Gucci

With Alessandro Michele it’s never only about the clothes. And maybe that’s his secret in his still short tenure at Gucci where he has turned the fashion world upside down. Miuccia Prada loves to talk to the press after her shows but show notes are a big no-no to her. Michele has embraced them from day one to add another layer to his collections – philosophical, religious, and evolutionary. He challenges himself to align his shows and collections with more than just one idea. Yesterday his claim was that fashion is a religion and the runway show its holy ritual. Making guests enter through the backstage, showing the models getting dressed and then having them parade around the carrousel show space.

For men’s – which he showed separately – he was playing with stereotypes about masculinity like macho behavior and at which moment they take shape in a men’s life. This brought him to his own childhood. Well, a little boy might just put on his sister’s clothes in a playful attempt to explore the other sex. So the best clothes in yesterday’s show were the fetishistic pieces with leather straps holding the chest, which also channeled the dominatrix vibe from Spring.

Jil Sander

After a great men’s collection at Pitti Uomo in January, Lucie and Luke Meier continued to usher in the new decade with mega strong Jil Sander collections. The purity of their lines, which are essentially the DNA of the house, is more or less taken out of context with the use of fringes. From the beginning the Meiers have been using fringes to inject emotion. In a way their Jil Sander believes in handcraft and the time it takes to make a garment versus technical execution, which was part of the founder’s spirit. To show their range, the show invitation was a floral printed silk scarf, which came out as a beautiful below the knee dress in the show.