In a lengthy series of Instagram posts this weekend, Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele announced the house’s plans to scrap seasons and show fashion collections twice yearly – or, as he put it, to “abandon the worn-out ritual of seasonalities and shows to regain a new cadence”, away from “an excessive performativity that today really has no raison d’être”.
Promising to ditch phrases like “cruise”, “pre-fall”, “spring-summer”, and ”autumn-winter”, his message – in the form of a lockdown diary – revealed that the coronavirus crisis has given him time to reflect on why he entered fashion in the first place, as well as his desires to push for change.
“For me, in my own small way, I feel the urgent need to change a lot of things in the way I work. I have always been professionally inclined to change, after all, bringing with me a natural and joyful creative restlessness. But this crisis has somehow amplified such transformative urgency, which can’t be deferred anymore”.
Michele further discussed humanity’s destructive power over nature (“we dominated and wounded it”) and of the importance of “a return to the essential and getting rid of the unnecessary”.
“At the end of the day,” he wrote, in a line that could well sum up the industry as a whole, “we were out of breath.” Gucci had previously shown around five collections a year, and in March was forced to cancel its San Francisco cruise show, originally slated for May.
As for when these two non-seasonal, potentially eco-minded fashion shows will be, remains to be seen. Read Michele’s full statement below, and head here to read WTF is going on in fashion right now, as the industry responds to the pandemic.