Months into the COVID-19 pandemic, this much is clear: the fashion industry will forever be transformed by this global crisis. If our business is ever to feel normal again, it will be a new normal, with once grand department stores now shuttered or shrunken, and many designers and brands sadly gone for good. And the fashion show system? As glorious as individual shows can be, as a whole they’re unsustainable—excessive in terms of cost, time, and waste.

Over the last two weeks, designers, business leaders, and fashion’s governing bodies have begun setting out proposals for change. This Memorial Day weekend—precisely a year after his resort 2020 show at Rome’s Musei Capitolini, the acme of “the old way of doing things”—Gucci’s Alessandro Michele took to his Instagram account to tease some of the shifts he’s been considering. Extending over seven screens and including dated ruminations, the post dubbed “Notes from the Silence” suggests a new way forward for Gucci, one that rejects seasonal shows in favor of more personal expression. From May 2: “Now we know that too furious was our doing, too insidious was our ride… This is why I decided to build a new path... away from deadlines that the industry consolidated...and an excessive performativity that today really has no raison d’etre.” From May 3: “We will meet just twice a year, to share the chapters of a new story. Irregular, joyful, and absolutely free chapters, which will be written blending rules and genres, feeding on new spaces, linguistic codes, and communication platforms.”

The designer hosted a “virtual gathering” to elaborate on his written statements. The technical challenges of simultaneous translation aside, he was poetic and optimistic. “We should not start over in the same way, breathless. It’s been too difficult. I want to start over with a breath of fresh air, with oxygen,” he shared. Some of the details remain to be worked out, but an outline of the next year or so is starting to take shape. Gucci’s two shows—down from the current five—are to be co-ed and scheduled in the autumn and the spring, however a September show is now unlikely. Michele hinted that there might not be enough time to be ready. Regarding the potential for a live audience at those shows, that, too, is in question pending government regulations about gathering in groups. Resort, one of the five big shows Gucci usually produces, will be shot instead on his studio assistants. The resulting digital show, to be presented at Milan Digital Fashion Week on July 17, will act as a sort of “epilogue” for the house’s old way of doing things.

At least some of the uncertainty about the future stems from the fact that Gucci is just one brand in a globe-spanning ecosystem. Michele urged an “open dialogue” with other houses and fashion’s governing bodies. “Rewiring” the system, to borrow the language of one of the industry proposals that emerged earlier this month, will require coordination on a massive scale, both externally and internally. For Gucci’s part, Michele indicated that much of the responsibility will fall to Marco Bizzarri, the company’s President and CEO. Bizzarri has Gucci’s customers to consider, but also its 40 million social media followers. “The fashion world has become a sort of Woodstock, open to a huge audience,” Michele said. “We’re followed by many people who’ve never entered our stores. The community outside the company is scattered all over the world.”

The unspoken message of all this may be that fashion shows are not the be all and end all of consumer engagement that their massive expense would seem to suggest they are. That said, Michele is committed to them. “I’m passionate about fashion shows, but maybe we can be open to seeing them in a different way. This is a suggestion we’re receiving from our current experience,” he added, nodding at the journalists on the virtual call. The dialogue will continue. Meanwhile, one of the brand’s first post-COVID innovations is the upcoming launch of a gender fluid shopping section on Gucci.com called Gucci Mx.

Source: Vogue Runway

FASHIONADO