-not.”
Alessandro Michele’s final Gucci collection, Spring/Summer 2023, played a fantastical trick on its audience. A large partition along the middle of the runway split the audience without them being aware of it. At the end the partition was lifted, revealing the two audiences to each other and the fact that for each model one side saw, there was a twin counterpart on the other side styled in the same outfit. As the twins walked down the runway, one could notice the subtle differences among them just as much as the striking similarity in their clothing. Michele’s Gucci followed this observation: his concept has always been what it is not. Rather than being trapped by firm categories, Michele allowed his designs to do as they pleased, especially if they caused confusion and more importantly curiosity among those who viewed them.