Gucci. Pre-Fall 2020

(Images from the designer and the public domain. Credited to the photographer/company where applicable:  GUCCI)

Alessandro Michele for Gucci is emerging as one of the defining fashion designers who has been able to invigorate a trend, style and look that holds its origins from an evolving street fashion.  As discussed in my previous reviews, it is a stylization which has been hard to pinpoint its exact origins, with all the hallmarks of counter culture and anti-establishment representation or even a so called anti-fashion ethos, however its formulation is not from any motivated idealism.  Rather, a represented aesthetic which has been truly affixed to the desire of designer consumption and its brands.  From a visual cue it doesn't pretend to be otherwise, in that sense this new style holds no contradiction.  Although in a materialist aspect, particularly when used to represent an idealism – tend to fall into an antithesis in some way shape or form.

So, this reflected style that Michele has drawn out and made his own, is under no illusion of its portrayal, that, although it maybe alluding to a specific classification, could be an renewed hedonism.  After two decades of digital feedback loops via the internet and social media, where everyone aspired to reflect the cult of personalty with its hope of fame and fortune.  But, within the grandeur and its illusion, bares a reality that is a harsh mistress.  Who offers no favors.  This new sybaritic of creativity could be a backlash against the self. 

Michele's Gucci Spring 2020 show set a precedence in discussing identity and perspective, particularly in fashion.  While our society staggers into the new year, it continues to reverberate the tenuous attempts at dividing and re-branding itself into new commercial market places, under the banner of wayward sensibilities.  And as mentioned this new backlash has begun, in light of online echo chambers, a collapse inward of disinterested sentiment and exhaustion maybe taking place.  The sexual tension, nonchalant and obscure overtones highlighted in Gucci's Spring showing, Michele has maintained the script for the Pre-Fall 2020 collection.

The infused 1960s vintage styles remain, but more in tune towards an alternative Earth and what could be their 60's styles, so there is a very clever fusion into retrofitted aspects of looks that have an otherworldly feel to them. Superbly fitted and styled, velvet, fine wools, with a distinctly modernist color spectrum, the Gucci inspired prints ensure that the collection maintains a the relevancy of the mega brand.  The oversize sunglasses, seen at the Gucci Spring 2020 show, keeping the obscure and eccentric whilst representing free-flowing form, maintaining the functionality of aesthetics rather than falling into avant garde predictability.  Which is important, one of the key factors of Michele's Gucci is to keep the collection relevant within the current time line, utilizing past ideas as a refreshing and focused concept.  Alessandro Michele has maintained his fixture in projecting the hedonistic influenced styling.