It seems unfair that I should try to unload how I feel about Gucci Spring 2017 on the day of the show, because similarly to how it went down at Thom Browne — a sort of fashion portmanteau that featured so many clothes that looked like one thing but were actually something else — the collection requires months of settling so I have time to organize these thoughts and deliver new data points accordingly. But this is the Internet, and the Internet waits for no one. So here we are, at the intersection of orange fur coat with zebras (not to be confused with zebra print) and dramatic athletic leggings.
Here are the things we know about the surroundings and show in question, which happened today in Italy on the first official day of Milan Fashion Week.
1. The runway looked like it was a piece of the collection, what with the metallic tile on the walls and the red-and-green striped carpet for runway.
2. The soundtrack that was played told attendees to “release the tension” before the show started. The Cut chalked this up to meditation-as-theme.
And here’s what we know about the clothes, as told by the photos:
1. Gucci’s popular loafer has been updated to feature a square toe for Spring, which sucks for people who invested too heavily in the former shoe. Just kidding, it rocks.
2. Maximalism is still very much the only dish on the menu at Gucci, as evidenced by the opening look: an otherwise calm plaid jacket, pink blouse and white cropped trousers made extraordinary by a similarly bright pink turban, rhinestone sunglasses, a string of cherries collared around the model’s neck and, boom!, horsebit flatforms.
2a. This theme is underscored many more times but is particularly unique to Gucci — multiple instances of what appear to be gift wrapping worn as a hat that will probably serve as inspiration the next time a royal baby is delivered and ceremoniously celebrated.
3. There are micro-floral prints, too, that remind me somewhat of Vetements, but are rendered in a completely Gucci fashion, further exploiting the trend of single-sleeve blouses and dresses which we identified as 2-hot-2-handle in New York.
4. While we’re on the topic of trends, it appears as though Celine was right last season! Our athleisurely cues will be following us into ready-to-wear while we reconsider what it means to layer leggings under our dresses and skirts. I’m scared, but I’m also excited.
5. The print of the season is neither a snake nor a tiger (fine, there is one tiger), but rather, it is a dragon set upon skirts, dresses and blazers.
6. If you bought one of those huge floral bow pins last season or just like, ten minutes ago on Net-a-Porter, good on you! They’re joining us for Spring.
And here are a couple of points to conclude what my head is thinking at the moment:
1. To invest in Gucci is not a bad idea (if, of course, you can). The collections all become each other and build upon the same story line, and so for however loud they may be (it’s hard to find a dress by Gucci that doesn’t scream Gucci), at least their shelf life is longer than the course of one season. Resort ’15, with its sequined tigers, may as well be Spring ’17 — metallic tiers of thread not withstanding — and so on.
2. Fashion shows really are necessary, huh? Without having seen that the venue looked just like the collection, and that the models walked at a sort of glacial pace, or having heard the soundtrack (which is such an important part of how you tell your story about the clothes) and the pre-notes on releasing tension, would I have been able to surmise that the overarching theme was perhaps speaking to fashion’s most favorite hot topic, burnout?
3. Indeed, it appears as though Alessandro Michele is trying to prove a point about a trend, about the way in which a designer regards the world and therefore metabolizes what should be put into it and what should be left out, and as far as I’m concerned, what his box office collections, which keep proliferating within the same lane but miraculously which don’t get old or feel tired seem to indicate, is that it’s okay to not be done with a theme the second you’ve shared it with the world. Work on it until you feel ready to let go, tame the beast — the dragon! — don’t feed it.
Feature collage by Emily Zirimis; all slideshow photographs via Vogue Runway.
