Backstages secrets were out in the open at Gucci. Models were made up in the foyer as the fashion crowd arrived for the show. And they dressed on a rotating runway at the center of a circular show room, overseen by creative director Alessandro Michele, just out of view in the center.
Michele said he wanted to demystify back-stage rituals, which he likened in a series of mixed metaphors to a religious rite, to cinema, to a circus.
Gucci's Fall/Winter 2020/2021 collection at Milan Fashion Week. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
‘’We are all on that stage. Fashion is a complex mechanism, a sacred thing. We all work for this rite that is almost religious,’’ Michele told reporters after the show.
Designer Alessandro Michele walks out at the end of Gucci's Fall/Winter 2020/2021 collection, presented in Milan, Italy. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
The collection reflected his mix of costuming and eccentricity, offering to the growing Gucci tribe multitudinous expressions that are gender fluid but also allow perhaps a pure form of self-expression by diving deep into the psyche.
Gucci's Fall/Winter 2020/2021 collection at Milan Fashion Week. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
As in menswear, Michele explored children’s clothes for adults, and it is not a stretch to say that his Gucci tenure, in its sixth year, is also sort of elaborate dress-up game, giving men and women the freedom to express themselves in ways they perhaps wouldn’t imagine on their own. Or, better put, to create a self they may only recognize when they see it on the runway.
Gucci's Fall/Winter 2020/2021 collection at Milan Fashion Week. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
How else to explain a baby-doll dress worn with patent leather collar, a French maid’s lace-trim mini-uniform with torn stockings and a riding hat and studded booties, or a pilgrim collar on a long black velvet dress and a large flat-top hat, tiered ball gowns straight out of a Little Women costume drama, and a bonnet with cat ears worn with a small smock dress.
Gucci's Fall/Winter 2020/2021 collection at Milan Fashion Week. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
Gucci's Fall/Winter 2020/2021 collection at Milan Fashion Week. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
‘’I did a bit the job of a costume designer, looking at things almost as a disguise,’’ Michele said. ‘’Then there were things done with great abundance, like bows that appeared to be created at the last minute by a mother, that belonged to other eras of childhood.’’