A more down-to-earth Gucci

Long coats, oversized jeans, blazers and beanies, nylon bomber jackets, as well as a huge dose of sculptural but mostly monochrome and minimalist handbags - exceptions aside (and exceptions were not lacking, from jeans covered in monogram made with crystals, to patent leather logo boots and sportswear) Gucci's FW23 collection that opened Milan Fashion Week Men's seems to want to emancipate itself from the identity established by Alessandro Michele over seven years of exuberant creative reign. With signature rock music by Ceramic Dog giving the collection a definite grungy edge, the brand seems to want to get back down to earth, away from syncretism, hybridization, pop references and conceptual flights. The result is less revolutionary than many hoped but puts the metaphorical ball back in the middle, setting a new and more neutral course while awaiting the arrival of a new creative director capable of moving the brand in a more precise direction. The result is not definitive but it is certainly refreshing, like when Alice comes out of garish, hallucinatory Wonderland and returns to her normal, reassuring English garden.

As we said, the design studio that collectively and anonymously signed off on the collection did not devote itself heart and soul to minimalism, inserting flickers of eccentricity in the form of heavily embellished jackets, candy-colored boots covered with the monogram, shiny leather workwear suits, vinyl pants, sculptural mega-shoulders, leg warmers, and a certain 80s vibe that was the second aesthetic "thread" of the show after the minimal-grunge looks that dominated the first part of the show. A nice detail was the long skirts, simple but able to evoke that genderlessness that had been of such great importance with Michele. Practically absent were the logos: the brand's identity was not to be reconfirmed in self-referential blows but through more or less discreet visual symbols (the golden riding clamp, the moccasins, the red-green sash recalling Frida Giannini's more rugged menswear) that, however, did not cannibalize the clothes, the real protagonists of the collection. The message, however, was one of continuity and stability: if there is currently no creative director to look to as a north star, the brand and its talents are still here, tangible, wearable, the same on the catwalk and in the store without the creative concept galloping in the opposite direction to the manufacture and sale of the products.

The collection included, as we said, more exuberant pieces that found a perhaps somewhat imprecise place in the brand's new, grounded identity discourse. It is clear that a certain exuberance cannot be renounced - and those looks are meant to signify that Gucci's energy and vitalism are still there, back in the state of stem cells whose DNA is still being structured. Indeed, as Alessandro Michele has been the champion of Gucci's maximalism, it is precisely the more rock-chic and minimalist part that is the most innovative and cohesive in the collection, the one capable of declaring with force and subtlety at once that times have changed and that, while not losing its youthfulness, Gucci is done with weirdness and baroque and has returned to being a sensible, wearable brand that sells "real" clothes rather than colorful concepts. This is not to say, however, that Michele's touch has disappeared as if by magic. Much of the motion imprinted on the brand by the Roman designer still remains, in the colors, in the mix of old-fashioned glamour and youthful roughness. The legacy of the former creative director is still there but it is, precisely, a legacy, the legacy of a recent past that is no less outside of the present, in the ranks of Gucci's past "eras" along with those of Tom Ford and Frida Giannini. But the future, no doubt, will come.