Two shows will be organized a year set according to a new format and pre-collections will be cancelled
In recent weeks, more and more voices within the fashion industry had called for a rethinking of the calendar of fashion shows and collections: Armani, Dries Van Noten, Marine Serre and the designers of the CFDA and British Fashion Council had all spoken of the obsolescence of the current system of the seasons in the fashion industry and their willingness to replace it with a new, more natural order. But, except in the case of Saint Laurent, the brands of the large industrial conglomerates did not seem to have taken part in this movement. Things changed yesterday, with Gucci publishing a long message signed by Alessandro Michele and entitled Notes from Silence, in which the creative director of the brand announced that Gucci will abandon the classic calendar of the seasons:
Michele’s statement speaks not only of an alteration of the calendar or a decrease in production, but of a new way of telling fashion, of overcoming the concept of the fashion show – a concept that for some time had been close to the creative director of Gucci. Already his February meta-show, which had turned the concept of backstage by bringing to the front lines stylists and makeup artists, had wanted to deconstruct the concept of traditional fashion show. The change Michele talked about, however, seems to want to turn the old show into new “expressive passages“.
What differentiates Michele’s message from that of all his colleagues is precisely his authorial aspiration. The fiction of the diary page, the importance attributed to storytelling and narration, the need to re-contact “the deepest regions that have pushed me to enter the world of fashion” and the insistence on the personal dimension recall literary and musical models and seem to want to rewrite the role of creative director bringing him closer to that of an actual author. This is important because this authorial and more artistic dimension will define Gucci’s shows in the future – a brand that, due to its role as a top-player in the current fashion market, has the real power to inspire change for all sectors of the industry – and that could really mark the beginning of a change of gear for the entire industry.
