Setting the pace

Gucci steps off schedule as Alessandro Michele lays out “A New Creative Universe”
Fashion | 26 May 2020

Announced in a series of Instagram posts, Gucci will be stepping away from the seasonal calendar for good – slashing its schedule from five shows a year to just two annual, seasonless presentations.

Expressed via diary entries written by creative director Alessandro Michele, the Italian designer spoke of having had time to reassess during lockdown. Reflecting on the reasons behind him first entering the fashion industry, Michele outlines a “renewed awareness” and a “different time” away from “imposed deadlines that risk to humiliate creativity… A time that can stand still, awaiting; that can go through the gift of inactivity, slowly.”

Within these posts, Michele set out “A New Creative Universe”, “away from deadlines that the industry consolidated and, above all, away from an excessive performativity that today really has no raison d’être.” The designer continues: “It’s a foundational act, audacious but necessary, that aims at building a new creative universe. A universe that essentialises itself in the subtraction of events and that oxygenates through the multiplication of sense.”

Discussions around the speed of the fashion system have been ongoing ever since Raf Simons left his much-lauded post at Dior, giving insight into the sheer amount of creative output he was expected to generate. While Saint Laurent recently announced its decision to set its own pace by also stepping away from the traditional schedule for 2020.


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