Gucci unveiled the ‘Aria’ collection in collaboration with Balenciaga, to celebrate the fashion house’s 100th anniversary.
Creative Director Alessandro Michele made models walk down the runway in a film-set film-set version of London’s Savoy Hotel, where fashion house founder Guccio Gucci got the inspiration to return home to Florence and open his own leather goods shop, specializing in travel bags that he had admired working as a bellhop. A medley of Gucci-themed pop songs was played in the background throughout to bring out the aesthetic of the show.
“Gucci was born under some kind of constellation because the power it holds is nearly inexplicable,” Michele told in a video press conference.
Michele brought back iconic pieces from previous Gucci eras, and mixed them with Balenciaga’s signature elements, making it one celebratory collection. Take a look at the few of the menswear pieces from the collection.
The collaborative collection featured blazers fur jackets and accessories mingle with hats branded with a commemorative “100” and some “Savoy Club”-emblazoned items.
Watch the fashion show below.
This was the first collection of 2021 for Gucci, who left the fashion calendar and had announced that is committed to only present two collections a year. The digital fashion show is stuck strictly to the runway format during a pandemic year of experimentation that has all but shut down in-person shows.
Last year, the Italian fashion house’s creative director Michele announced in a virtual press conference that the Italian luxury brand was reducing the number of fashion shows it holds each year from five to two. Michele wrote in a diary entry posted by the brand’s Instagram account.
“I think these are stale and underfed words … clothes should have a longer life than that which these words attribute to them,” Michele said in a statement.
