Alessandro Michele: "we have changed. Taking time to do something is the real luxury. "
Forgive my dog, he likes to get attention. ” Alessandro Michele talks via zoom from her Milanese floor where the second Italian confinement passes. With his long messianic mane, the fingers covered by huge rings and a simple sweater - "three years ago" -, the creative director of Gucci, one of the most relevant in the fashion industry, reflects on his last daring: Some of the most settled rules in the sector by the arc of bell pants. He had been warning. Last May he already announced that he would reduce the number of annual collections from six to two, which will not respond to the traditional division for seasons and genres, nor will they adjust to the calendar of the fashion weeks. And he fulfilled him. "Pandemia," says the 47 -year -old designer, "the world has changed and the luxury sector in a radical way", and the norms that have been governing it since Gucci was founded 100 years ago have been revealed obsolete. It imposes - he warns - a transformation. Even if it is traumatic.
It is November and, on the other side of the screen, the Roman creator is plethoric. He has just presented his latest collection and has done not through a parade, but of the Guccifest, an ambitious initiative that encompasses a series of seven episodes co -directed with the filmmaker Gus van Sant and called Ouverture of Sumthing that Never Ended (Overture of something that never ended), in addition to 15 fashion films of emerging designers. The event took place a month and a half after the end of Milan's Fashion Week, in which the Italian brand usually parades and this season concluded weakened by the absence of it. Because Michele's decisions not only affect the firm he directs, but the entire industry. Not even the incombustible detractors, those who denounce that his work is closer to merchandising than fashion, can deny his enormous influence. First, for the specific weight of Gucci, which with a turnover in 2019 of 9,630 million euros stands in Kering locomotive, the second conglomerate of largest luxury companies in the world formed, among others, by firms such as Balenciaga, Saint Laurent and Bottega Veneta. And then, because there are many brands that replicate Michele's aesthetic and strategic steps in an attempt to reach their business figures: since the creator arrived at the firm in 2015, Gucci sales have increased more than 20% to year. So the Roman may be the first to reduce the number of collections and leave the catwalks, but it will not be the last. When Michele makes the gesture of scissors in Milan with the underwater fingers of him, a hurricane shakes the global luxury industry. “Gucci is under a spell. It is like a snake with a million layers of leather and that is why it still remains so strong, because it is always open to talk with society, ”explains the creator using the word that will repeat the most along the interview - confinement - and that summarizes his method to design, face the world and himself.
Why did you decide to change a business model that worked and was so profitable?
I spoke in a very sincere way with our CEO, Marco Bizzarri, and we decided to go on other roads.Repeating the same formulas is always easier, but it is no longer safe.It is not from the point of view of creativity and neither for the sector.Because it is boring for you, for your customers and even for journalists.And we don't want to get bored.Never more.Fashion is something interesting precisely because there is no fixed recipe.
What will be from now on the importance of physical events such as parades?
We are all looking forward to seeing each other physically, but we must investigate new ways to show our work.I just did it through a series.Can you imagine a parade with the models walking along the catwalk?I'm not sure someone wants.Before the pandemic my parades already left the traditional format, because for me it never made sense.If you have a scenario and an audience, there are many interesting things that you can do beyond walking.
He has reduced his six annual collections to only two, how do you plan to keep the envied Gucci benefits?
I do not say that I want to do less things, because it is obsessed with creating;But I do want to do them in a different way.And people are ready because they have bored a agenda as predictable as fashion.I would love to experiment with other brands, designers and artists, in the line of collaboration we have developed with The North Face [presented last December].Something has changed forever within us.We will never return to where we were.It is a new era.As after World War II, because Pandemia has been like a war.
Is the fashion industry prepared to adapt to this change?
There is an audience that is finishing and most of the young people do not connect with fashion brands because they are not interested.They have grown with social networks and are open to saying what they think.They want to know.And in a way they feel that they cannot establish a real conversation with firms.So I think the change cannot wait.
But it must be real, deep.For these new generations, authenticity is fundamental;And if they detect the imposture, they punish it.
Authenticity is a very powerful word.We grew up in a society that was not authentic at all.At least, my generation.They love Billie Eilish, for example, because she has talent but at the same time she is just a girl, she is not a diva.Harry Styles is as you see it: sweet, open and without limitations.Not that they are brave, they simply are not afraid of being as they are.They represent a new chapter in history.But the brands that try to manipulate them through marketing are being confused, because they realize perfectly.Marketing has to go after creativity, not vice versa, because then you are dead, be sure.
Does the decision to present your latest collection through a series have to do with the desire to connect with these new generations?
No. Sometimes I think I was born with star.I do things because I like them and finally it turns out that young people feel appealed to them.It is something magical.For example, in one of the chapters of the series I decidedBut I am also very connected to people like Styles, with whom I spend time.Achille's speech had a very complicated language, but I am sure that the audience is prepared for new and high things.
The youngest - the Tik Tok generation - too?
Definitely.Yesterday night I was watching my Instagram and there were hundreds of messages from young people who said: "We love Achille", and talked about Transvanguardia [the concept coined by beautiful in the seventies to define the reaction against Povera art].Surely they have had to do a Google to discover who he was, and that is wonderful.We must take advantage of the platform we have for more than sell bags.And we have incredible bags, understand me, I am obsessed with them, I am a collector, a fetish of shoes, dresses, everything.I have an apartment that is like a file.But I think, if you don't give a powerful sense to material things, you will not sell anything again.
Is that the key to the survival of luxury?
During the last 15 or 20 years they wanted to convince us that marketing was above all."I can sell you what I want," they said.Fortunately, that's not true.We are not going to buy - I include - all the things that you put in the face.The model of the model in a chair with a bag has died.Thanks.
What is luxury for today?What reason is it at this precise moment?
I think that slowness, taking time to do something, is the real luxury today.It's not about having many things, but about worrying about what one consumes.Buy beautiful things and take care of them.The first dress I designed for my first show I still love.It is powerful and delicate.The idea that we are going to sell it again is also a form of wealth.
Is it or should be political fashion?
I've never thought about it.But yes, because everything is political.If you have a voice - be a singer or a film director - and use it to communicate an idea, that, without a doubt, is political.And, of course, the way you wear is power.
Gucci is necessary to be one of the first major international brands to experience - in the contemporary era - with the garments without gender, bet on diversity in their campaigns or in establishing collaborations in principle as transgressive as the one starring in 2018 by the tailor ofHarlem Dapper Dan, famous for plagiarizing the logo of the two g in the eighties to dress the Hip-Hop aristocracy and to which the brand sued at the time.
In an interview that I did to Dior's creative director, Maria Grazia Chiuri told me that the fact that they were two of the designers who most use social discourse in their collections has to do with that both are from Rome.
It is a very interesting point of view.Rome is a very strong place to be born because it has something magnetic, an atmosphere, a perspective, and, in addition, the Romans interact with the city in a very free way.After all, he reminds us of what is transcendent: things change and she remains.
A few years ago, Gucci decided not to make sales.And now, more and more brands, both luxury and Fast Fashion, have climbed into the car.
When I see very lowered things, they sell almost for nothing, I think it is an ancient formula.We live at a time when we are supposed to avoid waste, so we do it.It makes no sense to fill the stores with a million things and then lower the price because they are not sold.It may be better to select the appropriate ones for each city.Our merchandising is working very well because we respect the market.If you do not value your product, who is going to do it.In addition, if you buy one thing today and in a month I put it on sale with a 50%discount, it is as if I were stealing.Nor is it fair for the production chain: we must not forget the work of the distributor and the supplier.A bag is a bag.It is not half of the bag at four months.I hope this strategy - which, by the way, was an idea of Marco Bizzarri, our CEO - function forever.
Many say that much of Gucci's success lies in good understanding between the two.
He has never interfered in my work.And, at first, when I arrived, it was even dangerous not to do it.I was always thinking that they were going to fire the next second.He is the real player, who risks.
Now that we define ourselves through our tastes and social networks, and that we spend so much time at home;Has fashion lost strength as a personal expression tool?
No. I can't resist carrying my necklaces and rings when I'm at home.It is true that I now wear more comfortable clothes, but I need to be myself in front of the mirror, even if I don't look very often.We like to reflect the idea we have of ourselves through clothes, even if our style is very simple or we are alone.It is the most powerful part of fashion.
Do you think that, from now on, people will look for more functional and basic or something more extravagant designs that make them feel special?
We are looking for beautiful but simple and very wearable silhouettes.Therefore, in this collection he was so obsessed with basketball t -shirts.Combined with a classic and elegant skirt they are very chics.It is a look that I think makes sense now: austere but cool.Understand me, eccentricity is something that I love, the idea of getting something wrong, that does not fit, I love it.I have always done it.Even when I was very small.
Was it an eccentric child?
My mother always told me: "You were already crazy since childhood."When I was six years old, in the seventies, I loved the clogs and intended to go to school in the middle of winter, and without socks!You imagine?I was invented a thousand excuses to let me do it.I think I keep doing the same.When I look and check that everything is perfect, I like to introduce a detail that is wrong, because it is beautiful and gives you the opportunity to experience something very powerful: we are all afraid to be wrong, but when you have under control what you do wrong andYou allow yourself to wear something beautiful but wrong, in the wrong station, in the wrong way, it means that you are more in contact with your ego and yourself.
It seems that, in one way or another, his work almost always hides a tribute to his parents.As for example now, with the series that he co -directed with Gus van Sant and in which he delves into that passion for his inherited cinema of his mother.
My parents died a long time ago, but within me what they taught me, such as the pleasure of maintaining an open conversation with different referents and voices, because they were very different.My father was like a shaman, and my mother, a very urban girl who worked in the film industry.In addition to loving movies or opening my mind, they taught me that you can spend your whole life with someone completely opposite to you.And, therefore, I have always liked being in contact with the two faces of my personality.
Which are?
I feel that I am not a person, but many voices that are in constant conversation.I am a child and I am an old man, that he tries to change from time to time, but to which it costs him more and more.
He always explains his collections through philosophy.Some of his press notes seem doctoral theses.
My boyfriend constantly reads me philosophy.But I am ignorant in this and other fields: that makes me feel alive and curious.What I know is that fashion is not just a piece of cloth.As [the Walter philosopher] Benjamin said, the conversation between fashion and society is very powerful.I find it strange that in the past nobody resorted to her to explain her collections, now everyone quotes philosophers in her work.
After you.
It's like everything.The things that in principle were considered rare are now fashionable.The Loafer with hair [iconic Gucci clogs designed by Michele] were strange and not very functional;Then they became fashionable;They later popularized and are now like the Kelly de Hermès bag, a classic.If people copy the way they work, well;I just hope someone else does it in a sincere way and discover how powerful it is to open fashion to other disciplines.
You work with Underground artists and during the Guccifest issued the fashion films of 15 emerging designers.There is something perverse in which a luxury brand like Gucci - consumerism and capitalism - is erected on the platform and defender of subcultures.
They are the blood of what happens upstairs.It is very interesting.We are parasites: I of them, and they of me.This connection keeps large brands alive;especially to those that manage to incorporate the reality of subcultures in a contemporary way.For me it is normal, because I have always felt very attracted to the underground world and I don't mind sharing the same space with them.It's like oxygen, I can't live without it.But it is true: there is a perversion in this relationship.
