The first three episodes of the Gucci web series

Overture Of Something That Never Ended, the film project by Alessandro Michele and Gus Van Sant for the presentation of the Gucci SS21 collection continues with the third episode. In the first episode we followed the extraordinary Silvia Calderoni in her domestic routine, in an almost silent first episode except for the intervention of the author and philosopher Paul B. Preciado, while the second was set in a café populated by surreal characters on which the English poet and singer-songwriter Arlo Parks stands. The third episode sees the protagonist go to the post office to send a postcard while listening to her neighbour in the line, played by the art critic, university professor and founder of Transavanguardia Achille Bonito Oliva, chatting philosophy on the phone with Harry Styles on the contamination of the arts. The production values of these first three episodes are something transcendental, from the soundtrack to photography, and they carry with them the imprint of the director Gus Van Sant who directs the action with an incredibly safe hand.

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

After Preciado's intervention, in the first segment At Home, constructive and able to enrich the format with a cultural element that resonates with the more general philosophy of Gucci, the dialogues of the second episode turn towards a series of dreamy verbal exchanges – a turning point that underlines the surreal and poetic nature of the project. The third episode, on the other hand, aims for a more realistic register that surrounds Oliva's philosophical excursus, which says:

"Let us say that ours is an age of contamination where, I would say, there is also a lack of confidence in the future but a consideration of the present. This is very important, if you think that there have also been other eras when this happened. A distant era after the Renaissance".

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

The result is that the eyes and ears remain deeply fascinated by Michele's stunning eye and fairytale-realistic world. The presence of Arlo Parks, as before that of Preciado, is then the gem of the second segment, totally illuminating the screen, as well as the small part interpreted by the Neapolitan model Carmine Matacena that recalls (albeit in nudist version) a kind of Timothée Chalamet in Mediterranean sauce. However, the project remains very interesting, with its cross-sectoral and multi-platform nature, the perfect maturation of Michele's vintage aesthetic and the cultural ambition it aims for. In the third episode, it is Oliva's words that are the true star, almost able to put in the background a star like Harry Styles, who listens intensely to his monologue that so reveals and tells about the intimate mechanisms of fashion and art according to Michele.  

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

In terms of clothes, the collection is beautiful and bohemian as usual, with Michele's imagintion becoming increasingly consolidated and coherent. Then, in the third episode, you can see a t-shirt worn by Styles with the words Gucci Loves Pink Eschatology 1921, in reference to eschatology, that is, the theological field that investigates the ultimate goal of man and the year of the foundation of the brand. The references to the vintage world, the mixture of sportswear iconography of rugby-inspired t-shirts with the luxurious details and retro world of Michele, as well as the work done on an increasingly fluid and genderless silhouette, testify how contamination and cross-sectorality are, more than an operational methodology for the brand, a true all-round inspiration that starts from tailoring and ends in storytelling.  

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

Photo Credits: Paige Powell

 In terms of storytelling there is an important note to be made, which is linked to Michele's own reflection on his career. In the first episode, in fact, we see Silvia throwing a dress from the balcony of her home - a dress that appeared in Gucci's FW15 collection that marked Michele's debut at the direction of the brand. A gesture that almost marks the completion of a cycle but also a new beginning: like many easter eggs, in fact, some models of the Overture collection (including the suit worn by the philosopher Preciado) replicate Michele's early designs and stand out from the others for the red label and the inscription "Something That Never Ended".