House of Gucci: what’s next? The show is set on the decor of some mid-century plush living room. The music is a wink to Britney Spears’ “I’m A Slave 4 U,” downbeat replete with some sexual connotations. The guests, meanwhile, are a good mix of past and present, generation-wise. But the future of Gucci is now. This is the first woman’s collection after the departure of the highly influential former creative director, Alessandro Michele. The design team, which all showed up and bowed at the end of the show, carries on the torch and looked back to yet another highly influential former creative director, Tom Ford.
Gone are Michele’s hyper-imaginative Italian-Renaissance-Greco-Roman references; say hello – or should we say ‘hello again’ – to the sexed-up looks of early Noughties ensembles. The result is an interesting mix of, well, the past, the present and the future. There’s thong-showing skirts and navel-gracing shirts aplenty, and some are even done in the sheerest fabrics and laces. Most are paired with the latest version of iconic Ford-era Horsebit bags. They are flashy, with high-octane fashion made for the cool kids of today. Fret not, traces of flashy (a la Michele) still can be seen via the faux fur pieces, va-va-voom coats and exaggerated, tailored stuff. And this dialogue between Ford and Michele’s iconic moments, albeit seen from the fresh mind of the design team, seems like the right formula for Gucci, for now.
