Fashion For All Says Gucci
Following the footsteps of London and New York, designers certainly experimented with the political theme for this year’s Fashion Week but none could match Gucci. Collaborating with artist Coco Capitán, Michele stunned the fashion world with a collection consisting of at least 119 looks. Colourful, would be an understatement. Michele goes all out this season. In the first unified fashion show, he had male and female models strutting their stuff through a large plexiglass tunnel and looping around a central pyramid.
The designer holds nothing back when it comes to inspiration. Stylised the ‘Alchemist’s Garden: Anti-Modern Laboratory’, models are donned head to toe in an eclectic range of gender ambiguous clothing. Decorative to the extreme is all the rage with Gucci this year. Some might consider the Gucci range excessive. Others may be confused with the gender ambiguity behind the theme. But if there is one long standing political theme in today’s society, it would be rejecting the constraints of the male and female genders in favour of expressing one’s true identity. Hats off to Alessandro Michele and Coco Capitán for your ingenuity and craftsmanship!
The range combines cultures and historical eras throughout the years, even centuries, inviting people to contemplate on how we interpret and go about the future. Using bright colour and gender neutral motifs, Michele encourages people to question the issues associated with gender specific clothing. So what if a male model is wearing a floral printed jacket and a female model has her face covered with a glittery balaclava? Women have been shopping for men’s stylised clothing for decades and this year’s Gucci collection caters to everyones tastes. The collection embraces everything, whether it be bees, flared trousers, striped parasols, graffiti sprawled t-shirts with the text, ‘Common Sense is not Common’, dog collars and an arrow as an accessory. With the catwalk reminiscent to a fancy costume party, Gucci has made it clear since day one of Milan fashion week that fashion isn’t just for the trend setters, it’s for everyone.
Alessandro Michele states his range – “[Is] beautiful and pop but also very sophisticated in a way… it’s an eclectic conversation between different inspirations, that at the end becomes a language. My idea of fashion was always that it wasn’t just one story”
Love and Unity Preaches Prada
While Gucci embraced the eclectic, Versace on the other hand proudly shared their ideals of ‘Love and Unity’ for women. Although not written on paper, the manifesto was branded on clothing. Promoting ‘Equality’, ‘Courage’ and ‘Unified’ in capital letters, subtlety was not an option given the state of American politics!
