Set The Stage

Gucci’s theatrical Fall/Winter ‘19 collection posits the brand’s exacting consideration of its garments beyond physical manifestation.

- Wilson Lim

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” make for an accurate starting point of the Gucci Fall/Winter ‘19 collection. The obvious theatrics, replete with Jason Voorhees-Esque masks, reinforces the stagecraft of the runway show. Creative director, Alessandro Michele, recalls the works of German philosopher and political theorist Hannah Arendt, where masks appear on the runway as a metaphor (literally, as they would not be produced for sale) to explore expressions with garments – what we choose to wear shows a singular articulation, while consciously concealing others.

With his inspiration clear, Michele immediately topples the one-track mind of the fetishized mask like a house of cards and veer off the clichéd path of dark leather and skin-hugging silhouettes. Instead, the Gucci Fall/Winter ‘19 collection presents an idyllic array of prints across styles of generous proportions.

The most arresting print is the Zodiac, inspired by a Persian carpet dating back to the early 1900s bearing motifs of stars as well as zodiac and celestial elements. Here, it mesmerizes as a back panel of a quilted bowling shirt. Other interesting points include the Feline, which sees an imaginary Savannah forest richly populated with animals like jaguars, tigers, lions, leopards, horses, and dogs; and the Checkerboard Belt, which features belts and the double G buckle interspersed with marine-inspired ropes forming knots in the shapes of hearts and stars.