Imagine that the most glamorous place in the world is... hell.
Well, that's the impression Alessandro Michele gave, choosing to send his shade-wearing rock and roll muse, carrying Chateau Marmont handbags, down a flaming runway for Gucci's 2019 Resort show. Among the dead in Arles' Alyscamps, a large Roman necropolis (yes, a cemetery, that was later made a promenade in 1700).
The period and the burial ground are familiar terrain for the brand under Michele, as his predilection for the macabre is nothing new (cephalophores, carting pallid heads down the catwalk, were his chosen means of showing AW18 looks).
It certainly felt like hell. If what you're expecting is the shimmering, simmering heat of Hollywood hedonism: hells bells and a flaming pit of rock stars in glitter drainpipes and crucifix chokers. Think The Doors' shaggy-haired Jim Morrison (fitting inspiration for Gucci's Chateau Marmont collab, as the hotel was the backdrop for the band's 1991 biopic).
But this wouldn't be a Michele-orchestrated show if it wasn't a mish-mash of the otherworldly and old. Queen Elizabeth I saw fit to trot from her catacomb in former Gucci Cruise venue, Westminster Abbey, and walk in look 4. Well, her doppelganger did, in a corkscrew curl wig and off-the-shoulder Edwardian midi-dress (mixing the periods and references in one look, as always).
There were also the Gucci scarf-prints and bougie bouclé twinsets we've come to expect from the brand since Michele stepped in, made new styled with acid neons, beaded skull-caps and beanies.
There was something for everyone, unsurprisingly, as 'something for everyone' is exactly how a label like Gucci has seen profits quadruple in the past two years.
And funnily enough it's at the base of Michele's decision to show in a former graveyard. 'It’s a place that belongs to everyone,' he said in the show notes. Just as the Gucci runway, walked by those choosing to eschew the gender binary and champion expression over conformity, has become a space for everyone (including young talent, with young designer Harris Reed taking over the label's Instagram and walking in the show).
So Gucci Cruise offered a melee of choice for both sinners and saints. But his proposition for the former, with a preference for leather and louche shirting, was a little more enticing from where we're stood.
