Of Flames And Flowers

Alessandro Michele’s Cruise 2019 collection for Gucci is an ode to the beauty of death

- Edward Lalrempuia

We walked through a Gothic tree-lined passageway, with rows of candelabras on either side.

A haunting soundtrack of church choir music played, echoing with the hooting of owls, as we made our way to the Gucci Cruise 2019 show. Artistic director Alessandro Michele chose Promenade des Alyscamps—a Roman graveyard and UNESCO World Heritage Site, in the beautiful French town of Arles—for his most recent show. A fitting location, given that his inspiration was the beauty of the afterlife. “The inspiration is an ossuary, the crypts of the cardinals, of the monks in the 15th century, and the precious decorations. [The] idea is that everything that is linked to the afterlife is accompanied by something of maximum beauty,” Michele wrote on Instagram in May, as the show opened. In the audience, you could see Soairse Ronan, A$AP Rocky, Salma Hayek, and Christian Lacroix among others.