The Barren Land and the Phenomenon of Alessandro Michele –
My thoughts upon seeing GucciCruise19.
Sometimes things touch us so deeply. They stir certain inexplicable emotions to the point we feel our hair stood on end yet we can’t explain why, like Promenade Des Alyscamps as venue of the GucciCruise19. Because the choice of venue talks about something that is known, yet unknown. Something that we knew once, but have forgotten long ago – the wisdom that once upon a time death wasn’t the end of life, it was the way of receding of the old for the new life to bloom. Life cycle was considered circular not linear, the concept behind the Ouroboros – recurring symbol in Gucci design. That is why the birth of a new collection in the land of death was so fascinating to many. But it takes quite some effort to make this connection to realize why such a choice unconsciously hits the “soft spot” and triggers such deep emotions.
I intend neither to describe nor to analyze another much-debated, much-intriguing and much-putwhateveryouwant show of Gucci for Cruise19. First, people talked enough about it in just one day. Secondly, a thorough analysis of all the concepts and all the symbols would take days and days (which actually I am doing slowly). On the contrary, I’d like to share my opinion on what kind of paradox the Instaeuphoria created for the world of fashion and how his genius Alessandro Michele “reversed the flow” tapping this paradox online and on the runway.
Two faces of Instagram
The day Instagram went viral it paved a way to a paradox for the world of fashion that has been ripening silently. Precisely, the obsession of our eyes for ephemeral beauty and the cry of our souls for eternal grace.
Captivating the world with the spell of picture-perfect ephemeral beauty was the main card for the world of fashion in those good old paper days. But when ‘gram made picture-perfect beauty so mundane, the internet got inundated with beautiful images without depth. Instahype broke the “beauty” spell of the fashion world. Fashion started to feel like sex without love. It felt good right at that moment, but nothing to remember couple of minutes afterwards. Minds bloated with another “barren” beautiful image started to look for something more meaningful than just good looks. Something that could stir deep emotions within and leave some traces in the memory. This was the paradox. While the whole fashion herd rushed to Instagram to harness fame and awareness, they exhausted the bullets of the strongest weapon they had – captivating power of ephemeral beauty.
Disarmed beauty, bloated minds, inundated Instagram
No matter how much one loves ephemeral beauty there is a limit to which point one can stomach. After hitting the saturation point, we start to search for something that talks of depth. Something that doesn’t talk about egoistic and snobby individualism (that was and still is central to modern beauty), but something that goes farther. Something that talks about continuity of life, participation in society, courage to experiment, embracing identity – all of which give sublime messages of hope. Here enters the stage Alessandro Michele.
Thousand faces of beauty
This is exactly what he does resiliently and persistently. The looks he runs through the runway can hardly be called beautiful by the modern standards instilled in us. Yet, every show hails like a storm in the Internet. He questions the ephemerality of the very concept of beauty by re-creating thousand faces of beauty across ages and cultures. In the same time, the core concept for his creations goes beyond the ephemerality of physical look. The imagery always offers depth and refers to symbols that are impossible to comprehend with rational thinking. They in a sense talk about inexplicable hope. Hope for regenerating capacity of our nature – something new, yet something was once known but forgotten, the Ouroboros.
In times when we feel like lost souls in the ocean of information with no horizon in sight, deep inside we are desperately looking for some clues to navigate our way. When something resonates with us so deeply, we realize that is the clue we’ve been looking for. The clue is the in conventional wisdom that lies in our memory deposit. That is where we feel at home, recharge and make our way back into the future.
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