(Re)Mix & (Mis)Match

All hail the new king of fashion democracy! JAMIE HUCKBODY joins ALESSANDRO MICHELE in Florence for Gucci’s cruise 2018 homecoming and decodes the secrets to his success.

- Clare Maclean

QUESTION: what do you get if you mix Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine (painted around 1490), Dustin Hoffman in Sydney Pollack’s 1982 comedy Tootsie and Marella Agnelli in the 1970s … on acid? Answer: Alessandro Michele’s Gucci cruise 2018 collection, of course.

“The collections completely reflect my personality, the way I live and what I am,” Michele told BAZAAR Australia in an interview a few months back. “I think fashion is not an invention that you try to create from a blank sheet of paper; it’s something alive. It is something that has to live inside you, and that’s why the collection is so personal.”

For ‘personal’, read the kind of stylistic sampling and plun- dering of cultural l history’s dressing- g-up box on a scale not seen since John Galliano’s heyday. Opalescent shell-suit bottoms, diamanté logo-patterned knee-hig gh socks and washed-out, loose-fitting high-waisted h denim — hip-hop and sportswear influences from the sidewalks of 1980s New York — were mixed with Michele’s subversive rifff on 1970s bourgeoisie chic — polite little cardigan suits, flared pants-suits and maxi- dresses tripped out on kaleidoscopic prints and clashing colour — before he brought it all back to Florence, the spiritual home of Gucci and the Renaissance. 

And so there were nods to da Vinci’s It girls in the pearl-encrusted helmets, the skinny ribbons and gilded classical ca wreaths worn across the forehead and in the show’s killer piece: a neo-Renaissance minidress of green lace, its corseted bodice and sleeves covered in lattice- work traced with pearls, and its square neckline framing the deliberately misspelt “GUCCY”.