Mon 17th August
It’s a brave new world at Gucci. A brand-new creative director in the form of Alessandro Michele. A brand-new aesthetic of blurred gender lines. It’s not about dressing in women’s clothes. It’s about the softening of the traditional male aesthetic. The concept of masculinity no longer being defined by traditional codes. Lace, boat-necked tunics topped shrunken sweaters worn over pussy-bowed chiffon (and what is the latter if not simply a fancier shirt with a built-in tie?) and louche, narrow trousers. It was romantic, slightly soft; it was sprinkled with florals and awkward proportions. It harked back to what the Gucci vision always harks back to, in a way: a 1970s jet-set aesthetic. But rather than conjuring up visions of playboys, a gilded, Slim Aarons world, it’s rooting itself in the gender play of the era’s musicians – Mick Jagger and David Bowie – their experiments with masculinity. Is wearing a blouse going to make you any less of a man? No. As the press release quoted, “There is no room for contemporary nostalgia. Rather, the need to reaffirm freedom. The freedom to revive stored-up possibilities. The freedom to construct new meanings at the intersection of diverging temporalities. The freedom to choose who you are, beyond what has already been dictated.”
