Designers become models for Gucci's Resort 2021 collection

Today, Milan Digital Fashion Week comes to an end, ending with Epilogue, the presentation of Gucci's Resort 2021 collection - the last of the brand before the switch to the model of two shows the year announced by Alessandro Michele with the Notes from Silence last May. A symbolic name, the final act of a story that distills its final meaning – and in this case the end point of an investigation around the meaning of fashion that the Roman designer called "a fairy tale in three parts". The end symbolized by this collection, in the words of Michael himself:

«Really feels like an overture. A watershed that closes and opens at the same time, a threshold of a new beginning, from which we try to imagine our tomorrow».

The first act of this story was Gucci's FW20 show last February during which the backstage of the show was put at the forefront of an act of deconstruction of the ritual of the classic fashion show. The second act came with the campaign The Ritual, in which Michele abandoned the reins of artistic direction to the same photographers and models making the campaign choral expression and no longer one-sided. The third act, the epilogue of this narrative arc, arrived today, with a 12-hour live-stream during which the clothes are worn by the same individuals who designed them and the members of the Gucci design team also become the face of the brand, allowing viewers, at the same time, to look in the backstory of the shooting of the new campaign – breaking the veil between reality and fiction and dismantling the charm of fashion revealing its interior.

As for the collection itself, the graphic look of the presentation (which honestly is not the best part of the show) is created in the style of the same pre-show looks, with the models dressed in front of a neutral background with the model number and model name on the side, with the naturalness of the faces and bodies of the designers being enhanced, even in its imperfections, by the exuberance of the clothes - an effect that would not have occurred if there had been models in their place. The photos are decorated with fake post-its and side notes that spell out the name and role within the Gucci team of each of the designers who model for the looks. The looks themselves are an anthem to hippie culture and the 1970s – a stylistic direction that makes even more sense when you consider that it should have been shown in April in San Francisco, whis was (and still is) the moral capital of hippie culture and the struggle for civil rights.

Gucci's Resort 2021 Epilogue collection, as the official closure of Milan Digital Fashion Week, which is also the last of the digital fashion weeks that we will see from now on, can also be taken to the final chapter of the short era of phygital shows – a new and ambiguous format with which the fashion world has been forced to become familiar in recent months and with results more than alternating. If the final result of Gucci's presentation is interesting but not entirely convincing, many other brands have proved in recent weeks that even their prestige is not exempt from defaillances when compared with the novelty of a new media. For every Prada, Casablanca, Loewe and Hermès that have created valid content and centered collections, there have been unexciting presentations to good collections and mediocre collections presented in an interesting way. Only one thing is clear: this epilogue will mark a new beginning for the industry as well as a return to the normality of the catwalks that are already being felt strongly.