Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele Michele was certainly destined for the top spot. New CEO Marco Bizzarri was looking for a staff member to brief him on design after the ousting of ex-CEO Patrizio di Marco and creative director Giannini, a husband-and-wife-team. Dismal sales had plagued Gucci for many seasons, following Giannini’s predictable modern-glamazon formula that was fast losing favour with the fashion crowd. As fate would have it, it was Michele who debriefed Bizzarri and a quick bond formed between the two. At the recent WWD Summit, Bizzarri said his choice of Michele was based purely on intuition and instinct as they developed a close rapport over a shared vision and mutual understanding of Gucci, with Bizzarri’s business standpoint and Michele’s perspective in creative design, according to Forbes.com. Furthermore, it is reported that Bizzarri leaves matters of design completely to Michele, saying, “You cannot put limits or constraints on creativity.” The Gucci CEO backs that up with corporate values that foster creativity, including “respect, happiness, passion, empowerment and inclusivity”. Fashion moves in cycles and as clichéd as she sounds, Heidi Klum of Project Runway uttered a fashion truth with her tagline: “One day you’re in, the next day you’re out.” So, what has caused Gucci’s meteoric rise under Michele’s new sartorial direction?
Gucci Cruise 2018 The Bizzarri-Michele duo, in their reinvention of Gucci, have taken steps to de-emphasise faces of the brand from its past, such as Grace Kelly and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, instead, putting into the spotlight a new generation of youthful and contemporary celebrities and style icons. Perhaps a shift in the brand’s era of creative design is best heralded with the widespread boutique makeover under its “New Store Concept”. The previous Giannini-led black-and-gold aesthetic has given way to Michele’s eclectic vision of colours (pale pink, peacock blue and cherry red) and textures (stark display units contrast with rich, plush fabric), marrying the traditional and modern, industrial and romantic. So far, 25% of its 550 stores have been remodelled, with 30 more to be transformed by year-end, according to Kering chief financial officer Jean-Marc Duplaix. Michele burst onto the scene following the musical-chair drama of creative designers leaving and being replaced at fashion houses and at a time when fashion had grown lethargic with insipid normcore style and run-of-the-mill, derivative collections. His candy-shop assortment of apparel and gender-fluid proposition captured the imagination of the fashion world, powering his unstoppable ascent to the top of the style league.
What is most interesting from the rapid rise of Gucci since Michele’s debut menswear fall 2015 collection is that holding group Kering is riding the crest of profitability not only with Gucci, but also with Balenciaga and Saint Laurent, demonstrating that it has hit the jackpot with its group-wide strategy. Balenciaga is headed by Demna Gvasalia, who is rewriting style codes with his guerilla-style, ingenious send-up of conventional fashion, while Hedi Slimane, when he took the helm at Yves Saint Laurent (since renamed Saint Laurent by the -renegade Slimane) caused an uproar when he revolutionised the French house by infusing it with a youth-oriented and rock-tinged charisma.
One thing that can be learnt from all this is that fashion and its consumers are intrinsically ephemeral, and to stay on top of the game, change and newness are inevitable and will always be the true elements of style.
Tan Siok Hoon is an assistant editor with the Options desk at The Edge Malaysia
