Spending 72 hours with designer-turned-Gucci-model, Harris Reed

ICYMI, Gucci’s 2019 Cruise show happened this week in the French city of Arles and boasted plenty of religious and occult references. Set in a Roman cemetery, the catwalk was literally set ablaze as the models walked in Alessandro Michele’s 114 looks inspired by Catholicism and the afterlife, with a dash of 80s disco-punk influence.

One of Michele’s invité d’honneur on the runway was young designer Harris Reed, a 21-year-old Central Saint Martins student. After being discovered by Harry Styles’s stylist who dressed the singer in his romantic designs, Reed caught the eye of Michele – one of his favourite designers – and shared with us his experience of the show. “I kept telling myself, ‘Harris this is really happening, this isn’t a dream’,” the young designer told us. “It was truly a mix of my deepest fantasies and darkest desires fully coming to fruition.”  

Dressed in a silver sequined shirt and long pink kimono, Reed was moved to tears as he walked through the flames and old tombs: “It was overwhelming to think that someone had made the exact accepting space I had always envisioned.”

We asked Reed to illustrate a diary of his first experience as a Gucci model. Click through the gallery above to follow his journey in the South of France from his arrival at his hotel to the end of the show.