Gucci Cosmogonie at Castel del Monte: the collection inspired by the constellations.
For Gucci’s latest collection, Alessandro Michele looked to the stars and delivered “Cosmogonies”, a galactic array of looks inspired by the stars and magical myths.
“I was looking for a place that would give grace to the mythological,” he explained. “It’s a place where measurements and proportions intersect as if by magic, in the same way, that the measurements of collars and jackets can somehow be magical.” For Michele, the mystery of Castel del Monte resonates with the enigmatic genesis of his creativity, “which operates through the need to bring together constellations of signs and symbols.”
“Cosmogonie” or “Cosmogony,” translated from French, refers to the study of the universe, a lofty goal that only a designer like Alessandro Michele could take on as the theme of his latest Gucci collection.
“If any thinker was able to hold together things so distant in time and space, rearticulating them into bursting constellations, it was Walter Benjamin. To this man, who could not survive without his quotes, my gratitude,” said Michele.
The show was set in a 13th-century castle, and Alessandro Michele’s starting point was the German philosopher Walter Benjamin.
“His remarkable ability to illuminate otherwise invisible connections made Benjamin a paragon of constellation thinkers,” the designer wrote.
“A term that he turns into a philosophical concept. What may seem, at first glance, atomized and scattered like the stars in the sky, through Benjamin’s eyes becomes a set of complicities, a connective structure that illuminates the darkness through the epiphany of a constellation.”
Under projections representing stars and galaxies, every look exuded elegance, glamour, glitter and colour. As the show progressed, the colour black was almost in the background, and a range of vibrant colours and prints of all kinds suddenly started appearing.
Velvet dresses, ruffled collars, knee-high boots, designs that showed inches of skin, capes and big hats. The looks included extremely sheer garments with rhinestone details that resembled stars.
Of course, the event was attended by stars such as actresses Dakota Johnson, Jodie Turner-Smith, Elle Fanning and musical artists Lana Del Rey and Måneskin. The show was a proposal to a journey into space.