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21.07.2020

Gucci’s 12 Hours Of Digital Wonder

21.07.2020
© Mark Peckmezian

Did Alessandro Michele’s ‘Epilogue Collection’ mark the end of fashion shows as we know them?

“No signal” read the words on a sky-blue and purple screen.

Oh no! Don’t do this to me! Not when this is supposed to be the 12-hour, live-streamed Gucci show – so long awaited and billed as the final chapter of its ‘Epilogue Collection’, which started with Autumn/Winter 2020 womenswear and was set to close Milan’s Autumn/Winter 2020 online menswear season. 

Suzy logs on to the Gucci ‘Epilogue Collection’ Autumn/Winter 2020 show, live-streamed online for 12 hours

Here we go! A unisex collection in all its visual splendour, with a depth of contrasting colours and a feeling, as ever with Gucci, of dedication and decoration that would go on forever. 

It has stopped, of course. Fashion, like the entire world, is affected by the pandemic. And you have to admire the general ‘can-do’ spirit that has swept in a wild wave through what should have been the clothes of the future, models walking forward and backward on a catwalk, as in season after season for at least four decades.

Digital Fashion Weeks have – possibly temporarily – replaced the catwalk show, and in can-do spirit, Gucci had its staffers model the clothes
© Mark Peckmezian

But Gucci designer Alessandro Michele nailed it. Already convinced that shows should be reduced to just two a year, instead of the crazy rhythm of events every two months, this ‘Epilogue Collection’ (no longer referred to as ‘Cruise’) closed a story that began, fittingly, with what the designer called his Autumn/Winter women’s show: ‘An Unrepeatable Ritual’.

So this was the end of something – but not in the sad, sweet way those words suggest. Instead there was a vision of how it was put together: the photoshoot for the Gucci advertising campaign, broadcast in real time, from the make-up to transparent head covers and models in face masks. As I logged on to YouTube at 7am, 1,698 viewers were already watching to my rhythm. As I left, that number had swelled to nearly 80,000. The models, hanging out in the garden, fanned each other from the Italian summer heat. It was high-fashion reality TV.

Close-ups of the Gucci collection were offered by watching another fly-on-the-wall film, ‘Preparation’, with stilled pictures and notes pointing out detail, even though these ‘models’ were, in fact, Gucci staffers. In these clothes, mostly there were bright shades – patterns, colours and flowers. But the shapes were tailored for both sexes, with jackets and waistcoats.  

Jackets and waistcoats bring a formality to the joyful cacophany of layered prints, patterns and textures 
© Mark Peckmezian

Add big straw hats and a bold necklace swinging on a chain. Plain fabrics were made bold by fat red flower patterns, or a back-to-the Seventies (men’s) jacket, edged with fake fur. A Disney Donald Duck (as decoration) flashed by. 

A Disney x Gucci tote bag features Donald Duck with his nephews Huey, Duey and Luey
© Mark Peckmezian

‘Epilogue’, which will be available from October, was all very Gucci in its layers of accessories, as seen in its collections since 2016. Were the tailored coats and kooky sweaters destined for men or women? Who cares? I just hoped I was following correctly the line-up of 76 outfits from the new collection, with its checked tailoring, golden gloves, and decoration that included vegetables. 

A classic cape is the perfect foil to a riot of accessories in every possible texture
© Mark Peckmezian

The peas opened up as an antidote to angular tailoring, while smart suitcases were patterned with wild flowers from the archives of designer Ken Scott and floral and paisley prints by Liberty London.

Doraemon x Gucci is a new collaboration between Gucci and the famous Japanese manga cat robot, worn here with Gucci's Liberty print shoes 
© Mark Peckmezian

On the other screen, I watched the long, slow film of the show’s presentation – a mesmerising vision of putting the collection together.

I have mixed feeling about designers taking absolute control of everything they show – even if, in the case of Gucci, it is hard to take in, at one brisk look, each outfit with its mass of accessories. At least we could still manage to soak in the wonder of the Roman sets, from a statue in cold, white marble set in a broken stone wall, to a grand and gilded chair in front of a blue sky and lush green reeds. Add an interior where an ancient classic statue stood beside a photographic stand. The live screen broadcast from Rome’s Palazzo Sacchetti was gripping.

The Gucci show was filmed in the late-Mannerist interior of the Palazzo Sacchetti in Rome 
© Courtesy of Alec Soth

Spending hours with Gucci, from its mad party to the show preparation, I genuinely felt that I was there, living through the events, riding on a flood tide of emotion. YES! This truly was fashion as we recognise it – except that the woman in the pink straw hat and brightly coloured lines at an angle was in our dreams, not in reality.

As a fashion editor – and one who has been around a long time – I felt that this was a force of control that I could not break. No running backstage, nor hoping to capture Alessandro, as one could in previous shows, when the designer talked to the press, sitting in front of us. 

An ode to the Seventies with a sequin hat, faux-fur print coat, knit bag, shirtwaister print dress, and mid-heel sandals worn with tights - all in artfully clashing but complementary pattern and print
© Mark Peckmezian

This ‘Epilogue Collection’ offered a brave new world. And I am still not sure whether I was thrilled – or anxious – to be part of it.

Suzy Menkes
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