This evening, Seoul's grand Gyeongbokgung Palace was not just the venue for the Gucci cruise show, but an intersection of all of Gucci's worlds. If you think about the brand – a famed, multifarious collage made by several creative directors over the years – this 14th Century monument from South Korea's Joseon period makes perfect sense. It is ornate and wedding cake-like; a baubled foil to the cold steel of surrounding skyscrapers. It is a survivor of invasion and fires. It has housed many different people, and served many different purposes. And this evening, it served as a runway filled with the portals to Gucci's many, many dimensions: Tom Ford Gucci, Studio Gucci, old world Gucci and future Gucci all spliced and diced and finely contained in one runway show that honoured its host city (over at Vogue a “jaded Seoulite” in Monica Kim “felt her breath sucked away” at the spectacle of it all).
But despite leaving the brand late last year, Alessandro Michele's Gucci is still there. There was no big cultural reset. His influence on Gucci is just as hallowed as all the creative directors that came before him (and, no doubt, will be respected by the recently installed designer-elect in Sabato De Sarno, an alum of Prada, Dolce & Gabbana and Valentino). And like Gyeongbokgung Palace serving as a reflection of the many different Guccis, they were all there in one It bag-in-waiting.
Except it wasn't really a bag. Not in the traditional sense. It was… a skateboard. Held by a model in one of the show's opening looks (and repeated throughout the collection), it was metallic, lacquered, smart; digital-savvy catnip for fashion's armchair pundits, and a succinct illustration of where Gucci, the brand, is at. At a crossroads, yes. But the space in-between creative directors isn't necessarily a confused one, or a No Man's Land: it's a melting pot in which the studio team – who served as chief designers for the final time – can mix up the archives and celebrate Gucci's legacy.
A skateboard bag might not seem as Classic Gucci™ as, say, a horsebit loafer or Tom Ford's well-regrammed hardware G-string. But there was the sleek monochrome sexiness of Tom Ford, and the oddity of Alessandro Michele, and the celebration of Gucci as one of the few brands that unashamedly and successfully embraced the hype movement. There's prior sold-out collabs with Adidas and The North Face. And the bag references the many prior nods to skatewear in general: the A/W ‘20 show debuted an ‘alt-grunge’ collection that made a fey reimagining of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, while a more recent Gucci Grip watch campaign openly admitted the skateboarding influence in official release notes.
Gucci is a brand that's able to commercialise the weirdness, too. Where the runway was once a lofty, abstract projection of simpler clothes to come, the leading Italian marque was able to airdrop that strangeness into real life. It's not that difficult to imagine a fashionhead carrying a skateboard It bag on any street of any capital.
At tonight's show in Gyeongbokgung Palace, Gucci leaned into its multiverse of madness. This is an Everything Everywhere All At Once sort of fashion. And while that may become more fine-tuned upon the next creative director's debut, for now, Gucci played to the weird and nailed its flag to the mast of a strange skateboard hybrid It bag. Which, perhaps, is the most Gucci thing a brand could do.
