Gucci goes meta-fashion for the FW20 fashion show

It's been three weeks since Alessandro Michele astonished everybody with the FW2020 menswear collection fashion show. In that occasion, the italian the designer made his models walk on an Elizabethan amphitheater-like catwalk dominated by the swinging of a giant "Foucaultian" pendulum. Whilst Michele's always had a glimpse to turn his runways into cinematographic and theatrical sets, for the Gucci FW womenswear fashion show he decided to overcome himself: he completely thrown away the catwalk. On its place, models have posed on a giant rotating footboard absorbed in a gloomy atmosphere and on the notes of Ravel's Boléro. This giant glass cage has been the stage of a particular  experiment: on the inside, Michele recreated the backstage of the fashion show itself and made his stylists dress the models under everyone's eyes.

“I have always considered the fashion show as a magic event bursting with enchantment” - said Michele on an open letter that Gucci posted on Instagram a few hours before the show. The show, that was opened by the registration of Federico Fellini's words ("Cinema was like that: an hypnotic, almost ritualistic suggestion..."), was precisely a dressing ritual that wanted to celebrate "the collective intelligence that take care of gestation [...] as shivers rage on" - and even if that's been clear since the live streaming of the show, it founded its peak when the stylists that dressed all the models took a further step towards the public.

I decided to unveil what lies behind the curtains. […] May that wild and crazy hive that I made my home have a throne. because that is the home I worship: the blessed passage through which beauty comes out of its hell.

Alessandro Michele has never made any distinction between sacre and profane, between History and Walt Disney. But with this show, Michele just broke another wall and put the light over the "working class" that usually live behind the scenes. He even made his guests entered the show from the backstage. It was a powerful statement: Florence Welch, Dakota Johnson, Achille Lauro and Boss Doms posing between the stream of all the people at work, make-up artists, hair-stylists and models. But there's more: deciding to put "the common people" on the center of his narrative, Michele ended up to tell the story of its public too. His intent was clear: to completely cancel the distance that for so many years has made the fashion world so fascinating, yet so frightening.

The space of the show so becomes a place of experimentation and discussion and a stage for a revolutionary shout. It's an important choice of revolution, though it risks to overshadow the light on the clothes - and has made the show itself difficult to appreciate, both for the photographers and the public. In general, it looks like it's been a low-tone fashion show. There's not even been a trace of many illustrious guests: there were no Tyler The Creator, Anderson Paak, Jared Leto, Ghali and Maurizio Cattelan, neither Harry Styles, all of them big protagonists of the recent menswear Fashion Week.

On the merely fashion side, Gucci has confirmed a continuity with what we've seen On the menswear, proposing a lot of wool tailleurs, big skirts and lace dresses and details, satin blouses and oversize velvet pants. In general, Michele continues its road to exaggeration, mixing enormous bangles, gloves, collars and crucifixes with his Victorian-inspired looks - and confirming that his style it's already a certainty.