The 10-cent word that defined today's Gucci show was détournement. It essentially means recontextualization. Is a granny's pussy-bow blouse still a pussy-bow if a willowy teenage boy is wearing it? Or is it, as today's show notes claimed, "a renewal of possibility"? The slightly impenetrable tone of those notes actually echoed the Situationists, the French anarcho-philosophers who were so inspirational to Malcolm McLaren in his creation of the Sex Pistols. And a similarly transgressive instinct was operating on the Gucci catwalk. Welcome to the New Punk.
Alessandro Michele has brought a radically different culture to Gucci. The venue today spoke volumes. No more the chilly space on Piazza Oberdan with its angular benches. Instead, we trooped to the outskirts of Milan to a ramshackle shed that was once the Farini railway station (the rails still running away into roof-height weeds). And we sat on spindly little chairs lacquered Chinese red. One might have expected a pipe of opium rather than the flute of prosecco that was served of old. How perfectly would such an additive have suited the silken languor of the collection. And yet that languor was deceptive. If it isn't exactly new, the magpie sensibility of Michele's Gucci—scouring time, place, and gender for scraps—has a Marmite impact. (Marmite, for the uninitiated, is a yeast-based food paste that its U.K. marketers confidently advertised with the slogan, "Love it or hate it.") That, in itself, is punk. So is Michele's ardent faith in the power of youth. Asked about the religious symbolism in his collection, he talked about, "the young generation as the real saints of the new world." Tattooing, piercing, decorating themselves in a new kind of geography of the body—Michele takes all of these as youthful tokens of a new shamanism.
And that certainly added a significant gloss to a collection in which decoration was a more accessible notion than recontextualization. Or maybe they went hand in hand. Like the shirt in flesh-toned lace garlanded with embroidered roses. Or the pale blue leather biker heavy with studs, elaborately tattooed with birds and flowers, and paired with gold silk pants. Or the lavish green silk robe with the fur cuffs. If there was a masculine heart to each of those items, the defining details were eccentric old-ladyish. And this was Michele's most thrillingly audacious proposition. When he spoke about the young, he insisted he meant a state of mind, rather than a chronological point in time. "The very young and the very old want to be free," he clarified. And youth and age are both so much more liberating than that long, put-upon stretch in between. That rather begged the question about why Michele didn't make his show an all-ages proposition. (Now that would be truly radical.) "It's easier to communicate the message on young models," he answered, "but we are all young." Anyway, that was a credible rationale for granny-ish touches like ruffled collars, crocheted ruffs, and what looked like a doily draped around one young man's throat.
Fans of Gucci's jet-set heritage need not look away. There were some perfectly credible pieces that honored the past. One trenchcoat married Gucci's most iconic pattern to sumptuous floral embroidery. A python coat was happily left as was. A suede coat over checked pants had a Helmut Berger flair. (Caveat: The trousers were flared and elongated into puddles on the floor.) The shoes, longtime fundament of the Gucci business, were another matter all together. Glittery gillies featured the classic Gucci stripe, but they also boasted fierce-some spikes on the ankle. In fact, all the shoes did, even at their most luxuriously gilded. Détournement pursues a new idea of beauty. And here it was, lush but confrontational. The New Punk.
