The music was blaring, the chandeliers were shaking, the bravest of the fashion crowd were already dancing––and Gucci designer Alessandro Michele in a glitter jacket over a checked shirt, a cap poised on his wild black curls, and with more rings on his fingers than seemed credible, spoke the words that summed up his collection.
Gucci Autumn/Winter 2017. Credit: Indigital
“I collect everything,” he said. “My life is a storage! I rent another apartment that I use just for storage. When I have to find a pair of shoes, it’s a nightmare! I know much better where I have put a piece of 18th century fabric.”
Gucci Autumn/Winter 2017. Credit: Indigital
So no real surprises that the Gucci Autumn/Winter 2017 show was a garden of earthly delights––and not just the flowers rampaging over anything from long dresses to men’s tailoring to Japanese parasols. All these were in mouthwatering colors and delicate patterns, running from head to foot, and including jewels, bags, and shoes. Especially bags, the heartbeat of the company.
Gucci Autumn/Winter 2017. Credit: Indigital
The mighty collection of 119 pieces included the men’s collection, where, as well as the flower power garments and travel bags, attaché cases and male accessories played a major role.
But then everything in this show was major. The vast brick, former airport hanger on the edge of Milan, Gucci’s new headquarters, glowed with the color purple. The models of both sexes walked through large transparent tubes, wearing their vivid and intensely decorative clothes.
Gucci Autumn/Winter 2017. Credit: Indigital
By the time Alessandro Michele, this alchemist of color and print, took a gentle bow, there was a deep roar from the audience, rising to its feet in genuine applause, rather that just to get an Instagram snap.
Alessandro Michele taking his bow at the end of his Gucci Autumn/Winter 2017 show. Credit: Indigital
Backstage, the designer hugged and wept with Florence Welch. The singer of Florence and the Machine and rapper A$AP Rocky read texts from William Blake and Jane Austen that appeared in the vinyl record that was made into the invitation.
Ah, the emotional overkill of it all! For people who love fashion, Michele has been manna from heaven with his intense prints and decorations. For the Gucci brand, owned by luxury company Kering, the designer’s success over the past two years has made sales sing.
Gucci Autumn/Winter 2017. Credit: Indigital
So asking if Michele really needed to do so many outfits, often pretty similar, made no more sense than enquiring whether the guy in the meadow flower suit needed glittering palm tree leaves on the black lapels. Or asking why the dead plain, perfectly cut men’s camel coat could not have been offered for women––rather than an all-over-floral mini skirt suit with a further flower display on white ankle boots.
Gucci Autumn/Winter 2017. Credit: Indigital
In his show notes, Michele called this presentation “The Alchemist’s Garden,” suggesting that it was an anti-modern laboratory filled with anything from scarabs and water lilies, moths, ladybirds and dragonflies, stag beetles, owls, thistles and snakes.
Gucci Autumn/Winter 2017. Credit: Indigital
All of the above seemed to creep into the collection, giving the patterns and shapes more heft than just a pretty path through an English country garden. Although Michele referenced Sissinghurst, the home in the Thirties of English poet and writer Vita Sackville-West and her topiary of “rooms.”
Gucci Autumn/Winter 2017. Credit: Indigital
Gucci’s clothes with their garden references are quirky rather than pretty and I was reminded of the jewelry of René Lalique, with its decadent poetry of nature, its mythical creatures and artisanal effects.
Gucci Autumn/Winter 2017. Credit: Indigital
Gucci is fortunate to have found a designer with a luminous imagination that gives him an ability to find beauty in fluttering moths as well as shimmering tulips.
Should he be reined in and forced to create shows of a more reasonable length with less items in each outfit?
Gucci Autumn/Winter 2017. Credit: Indigital
Oh, please, no! Fashion––and the wider world––can do with more myths, moths, and magic. Preferably all three at once––with a dragon and a bunch of bats thrown in. And what could be more stylish than a designer who can look at familiar things and turn base metal into gold?
