STYLE Edit: The true story behind Alessandro Michele’s Gucci ready-to-wear fall/winter collection campaign
Though some brush it off as frivolous, fashion and its advertising has the power to generate shock and outrage – and empathy and understanding – and in turn move the social needle like few other media.
When Yves Saint Laurent posed nude for Jeanloup Sieff in 1971 to promote his own men’s fragrance, the world gasped and braced for a new narrative in fashion advertising.
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The same thing happened when (then) emerging designer Tom Ford tapped photographer Mario Testino for Gucci’s notorious (and immediately banned) “Trimming” ad. American Apparel caught flak for its “porn chic” series in the 2000s.
The campaign with the most impact, perhaps, is Oliviero Toscani’s “United Colors of Benetton” ads in the 1980s that notoriously featured a man graphically dying of Aids.
Picking up where those brands left off, Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele and fashion photographer Glen Luchford are collaborating on a series for the label’s fall/winter 2019/20 advertising campaign, which less provocatively pivots on storytelling.
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Beginning from the moment a fashion item is born, on the drawing table, Michele and Luchford revisit the advent of the prêt-à-porter era and re-embrace iconic images from the 1950s to the ’80s.
The mythologising of the fashion process should be at the core of fashion conversation according to Michele and Luchford, and so the duo put it back at the core of Gucci’s new campaign.
The ready-to-wear lines are front and centre once again, and so the brand reimagines the locations and headlines of those ready-to-wear stories – about colour, fabric and hemlines.
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History plays a crucial role in Luchford’s images, and Michele’s respect for it is fully expressed in each shot.
The series also playfully re-contextualises iconic images that many of us remember, but just as many of us find fresh, even as they are referenced again and again in contemporary culture.
The point, of course, is to sell clothing, but the #GucciPrêtÀPorter campaign aims to reignite respect for the process of fashion creation.
Gucci describes the photos as “a tale of objects, not characters, with wordings intentionally old-world, because the clothes’ true tale will be told by their wearers”.
The clothes are the stars for 2019/20; the covergirls and coverboys that will carry the Gucci language, in the form of memories, into the future to become their own type of artefact.
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Italian luxury brand’s creative director teams up with fashion photographer Glen Luchford for series of images that pay homage to iconic images of 1950s to 1980s