Alessandro Michele has been seeing and feeling double to create his most emotionally demanding show to date. Michele had been thinking about his “mothers” (his mother and her twin sister who raised him), and about the “otherness” that he believes we all have inside ourselves. It’s a concept he’s been exploring in therapy: “Once I started going to my therapist, she knew I am very much afraid of events,” Michele told us in the post-show press conference backstage. “I told her once I had fun [at an event] and she told me you were with your other self, that’s why you had fun.” That co-existence with our inner truths has been playing on Michele’s mind, and so, this season he presented Gucci Twinsburg.

A single file Gucci gang glided through a stainless steel silver space, in front of a wall of portraits, which eventually lifted to reveal the same show had been playing out on the other side with the models’ twin siblings. For the finale, the twins came together hand in hand. It was a poignant moment - for Michele too. “I was crying… I cry very rarely but maybe it was appropriate at the end to cry for me. It was very intense and now working is becoming more intense for me.” It is less about the clothes for Michele this season - although they were genius level Gucci - and more about the weight of the world right now. “I think it’s much more complex now, doing this job. There’s a time when you ask yourself, why am I doing this? When somebody is talking about war, politics are a catastrophe, the situation of the planet is a disaster… Human beings, the only tool we have, the only weapon we have is to imagine something else and make it happen.”

Gucci always takes us on a fantastical escape, and while it still was infused with those ever present theatrical moments such as silver strings cascading from cheekbones and flashes of animal prints, there was also a sense of grounded confidence in the collection. A new take on a Guccified suit was one of the best things we’ve seen this season: skinny tailored trousers sliced at the thigh and suspended. Super Gucci. That sense of companionship in twinship that Michele so admires cheekily played out with little Gucci gremlins peeking out of bags and clinging to skirts. Why the gremlin? “A pop reference to a small animal that can transform, that can become very naughty… the fear of your evil self.” 

As the chosen twins came down the runway, hand in hand, their new Gucci bags by their sides with that sleek new curved flap (“inspired by the equestrian, aristocracy, the DNA of the brand”) they felt empowered in their togetherness. Unbreakable. The music was their theme, brilliantly heart-wrenching, specially composed for the House. The familiar, fabulously gritty voice of Marianne Faithfull rang out: “you can’t tell which is which, you do’t know who you’re talking to because we’re identical, identical, identical, identical twins… opposite utterly different.”She was reading the ‘Identical Twins’ nursery rhyme the Olsen twins used to perform when they were little (find it on YouTube), read by Faithfull to create “a Shakespeare style”.

Ultimately, this collection was about freedom, with the word ‘Fuori!’ translating to ‘Out!’ stamped on looks, referencing the first homosexual organisation founded in Italy in 1971. “I think it’s the right time to talk about this again, the notion of freedom and being free has always been part of my work. I feel the need to be free, ever since my birth… I try to show the humanity that sometimes we want to take away from clothes. We say fashion - this word hides plenty of things. In the past few years it has become evident that clothes are not enough.” This was freedom, it was family, and we were deep inside the heart of Michele’s Gucci.

gucci.com