May 29, 2017 |
So here we are on the final leg of our Cruise extravaganza, one that has seen us shuttled around the planet – Los Angeles, Milan, Tokyo and now to the the city of Florence, where this evening Alessandro Michele showed his Resort 2018 offering for the house of Gucci. Specifically: the impossibly beautiful rooms of the Palatine Gallery in the city’s Uffizi Palace, which tonight served as a runway for a collection that drew inspiration from the Italian renaissance artworks which decorate the historic walls. This point of inspiration outlined the collection – sometimes literally – an incredible gown in cerise, with trompe l’oeil bows, worn with floating Botticelli-esque curls or a pearled party dress, fitted like a bodice with “Guccy” (the medieval spelling, apparently) across the chest – other times merely suggested through a richness of fabric, the opulence of having more than you would ever need – from huge monogrammed puff sleeves on a tracksuit, all the way down to a bejewelled double-G pop sock.
But forget Mr Michele concentrating on just one thing – he instead chose to ricochet between decades on a sort of phantasmagoric trip through his mind – from blousy Eighties prom dresses to sequinned Twenties frocks, and all the way back again to sportswear cuts, lifted from 1970s NY street culture. And some things “just because” – because do we ever need an excuse for a layered fur dress, replete with fur hood? A suit in hot pink foil? A monogram jacket re-made in wipe-clean PVC? No. We don’t. Yes, it might sound a lot, but together it works. Because this is about a lust for clothing – an urge to acquire, to buy, to wear, in whole or part. Here, that meant: more more more. And it was these very layers of richness that meant that amongst the work of the great masters that lined the walls, the collection managed to hold it’s own. Because it was fashion fantasy of the very best kind – and is that not what Cruise is about? The ability to transport to somewhere else entirely. Here, Mr Michele took us all the way into his world, and back again.
