Gucci Ready-To-Wear....Fashionweekly...On Fow24news.com

We are in a simulacrum of a ’70s nightclub or—given the boudoir-pink velvet banquettes, mirrors, and miles of matching carpet—maybe it’s a high-class pick-up joint. A white mist imitates cigarette smoke. It feels like being in a movie set.But something is not right. “You know, when you are in love, in a nightclub, but you are not in the right place, the person is not there?” said Alessandro Michele, in a backstage preview, minutes before his strangely solemn Gucci creatures set their gigantically platformed feet on the plush pink runway.....
Oh: So we’re speaking of being all dressed up, yet brokenhearted at the same time?

Maybe. There was one tiered evening dress that had a giant red embroidered heart, pierced with a jeweled dagger on the front, and the numerals “XXV” above it, which is Michele’s lucky number and part of the name of his Instagram account (@lallo25). Yet Michele’s whole point is never to dwell on a single point—it’s a phantasmagoria of vintage 20th-century pop-culture references, bound up with relics of the Renaissance that he created here. One pathway to understanding this most surreal of his collections might be the fact that he met Elton John at the GQ Men of the Year awards, and he’s a fan. Hence the opening look, with its tweedy jacket and flares, and the extra-big ’70s glitter-framed shades. Florence Welch was reading the poems of William Blake on the soundtrack.

Then again, you would be rewarded by looking at the gigantically platformed footwear, and learning that Renaissance Venice also comes into it. Before the show, Michele knelt and picked up one example with a black patent 5-inch wedge and a black velvet upper, which was embroidered with a gold snake. “Prostitutes in Venice used to wear these,” he exclaimed. The necessities of glam streetwalking in a city of floods meant that elevated pattens, or chopines, soon became elaborately stylish and beautifully fashioned in the 15th century.

Cut to the present, and Michele is dismantling the shoe, to demonstrate that it is actually a two-for-one purchase. “You see, there is a flat slipper inside, one you can wear separately.” The tender surprise of the rose bud–printed insole of this shoe tells as much about Michele as anything else. The lining didn’t strictly need to be there, but to discover it in a world of generically bland corners-cut product is a wonder, and a wonderful selling point. The inspiration is seen through into every product.

Back to the whole, though. There were fairy-tale chiffon dresses tipped in zigzag sparkle. Eighties Ungaro–meets–New Wave cocktailwear in taffeta that was frilled, floral ruched, and straight out of the Ivana Trump era. Fragile dresses, deliberately aged, which looked as if they were relics of the Depression. And on one extraordinary long red dress, a sash spelling out the words “Hollywood Forever Cemetery.”

That’s a funny thing to put in a fashion show. Michele explained that he had been to Los Angeles and was invited to Linda Ramone’s commemorative celebration party for her late husband, Johnny, at the cemetery. Surreal, yes. In the context of that, it was tempting to wonder whether the whey-faced, expressionless models were actually of this world, or the next. Either way, what they were wearing was of near haute couture level, from the hats through the embroideries, down to the gilded, rose-strewn insoles.