Gucci. Fall 2020 Ready-to-Wear - Milan Fashion Week.

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

Alessandro Michele of Gucci after pushing the prestigious brand's profits higher, under the parent company Kering, into the upper stratosphere.  He has since been given free reign as a creative director to unleash his manifested vision of the famed fashion house.  Stripping back some of the outwardly luxury aspects and reworking them to appeal as an open, yet exclusive, standard for most people to admire the inclinations of his work, even if it is from a distance.  There has been, so far, shown at the Fall Ready-to-Wear collections a homage to Couture, which has an attached irony to the shared history of production styles, as it was the onset of RTW which began to remove couture in the late 1960s as an established presence in fashion.   But fashion is a strange industry, constantly remolding itself over past, present and future possibilities, for ever restless in its sentiment.  Yet, the business model remains the same, to sell and make profits.  However, markets can offer no reprieve on the fluctuations of consumer temperament within a changing world, that can cause the exponential to invert in a dramatic way.  Such is life and fate. 

Still, in light of Michele's clever and very original imprint for Gucci. He continues to experiment with the theatrical side to his showings, drawing on, from an Italian heritage of film making.  The avant garde of stylized emotion, allowing the ambiguity of Michele's imprint.  A staged assemblage, yet structured in its theme.  There are degrees of chaos here,  although it is orchestrated in a very precise and focused presentation, to which Michele has mastered the art form.  Once again, if one is not in attendance at his gala stage shows, one can only perceive its resonation after the event.  This on reflection offers a glimpse at the opulence expressed via Michele's Gucci and the fixation of presenting his styles in such an operatic manner.  

For Gucci's Fall 2020 collection, Michele has upped the ante, as a full open sourced stage presentation.  Portrayed in a playhouse layout, with the audience immersed into a 360 angle viewpoint.  As you would expect from a stylized play, where it both offers the constructed presentation and deconstruction of its format; all set within the melodramatic.  A controlled mannerism of production that is rarely seen in fashion on such a scale.  Michele has maintained the prefall and men's Fall collections as a template for his RTW styles, although this time, he is explored aspects of the couturier overview which would be expected to justify the overtly theatrical setting for his latest collection.  For what it is worth, the concept and its impression in its self, has fused aspects of couture and Michele's more simplified ensembles, which has been influenced by 'thrift styles' to the more avant garde risqué looks.  The overall collection spans over 60 pieces, which casts itself as an extreme spread of the looks on offer, but it feels relentless.  A saturation, an over indulgence.  Which in turn will eventually dilute the creativity on show.