A change of pace
Alessandro Michele – Gucci
“Something was changing inside me,” says Alessandro Michele, recalling his premonitory days between the autumn/winter ’20/’21 Gucci show on February 19 and Italy’s lockdown on March 9. His collection confronted fashion with its own overload, presenting a voyeuristic view of the backstage preparations, in lieu of a runway. “I was thinking about my position; why I need to show all the time.” In 2015, Michele’s multibillion-dollar Gucci makeover catapulted him into an incessant loop of fashion shows and red carpets. Suddenly, confined by the coronavirus outbreak to his apartment in Rome with his partner Vanni, he experienced an awakening. “I felt like a monk,” he says. “I was travelling in my imagination, all by myself. It’s the first time in a long time I was really by myself.”
With his princely locks in pigtails, like a Pippi Longstocking of the Early Renaissance, Michele lost himself in the writing and knitting that, he explains, felt “like a prayer”. He visited online auctions and added to his art collection, and, as the days turned into weeks, he sang and reconnected with the guitar playing that gave him rock-star dreams in his teen years. “Harry said: ‘I will try to teach you more.’ Jared said: ‘We must play together!’” Michele smiles, referring to Styles and Leto.
On his terrace, Michele saw nature in a new light. “Like my roses, I wasn’t moving. I was just there, waiting. It was beautiful.” He felt rooted in earth. “I thought, what have we done? We’ve been so stupid and crazy and completely blind.”
Inspired, Michele composed a future philosophy for Gucci: fewer shows, more sustainability. “I will always need the beautiful work of human beings. I am sure that my reason for being on this Earth is the creative research of beauty. I can’t stop,” he vows. “But I want to be more connected with the Earth.” We should never forget lockdown, he says. “We can’t say that it’s all the same, because it’s not. We went through
