Fashion show goers know that there are runways that move you to tears or that fill you with an unexpected sense of joy or with utter feelings of disappointment.
Alessandro Michele's shows for Gucci have the power to leave people disoriented: this strange puzzling feeling is usually produced by the many layered references scattered in the venue, the clothes and accessories.
You may think you have just spotted a reference to a painting in a dress when you realise the design following it is actually hinting at a film costume, but, then the cinematic mood turns into pure urban style, filtered through a myriad of cultural references.
Last Wednesday the feeling was the same: the new A/W 18 men and women's wear collection, showcased during Milan Fashion Week, was presented in a set that reproduced a surgical theatre with several operating tables placed under harsh hospital lights, while the audience sat in waiting-area plastic chairs.
At first you may have thought this was a reference to plastic surgery and an impossible quest for beauty, but then a model entered carrying a perfect reproduction of her severed head.
While this was a perfect Instagram moment, confusion creeped in - was this going to be some kind of horror show à la Dario Argento (after all Michele is a fan)?
The designs that followed actually did not confirm the horror derivation, but combined more themes together in 90 confounding and astonishing looks.
There were classic Gucci florals mismatched with checkerboard prints; glam '80s dresses with big shoulders were juxtaposed to blanket coats; turquoise metallic tops with extravagant bows seemed to be an antidote to sensible yet boring '70s suits.
Classic Chanel tweed jackets were shredded at the hems and sprouted chains of sequins, while the New York Yankees logo was applied to elegant coats and formal jackets (Gucci partnered with Major League Baseball on a line of accessories and clothing, so this was all official).
Long gowns evoked in a sleeve or in the embellishments a sort of refined Renaissance style, obviously destroyed by the geek librarian look that followed them.
Accessories inclouded bejewelled brooches of tigers and long necklaces; trainers looked terribly ugly, but embellished with fake gems and crystals again of the sort you may spot in a Renaissance painting.
Other accessories included Russian babushka headscarves and knitted balaclavas (is that going to be a trend come next Autumn?) that at times looked more like post-plastic surgery bandages and only covered the lips.
The bright colours of the headdresses evoked in some cases the masks of the Mexican Lucha Libre or the transformative power of Leigh Bowery's costumes, though when matched with coats or knitted pieces they seemed to reference the Inuit attire or the pictures of masquerades or masked religious celebrations taken in Brazil, Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, Benin and Nigeria by Phyllis Galembo.
In some cases though the balaclavas were transformed with jewels in the fashion of Berber women.
There were more hints at transnational style with visions of China in a pagoda headdress and in mint green silk pyjamas and Japan being represented by characters from '80s animated manga series replicated on jumpers and coats.
What to do about the blue Sikh turbans? Some may find them offensive, after all a Sikh turban is an article of faith, but Michele also used a heavily embroidered stole, a vestment from the Catholic liturgy, to accessorise one look.
Besides, another model in a red velvet dress looked like a perverted version of a Medieval nun (is Michele trying to get into the new Met Museum exhibition "Heavenly Bodies"?), so his main intent seemed combining all these references together rather than offending anybody's religious sensibility.
In some cases the accessories were integrated into the models' bodies: a young man sprouted for example a pair of faun-like horns, while a model in a cute pink dress had a disturbing third eye on her forehead.
Another model carried a rubber red and black striped snake of the kind that Michele made famous since becoming Gucci's Creative Director; but there were also a pet baby dragon and a cute chameleon.
The explanation behind all this Gucci madness was produced in the show notes and in a press conference that elaborated on Michele's rather convoluted inspirations.
The designer moved indeed from Professor Donna J. Haraway's 1984 essay "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century" to create these hybrid characters or post-human "Gucci cyborgs".
The final idea was to play with dichotomies such as "normal/abnormal", "human/machine" and "human/animal" and present a humanity in constant transformation.
According to Michele this modern metamorphosis may happen via means of communication, social media, plastic surgery or just clothes: he indeed acts like a wicked Dr Frankenstein, stitching together two looks in one or combining two identities in an entirely new one.
The nude transparent tulle wraps donned by some of the models on their looks were indeed supposed to be signs of these metamorphoses (and not replicas of the laundry bags in Margiela's S/S 12 collection... View this photo).
Yet in Michele's delirious remix it is almost too easy to spot some references and ideas especially if you sit down and worked like a forensic scientist: the models accessorising their looks with pets seemed new versions of ladies portrayed during the Renaissance with exotic, fantastic or symbolical animals like Raphael's Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn or Leonardo Da Vinci's Lady with an Ermine. Andrea Solari's Cleopatra may instead be the inspiration for the model with the snake.
His models carrying heads - symbols of young people trying to forge an identity for themselves in a rather confusing world - could almost be seen as glammed up versions of cephalophore saints like St Denis, St John The Baptist or Saint Valerie. In the same way as the model carrying the baby dragon seemed a modern reinterpretation not of a character out of a fantasy saga, but of St Margaret of Antioch, often portrayed with the dragon that swallowed her and that she defeated.
Even the electric blue turbans may have an arty derivation, evoking Jan Van Eyck's Man in Blue Turban, while it is difficult not to spot in the ample white collars decorating the black jackets and tops links with the attire of the men and women portrayed in Dutch paintings (think about Rembrandt's Portrait of Maria Trip).
There were also cinematic hints (after all Michele studied costume design at the Academy of Costume and Fashion in Rome): from the Paramount logo gown and the Russ Meyer's "Faster, Pussycat, Kill! Kill!" top, to Old Hollywood gowns and designs that called to mind Theda Bara as Cleopatra.
The religious references also conjured up visions of Danilo Donati's costumes for Fellini's "Roma", while the luscious ruby red gowns called to mind the sensuality of the costumes in Matteo Garrone's "The Tale of Tales".
There was actually a strong connection with this film as the special effects in the show - that is the severed heads, third eye, and the fake animals - were courtesy of Rome-based company Makinarium, that also did the special effects for "The Tale of Tales".
So there is logic in this madness, but there are also other points to make: in the case of this show the clothes became secondary to the special effects as if they weren't important.
In a way they aren't since, rather than designing, Michele appropriates, remixes, reinvents, regenerates, re-edits and styles together all sorts of eras and inspirations (consider Gucci's floral scarves - they are still the same ones favoured by Princess Grace of Monaco, but they may be embellished with crystallised chains or matched with a varsity jacket).
This is what differentiates Michele from other designers: in the past we may have seen people like Miuccia Prada getting one designer coat from a vintage shop and recreating it in a new version.
Michele's main skill stands in recombining more than one era, painting, artwork, film, obscure reference, book, garment and style in one look like a mad surgeon, in an endlessly post-modernist act of unapologetically stealing and recollaging things together. In a way it is the amount of references that gets people lost and confuses them.
The modus operandi behind this multi-layered exercise that confuses most people is dictated by optimism and by Michele's belief in possibilities and hopes. That sounds a bit childish, especially considering the state of our world.
Locked in an ivory tower from which he creates glammed up versions of Renaissance and Medieval gowns, Michele risks of living a utopia in which he may think to be speaking to the entire world, while he is catering for celebrities and selfie-crazed influencers.
There are more practical plans for the future, though: Gucci has pledged to donate $500,000 to the Gun-Control March for Our Lives rally planned in Washington next month organised by the survivors of the massacre in Parkland, Fla., where a gunman killed 17 people on 14th February. Maybe there are hopes Michele will leave at some point the ivory tower - with or without his pet dragon - to rejoin the masses.
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