Everything you need to know about the plagiarism charge against Gucci

Before you come to any conclusions, you have to know every single fact of a story.

This is the case of the new mediatic trouble who is involving a big name of luxury fashion in the latest plagiarism affair against a young "not-so-famous-before" fashion student. 

The facts.

Recently Gucci has launched on Instagram some teasers of its new, futuristic #gucciandbeyond advertising campaign for its FW17 collection with some very special stars: aliens.

The teasers, directed by Glen Lunchford, show models impersonating aliens and science fiction characters – with detailed description about their names, ages, and origin –inspired by retrò sci-fi movies from 50s and 70s who introduce themselves during a sort of mini-interviews with a green screen in the background. As you can image, in few hours the short videos have conquered the Web, turning the campaign into a viral news. 

But the success of the campaign was brief, because shortly after Pierre-Louis Auvray, womenswear student of Central Saint Martin in London, has launched publicly an accusation of plagiarism against the Gucci's campaign.

“Young creatives struggle enough without big companies shamelessly stealing from them”,

the student posted by saying that the brand removed its first post of the campaign after some his friends commented it pointing out the too many similarities between the Gucci's concept and the Auvray's works. Effectively, scrolling the Instagram account of the student, it's impossible not to notice a certain similarity between the images he posted – in which the digitally retouched fashion images turned models into aliens and other characters inspired by sci-fi/fantasy movies and tv series – and the Gucci's video clips.

"So that person who collaborated on Gucci for this, now deleted HER POST or blocked me since i can't see it anymore, i'm a student working on building my own stuff and the last thing we need is to be ripped off”,

Auvray added in a second post against the brand, turning his personal battle into a mediatic scandal. Even the official Central Saint Martins Instagram account came to his rescue, by sharing a supporting post for the student –

“Wherever your influences come from, it is vital to credit.
Young emerging designers and artists only have their ideas to trade”.

The consequences.

Gucci didn't make an official statement about it, and neither Alessandro Michele, until a few days ago, when the fashion designer gave an interview to Business of Fashion to clarify the situation.

"It's not true. It's something that makes me feel really sad. People build a story around nothing" Michele began, explaining the concept behind the #gucciandbeyond project: "It’s about my memories, so movies from the '70s [including Star Trek: Lost in Space] that I saw many times. It’s more about space, we have the robots, the aliens [...] I tried to work with Chris [Simmonds, artistic director] and the guys and Glen [Luchford, photographer] on strong characters". 

To support his position, the designer explained that the idea of the campaign started several months ago before the student shared on Instagram his project about ten weeks ago. Not only this, Alessandro Michele has launched a brief observation about the fact that is supposed that a 45-years-old man like him can lo longer be creative.

"Creativity [is] not about the fame. I mean, it could be possible that you are thinking something that is in the mind of someone else. The idea that I’m 45 doesn’t mean that I have no creativity. I’m like a student, it’s the same, it’s not a war!",

the fashion designer explained. An interesting input, because we often assume that young artists only can have innovative ideas "to copy", targeting the not-so-younger men as devoid of creativity. 

The conclusions.

Considering every single fact and the possible thoughts about it, which is the truth? Is it actually an Alessandro Michele's big idea, which delights us with vintage-like collections and groundbreaking, successful campaigns for long times, or is the

Is it actually an Alessandro Michele's great idea, which delights us with vintage-like collections and groundbreaking, successful campaigns for long times, or is the case of a young designer trying yo conquer his little space of fame with retouching images? To you the hard

To you the hard judgment.