Gucci sends fashion back to roots…

Gucci has made quite stir in elusive world of fashion with the latest show of RTW Fall/Winter 2018. No surprise, with Gucci’s Alessandro it is always a stir. Pale looking models were carrying around replicates of their heads, almost real-looking snakes and dragons in an operation room with operation chair in center. Some had third eye on their hands with myriad of ethnic twists to the looks. Some people found it unnerving, some awesome, some were confused, some didn’t understand at all. All for a reason. This scene resembled an initiation ritual with ghostly participants.

Alessandro played a different card – to move to the next phase, he went back to basics, he shed light on a long-forgotten knowledge. The knowledge that fashion was not born out of the need to please eyes and tap only on sensuality. Fashion was not born to work as money-generating machine. Fashion, in the first place, is byproduct of “mystical participation”. The rituals where novice members of early societies were initiated into their roles in a neatly defined societal structure. Their “looks” symbolically communicated their role in that structure.

In this sense, primeval fashion used to be looks of medicine men, shamans with feathered headwears or of hunters with daunting chains around their necks made of horns of hunted animals etc. The root of fashion lies in taking on a social mask that represents the specific spot of each individual in a given society. Outer look used to be means, not the ends by itself. Now, with Gucci’s “cyborg-like” creations fashion takes on the same function again, it questions where we are and where we fit now. Actually, I do not think someone would call this collection sensual (which by the way has almost always been a strong card for Gucci). He had a different message and my take is as follows:

My take on the set:

To me it represented, in a more dramatized manner, the “liquid times” we are going through. In times when societies got protected by borders and distances, each survived and flourished upon certain set of moral foundations that defined general frame for every aspect of life. Yesterday traditional dresses characterized cherished values of societies and enjoyed emotional bond with those who put them on. Now, however with all the digital noise, fading borders and fusion of tastes we live in state of cacophony. Today, everything is everywhere, anything can go with anything – no bond, no emotions, no curated matching and it may feel like post-human. The experimental combinations may come out beautiful, creepy or transitory – the message that I think the collection delivered clearly. The process in making.

My doubts:

Although the concept he’s put forward is interesting, one thing is clear that he’s stepped away from what made fashion a “sweet spot” of humanity.  Namely, the tendency to please eyes and tap on sensuality. There is a reason why with time fashion became limited to only sensuality and beauty.  Deductively, outer looks turned into its only reference with no inward ties. To put it in an unpolished manner, “low” chakras are where money circulates. We have capacity to reach angels. Yet often times we find ourselves in the grip of our basic instincts of sexual desire and power quest. So, I wonder, how this new strategy will impact on Gucci sales.

My touch on the set-up:

I wish I were his genius, but we all have our opinions, right? I’d replace the operation chair in the middle with something that is pure representation of unconscious. For example, an unexplored forest, dark waters or infinite deserts. Why? Alessandro’s explanation of his vision is clear. He is the Hero busy with creating his world populated by personalities honed by his sentiments on our time in his laboratory. Another version would be to make these ghostly creatures (models) come out of a set that represents depth of unconscious. He aimed to break thru the “canonized rules”, yet every urge of destruction rises not from conscious, but from unconscious. The unknown new gets ripen there which will break into conscious only through destruction.

Symbols of Transformation

Furthermore, snake and dragon are unmistakable symbols of transformation. But they are not always that peaceful and friendly as they were in the hands of the models. Study of mythology tells us that they are personifications of our fears, desires and compulsive impulses. Each of these forces always try to get upper hand in our consciousness. The task of conscious is to tame and subdue them just like how Hercules fought. Otherwise they will grow into many-headed, flame-breathing wrathful dragons and swallow the conscious. But to defeat them the Hero needs to “re-vive” the moral values of the society he belongs. Because that is where he’d find the tips and mystical powers to subdue that dragon and experience transcendence.

Now that those moral foundations are vanishing, we are back in square figuring out where to turn to re-establish that connection with the inner space and outer space. In a sense, this set with a new twist to the centerpiece would symbolize our pledge to re-establish new set of morals, which would enable us to carry those snakes and dragons in as peaceful and friendly manner as they seemed in the show. As a result, It would also portray the process of the birth of new transcendent identity.

In general, these moments of chaos are times when new identity is born – usually more embracing, more universal.  I am curios to follow his next creations to see how he visualizes it.

This article was originally published at fashionnewsmagazine.com in Italian and in English.

I’ve made slight changes to this version to make it easier to read as a blog post.