GUCCI SHOW EVERYWHERE

The company’s president and chief executive officer Marco Bizzarri announced on Tuesday morning that Gucci will unveil its new collection with a show in Milan in February.

In addition, during the year, he said that Gucci will also stage two additional runway shows, in late spring and in September. Now we need a different, more elastic system that fits with the moment. Creativity, like water, always finds the space to run,” he added.

In keeping with this vision, in November 2020, Gucci presented the Ouverture of Something That Never Ended co-ed collection, a sort of spring 2021 lineup, with a mini series developed in collaboration with director Gus Van Sant, while the brand celebrated its 100th anniversary.

Earlier this month, the Italian brand returned to the physical runway format with the Gucci Love Parade spring 2022 show, hosted on Los Angeles; Hollywood Boulevard.When will there be a show on the moon?

GUCCI THE TWILIGHT ZONE

Vault is a programming tool that allows you to create, manage and store project-specific secrets. Alessandro Michele loves the word so much it’s the name he has given to Gucci’s new online concept store. “It’s such a pregnant word,” he enthuses. “It can be pregnant with everything you know.” He is certainly doing his best to guarantee that Vault arrives with a bellyful of wonders. “An online storage of beautiful things,” he calls it, like a virtual

Vault, which launches Saturday, is described by Gucci as “a time machine, an archive, a library, a laboratory, and a meeting place.” It is also the latest manifestation of Michele’s appetite for experimentation.

A time machine has always been my dream. Not so much for Michele, though he admits he would really love to have “a beautiful dinner or maybe just a quick coffee” with Federico Fellini and Anna Magnani. In fact welcome  to the twilight zone.

GUCCI NEXT SHOW L.A

Michele will present his next collection for Gucci with an in-person fashion show in Los Angeles on Nov. 3. The show will coincide with the occasion of the 10th LACMA Art+Film Gala, taking place on Nov. 6, for which Gucci is the founding and presenting sponsor.

Michele, however, has now changed the pace of Gucci's collections. In 2020, five years after his debut at the fashion house, in the midst of the global pandemic, the designer decided to abandon what he has called “the worn-out ritual of seasonalities and shows to regain a new cadence, closer to my expressive call. We will meet just twice a year, to share the chapters of a new story.” He conceived new names for the collections, inspired by the music world.

After Epilogue, the conclusive chapter of Michele's previous narrative, presented in July last year during Milan Digital Fashion Week, Michele directed with Gus Van Sant a series of seven episodes for his collection “Ouverture of Something That Never Ended” shown in November 2020, tapping the likes of Billie Eilish, Harry Styles and Florence Welch, among others.

On the occasion, the designer told that he felt “free,” giving “a natural rhythm” to the collections. “Of course, there is more responsibility in this self-pacing, and I want to be attentive to the company and position the brand in a respectful way. Continue reading

GUCCI A FAMILY SAGA

Gucci marks its centenary in 2021, passing through family feuds, take-over attempts, a near-bankruptcy, a public listing, storybook turnarounds and even a murder which has sparked the Ridley Scott film “House of Gucci” Just like the long-lived mythological phoenix, Gucci has cyclically regenerated, reaching its centenary in 2021.

Guccio Gucci, who in 1897 found work at London’s prestigious Savoy Hotel as a bellboy. Famously, the tale goes that he was inspired to create his company by the luxurious suitcases and trunks carried by the aristocrats staying at the hotel. In 1921, Gucci’s first stores opened in Florence, where he founded the company. The boutique in Rome’s luxury shopping street Via Condotti opened in 1938.

As a result of a League of Nations embargo against Italy, Gucci he found alternatives to imported leather and other materials in the 1935-1936 period, developing a specially woven hemp from Naples, printed with the first signature print. Continue reading

GUCCI VACCINATES EMPLOYEES

Gucci will open the doors of its corporate offices and facilities to vaccinate more than 6,000 Italian employees, including offices, factories and retail. The rollout of COVID-19 vaccines has been slow in Italy and a number of Italian fashion companies are taking steps to help speed up the process.

Gucci on Monday said it was joining an initiative by Italy’s association Confindustria. Even LVMH has thought of using its new flagship la Samaritaine to vaccinate its employees. As soon as Italian national and regional health regulations allow it, Gucci will open the doors of its corporate offices and facilities to vaccinate more than 6,000 Italian employees, from offices, factories and retail.

The decision is in line with that of parent company Kering, which is offering its own spaces and those of the other brands of the group operating in Italy. Continue reading

GUCCI NEXT COLLECTION IN APRIL

Gucci will present its next fashion collection through a short film on April 15 on several digital platforms around the world. This is the first collection to be unveiled in the year that marks the brand’s centenary anniversary, Gucci revealed that creative director Alessandro Michele has named the collection Aria.

The collection is presented outside of any fashion week calendar. In music, an aria is a self-contained piece for one voice.

The designer in November presented a seven-part film series he codirected with Gus Van Sant. The collection appeared throughout seven episodes running from Nov. 16 to 22, screened during a new digital fashion and film festival called GucciFest.

The collection and the series were called “Ouverture of Something That Never Ended,” shot in Rome and featuring actress and artist Silvia Calderoni as well as a range of friends of Continue reading

GUCCI UNDER THE SKIN

Gucci’s agreement with trade unions revealed on Saturday is a first sign of a restart of fashion’s production pipeline that does not involve protective masks or medical overalls. On April 20, the Florence-based company will reopen its leather goods and shoes prototype industrial complex called ArtLab.

While Italy remains in lockdown until May 3, the reopening was made possible by government provisions issued on April 10 and following an agreement signed with labor unions. The latter is based on the Safety Protocol signed on March 15, reinforced through a collaboration with the virologist Professor Roberto Burioni from Milan's Vita-Salute San Raffaele University. Continue reading

ONE MILLION BABY’S LIPSTICKS

Gucci sold more than 1 million lipsticks in the first month since the Alessandro Michele-designed line dropped in May.

At $38 each, that puts the Gucci brand at more than $38 million in retail sales for the lipstick launch. That could potentially put Gucci makeup ahead of industry projections, which estimated the collection would do more than $100 million in retail sales in the first year. Coty has held the Gucci beauty license since it bought it from P&G in 2016, and executives unveiled the Gucci numbers at the Barclays Global Consumer Staples Conference on Tuesday. Continue reading

GUCCI CRUISE 2020 ROME

Just two miles away from Vatican City, a bold pro-choice message was unfurled Tuesday before an international fashion public. In a darkened space in the halls of Rome’s Capitoline Museum, stone Roman faces and their gods presided over a runway where a white gown embroidered with a sequined uterus stirred a media frenzy.

It was Gucci’s 2020 cruise collection, and designer Alessandro Michele chose to make his voice heard through his most powerful weapon: needle and thread.

Amid controversial times, Michele was successful in making fashion’s voice heard. Just across the Tiber River, however, as the 47-year-old designer was putting the finishing touches on his fashion-forward collection, Pope Francis voiced his opinion on the pro-life, pro-choice debate, at a Vatican conference on Saturday. According to the New York Times, the Pope stated that abortion, even of a sick fetus, is like hiring a “hitman.”

Homage to Michele’s Roman upbringing. Models draped in veils and swathed in flowing gowns called to mind the Vestal Virgins, ancient highborns, who in Roman times took a vow of celibacy to honor the Godess Vesta. Continue reading

VERY ATTRACTIVE TAXE V.A.T

The Week Ahead: Will Kering Change Its Tune on Acquisitions? This week, everyone will be talking about Gucci parent Kering’s next move, fashion at Coachella and Allbirds entering China.

Every quarter, Kering reports Gucci’s sales grew a little slower and talk of the need for a major acquisition grows a little louder. To be sure, the brand is still running circles around most rivals, growing 28 percent in the fourth quarter. But Kering is a multi-brand conglomerate competing with the more-diversified LVMH. Saint Laurent, white-hot Balenciaga and McQueen may someday take the pressure off Gucci to perform, but a big acquisition would produce a new centre of value creation in a single stroke. Unfortunately for Kering, there are a imited number of targets it would take a brand

Luxury brands lowered product prices in China as a cut in the country’s VAT rate came into effect on April 1. Continue reading

GUCCI BRAND

GUCCIGucci, the flagship brand of French luxury and sportswear group Kering, posted a 4.6 percent rise in underlying second-quarter sales on Monday, marking a much sooner-than-expected rebound under its new creative and management duo.

Kering Finance Director Jean-Marc Duplaix said the brand had benefited from strong demand from Chinese tourists in Japan and Western Europe, while Gucci’s sales in China were boosted by discounted sales of its previous designer’s collections.

Kering’s first-half operating profit fell 5.4 percent to 773.2 million euros ($859 million), which Duplaix said was partly due to significant investment in marketing and communications at recovering sports brand Puma. Continue reading

ECCENTRIC GUCCI

Gucci, Ready to Wear Spring Summer 2015 Collection in Milan

Last Wednesday, the Gucci show launched the Milan Fashion Week. The designer Frida Giannini presented an Eccentric Hippy baba cool collection influenced from the 1970’s and really far from what we were due to expect.

Never forgets that quality is not in the fabric but also in the design. The Gucci’s brand ambassador, Charlotte Casiraghi as well as the face of Gucci’s newly launched cosmetics line and Kate Moss sat front row.

There is no question that the 70s roots of this show ran long and deep. But Giannini seemed to really be trying to bring her beloved decade forward. She did this mostly in her chosen proportions, by cropping her bell bottom boyfriend pants, inserting sexy broderie anglaise into her denim day dresses, and deciding to go with above-the-knee cocktail dresses (instead of a more traditional maxi) for her printed bead embellished silk numbers. In this way she was able to give a feather light fashion face-lift to all the hallmark looks that have a good 40 years on them.