Thanks to a spot on the tail end of show season, Gucci has, undoubtedly, been closely watching this strange, renewed ceremony we once called fashion week; a phantom, well-respected Ofsted inspector at the back of the room. Where brands from London to Milan were apparently to be shackled by the ongoing pandemic, it seems the lid of creativity was peeled off. Dior played tour guide on the Ghanaian art scene. Prada enlisted Juergen Teller and co to forge an abstract fashion film of mystifying vignettes. And Dolce & Gabbana, untethered, went ahead with a real life show based in the grounds of Milan's Humanitas University (socially distanced and masked to the nines, of course).
Though Gucci's creative director didn't orchestrate another otherworldly set piece, models strutting under the cloisters of Westminster's Abbey (which once happened) or on a conveyor belt from a far distant Brave New World (which also once happened). He simply set the cameras to live.
For 'Epilogue' – the final act in Gucci's fairytale trilogy of three collections – gave fashion a healthy dose of reality, and a fashionable take on reality TV. There was no runway procession, no Lynchian film transitions against a jarring soundtrack of tubular bells. Instead, Gucci, much like Hermès earlier in the show season's itinerary, pulled back the curtain on the inner workings of fashion production – specifically that of a campaign shoot. Despite what any teen movie ever would you have think, fashion photoshoots are not some fast-moving, glam-dram piece of theatre. They are slow, and steady, and forensic: a short tug of a collar here, a slight incline of the head there.
It was all available to livestream – with four hours of it on YouTube – as models received their make-up and lights were assembled and clipboards were ticked, before the languid action focused on the clothes and their ode to Seventies verve. Which is a recurring motif within Michele's vision of Gucci. Though this was more Woodstock-tinged than the nerd clogs and gogs of collections past; yards of shearling edged floral jackets, palettes went from pastel to kaleidoscopic, and the ever so nautical oversized coats and trousers were more relaxed than ever: Gucci for tripping in the glades as opposed to getting into Studio 54.
The models too were plucked from the real world. As permanent housemates from the house of Gucci, its design team were the stars of the show. Shane Wilson (women's ready-to-wear designer) donned a bucked hat in the house monogram. Junayo Salimo (men's ready-to-wear product assistant) dressed down flares with chunky, aerobics instructor sneakers. Normal people, then. Or, perhaps, a little bit more normal than the demigods that make-up fashion's frontline.
This disassembly of Gucci's gloss was always the point: "I tried to dismantle the scaffolding, to turn things upside down, to shift the gaze somewhere else" says Michele in Epilogue's show notes. Gucci is realising reality, reflecting the real world of fashion away from the circus of show season. Of course, spectacle wasn't totally sapped as a pink-hatted casting assistant lolled over the balcony's edge at Rome's grand Palazzo Sacchetti. But as a HAL-like supercomputer narrated Epilogue's direction, and as photoshoot notes were visible in permanent marker and post-it notes to each shot, Gucci is getting real with the industry – and is watching its every move.
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