Pure brilliance

smooth hair, glasses verging on hypertrophy, and black fan – more testimony to the ambient heat than a pedantic or pseudo-ecological stance – Alessandro Michele looks like a neohippie. Except that, in half a decade, he’s managed to turn Gucci into a glittering cash machine. The Florentine brand, a heavyweight of the Kering Group, achieved a turnover of $16 billion last year, up 13 per cent. The man lauded by the press since he took up Gucci’s artistic reins in 2015 appears, smiling and affable, on our phone screen, together with his press attaché. Talking jewellery, something that in essence is all about touch and intimacy, could prove problematic in the dematerialised Covid-19 context. But Michele rises brilliantly to the challenge. It is, after all, in his blood. A unique case in the world of fashion, this 48-year-old from Rome designedtalks to the man who’s currently finding his happiness in Gucci.