Gucci's Cheapest Stuff Ever

 

Gucci wants to change the business. Or, rather, the entertainment business. The Italian brand has joined the chorus of brands and retailers that demands a permanent restoration of the fashion system thanks to Covid-19, adding the weight of a global giant name to the movement.

On Monday, Alessandro Michele, the creative director of Gucci, held a video news conference to announce that the brand will reduce the number of programs each year five to two, effectively abandoning the idea of ​​cruise shows, half of the middle season. Extravaganzas that has remained in a Roman necropolis in Arles and the Capitolino Museum in Rome (among other places). He also wants to eliminate distinction between men's wear and women's clothing, and traditional autumn denominations / winter and spring / summer.

"We need a new oxygen to allow this complex system to be reborn," said Michele, talking from his study in Rome, while greeting a big black fan. One way to do it, he said, is to reduce the show program.

Gucci is not the first mark to announce a change in its track plans thanks to the Coronavirus pandemic, which has led the industry to an effective stop, closing and decimating balance stores. Saint Laurent, also owned by kering, the parent company Gucci, said it will leave the season of fashion shows and will follow its own schedule for this year; Dry van Notn, said he will not have a show at all until 2021; And Giorgio Armani announced that his shows for men and women will be combined in September, and his Couture show will be held in January in Milan instead of Paris.

But Gucci is the first brand to engage with a permanent rethinking.

And, although, as it is the tendency of him, Mr. Michele was long in philosophy and was cut into detail, he could have a dominated effect on other brands. Follow those of the Board of Fashion Designers of America and the British Fashion Council, which also asked only two seasons a year, and an open letter of the #Rewirfashion, a group of brands and largely independent retailers who asked for a stakeout of the sample.

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"There should be no rules, imposed by the Agreement or Fashion Councils, regarding the show format, nor any expectation that each brand demonstrates every season," read the letter.

However, given that Gucci under Mr. Michele has perhaps demonstrated the most influential brand of the last five years, embracing gender fluency and inclusion (it is about to create a gender-fluid commercial area on the website called Gucci MX) and prioritizing the savage emotional vision of the designer, this movement can be particularly decisive.

Ultimately, you can force a calculation of the feasibility of the feasibility of the entire show season ready to use: the four-week circus that moves from New York to London to Milan to Paris every September-October and February -March.

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"I will leave the worn ritual of stations and shows to recover a new cadence, closer to my express call," wrote Mr. Michele in his diary, the extracts of which, entitled "Notes of silence", made fun of Gucci's Instagram Account.

The designer said it was while he was in blocking in his apartment in Rome that he had "time, the time I have never had before thinking about my work, my creativity, our future, the future of the company". He felt, he said, who under the previous implacable system, the "creativity of him was being committed".

The designer said it was while I was in blocking in his apartment in Rome that had "time, the time I've never had before thinking about my work, my creativity, our future, the future of the company". He felt, he said, who under the previous implacable system, the "creativity of him was being committed".

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After speaking with Marco Bizzri, the Executive Director of Gucci, the decision was made to reduce the program of shows, although when the first of the new "appointments", as referring to the shows, will take place.

Mr. Michele said he thought he showed that next September would be impossible, but on July 17, during the Milan Digital Fashion Week, Gucci will give a look at what would have been his collection collection (called " Epilogue ", it can be the last of its kind). He said he believed that, ultimately, spring and fall were the right times for shows, with the exact dates to be determined.

Mr. Michele also said that he was not sure how, digital or physical, the shows would take, although he favored the use of the terminology of classical music as a reference: symphonies, madrigals, nocturnal, propositions. He added that while he was talking to other brands, "I am not anarchist," and the Nazionale della Fashion Chamber, the Milan Fashion Week Board, the conversations were in progress.

All of which suggests that the fragmentation of all the experience of the fashion program is increasingly possible.

Maybe it's time: cost, personal and professional, to spend two and a half months a year, if not more, in the alternative universe of fashion shows, has been growing, and designers, retailers and editors have been sweeping Under the tension. , lamenting the lack of space to really consider, create and produce a significant work. Not to mention carbon emissions involved. Less fashion weeks are unquestionably more sustainable, both in terms of human price and environmental.

However, in question is not only the point of a show, which in recent years has become more of a marketing event made to be read on the small screen that a presentation of a new idea about how clothes are built To express identity, but also a huge source of income for the municipalities involved.

In 2019, Representative Carolyn Maloney in New York launched a report from the New York City Economic Development Corporation, noting that New York Fashion Week was responsible for generating about $ 600 million a year in revenue, Thanks in part to all associated industries, including hotels. and restaurants, security services and florists, which represents a greater economic impact than the Super Bowl or the US open tennis championships. UU

The same goes for the other cities of the fashion week. If the show program falls apart, the cities that are already challenged by the pandemic will feel the impact.

That is not a reason to not change, but it is also not an intangible side effect of said change. No brand is an island, nor any industrial system. Like the conversation around what is the next for Steamrollers fashion, it is worth remembering.