The good news is, this isn’t just the last era of Balenciaga, regurgitated. But I can’t quite tell how Gucci it is, either, perhaps because we all — or at least I do — have a recency bias due to Alessandro Michele’s interpretation being so unmistakable. If the questline here is, “What IS Gucci,” then I guess everyone is gonna figure that out together. There is some gorgeous work on the last four slides, and dotted in between, but there’s also a lot that isn’t saying much at all.
Demna framed the clothes, literally in fact, as being 38 archetypes, many of which are not that distinguishable from each other, like “The Star” vs. “The Diva” vs. “The Drama Queen,” for example. His “The Nerd” is way more Expensive Hipster Whose Parents Are Rock Stars and He’s Trying To Model. His “The Lad” and “The Bastard,” the latter of which DID make me laugh out loud, are just in glorified bikini bottoms. “The Introvert” is for some reason flashing his pelvic bone. If nothing else, he should totally whittle this down into a tight Tarot deck and sell it.
