How Gucci became the main fashion brand of our time: The Mad Revolution by Alessandro Michele

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

This ingenious Italian man decapitated Jared Leto, returned the baroque ruffles to the men, and embroidered the female reproductive system on summer dresses. As Creative Director of Gucci, Alessandro Michele threw glamor off the ship of modernity, giving rise to an era of freedom, change and wild imagination. Each of his collections evokes as much admiration as bewilderment and rejection …

Alessandro was born in 1972 in Rome into a creative family. His mother, an assistant to a film producer, adored glamor and fashion, and his father, an engineer, studied art and literature in his free time. Alessandro considered him to be something like a shaman - his father was always immersed in his thoughts, hovered in the clouds, as if he half lived in another world. Michele absorbed love for fashion from his mother, and from his father - the ability to think outside the box. He brought up the future designer and the eternal city of Rome itself - with his contrasts, cinematography and ubiquitous art.

Michele was educated in costume design, but for a long time focused exclusively on accessories, adapting his ideas to the creative handwriting of the creative directors of the brands with whom he collaborated. He came to Gucci back in 2002, back in the era of Ford, who preached glossy and at the same time unbridled sexuality, clear gender definiteness and chic. In many ways, this line was continued by Frida Gianini. As if invisible to the entire fashion world, Michele changed many positions at Gucci before stepping out of the shadows and changing everything. And in his own words - to destroy.

His first show as creative director of the brand took place in 2015 - and it was a real breakthrough. Androgyny, artistry, ruffles on men, no heels on women, everything seemed to have left the paintings of ancient times … In the same year, Michele was named the most significant modern designer. Everyone talked about him - and they do not stop to this day. Gucci CEO Marco Bizarri said that Michele is the very embodiment of the spirit of the brand, his whole life is a life in the style of Gucci.

Millennials - Gucci's target audience - have become a generation that does not agree to play by the old rules and is constantly in search of a new one. It was Michele who was able to create images that evoke an emotional resonance among modern youth. Everyone was tired of the propaganda of asceticism and minimalism - and then Michele burst into fashion with his embroidered dragons and lace. Michele has always loved the past, collected vintage, his apartment is simply littered with antiques - and in his collections you can find millions of references to bygone times. Michele's work with all its embroideries, ruffles, strange and unexpected combinations, an absolute rejection of traditional categories of aesthetics is most reminiscent of the art of mannerism - although, of course, purely stylistically closer to the 70s and 80s. If Ford exploited sexuality in the traditional sense, Michele does the exact opposite, creating something ironic, sometimes frightening, intellectual and complex, abandoning the usual distribution of roles and perceptions of femininity and masculinity.

Michele's favorite color is pink, and he himself does not hesitate to dress in bright pink luxurious attire. His collection Impotent caused great excitement, in a commentary to which Michele urged men to abandon toxic masculinity (rudeness, aggression, inertia and disregard for their own and other people's feelings), to become more flexible, free, open to new things. However, Gucci fans will not agree to share with men the luxurious silver flared trousers and tweed suits presented by Michele! A manifesto of women's freedom and a new understanding of femininity has become dresses with an embroidered image of the female reproductive system, with which Michele responded to the wave of anti-abortion policies around the world.

Perhaps the main achievement of Michele, important for each of us, is that he was the first to propose to erase the border between "smart" and everyday things. You can eat every day from crystal dishes from your grandmother's sideboard - and you can wear unimaginable ruffles, bright colors and velvet vintage jackets every day. Do not put off until tomorrow what can please you today! And it doesn't matter what others think - Michele's clothes and accessories deny the usual understanding of beauty.

Michele's most recognizable accessory is the comic nerd-style oversized, thick-rimmed glasses that have suddenly become the epitome of modern luxury. The key image of Michele's work is a child playing alone in his grandmother's closet. Each of us.

Michele is not afraid to speak through her collections about anxiety, mental problems, dissociation and health - things that are preoccupied by the millennial generation (although the release of models in straitjackets has caused a wave of criticism, and the designer took it sensibly). Today, Gucci is one of the few luxury brands that strive to reduce the environmental impact of production.

It seems that Michele's ideas are pure madness, escapism and uncontrolled experimentation, but it was he who brought Gucci out of a protracted crisis and the threat of bankruptcy. Under him, the brand's revenue increased twelve times!

Michele's creativity is adored by Jared Leto (even despite the "torn off" head - such jokes are forgivable, because Leto and Michele are best friends, similar, like siblings), Lana del Rey, Elton John and Bjork. His courage inspired many designers - Gosha Rubchinsky, Demna Gvasalia, Virgil Abloh …

The most fashionable brawler, Alessandro Michele is not seen in any unpleasant stories related to his personal life - like many geniuses of our time, for whom creative self-realization is more important than emotional shocks. For a decade he has been happy with his partner, professor of urban planning Giovanni Attili, surrounded by friends and full of plans - not for the future, because he hates this word, but … for the present.