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Gucci sprinkles magic, but for how long?

By Don-Alvin Adegeest

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Fashion

The buzz around Gucci remains palpable as much as it appears to be unstoppable. For every naysayer there is a tsunami of yay-sayers, who drown out any whispers of "seen that before," or "more of the same."

What we know about Gucci, is that since 2015 the brand offers whimsy, texture, kaleidoscopic colour, print and enough fashion to overload the senses.

The shows are as eccentric as they are youthful, its Spring Summer 2017 'Magic Lanters' collection shown at Milan Fashion Week took place in the smokey decor of a pink nightclub. As always there were plenty of telling references, some unexpected, like the show notes quote of Vladimir Nabokov's reference to the birth of literature, or the word Phantasmagoria, others seem the storied go-to-references favoured by creative director Alessandro Michele, like the seventies, subcultures, androgyny and an unabashed more-is-more sentiment.

Every look Gucci offers on the runway - and there were plenty at over 70 exits - is brimmed full of fashion. There are layers upon layers of texture and colour, from quirky to the down-right 'ugly' but that is also its charm. The interesting attribute is its painstaking craftsmanship- this is ready-to-wear made to the highest standards of luxe.

There was a sprinkling repeat of things seen before, like turbans, Victoriana necklines, oversized spectacles, two piece suits - this season it came in silky canary yellow, last season it came in pink. But there were plenty of new things too, like statement jewellery, haute platforms, extravagant dresses, lots of taffeta and Eastern-inspired prints.

Arguably the clothes didn't take a radical turn from Michele's previous collections, but this appears to be not the point: the measure of success is not for a fashion house to reinvent the wheel of fashion each season. The ultimate signifier of success is to offer a dream where the power of its allure is only matched by the power of profitability. And when it comes to number crunching, Gucci is leapfrogging most of its contemporaries. With no imminent slowdown in either customer interest or media attention, the world at large will continue to be Guccified.

Photo credit: Gucci SS17, AW16, Men's AW16, Resort 17, SS16, Gucci Facebook

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