Sleazy and misogynistic, this was the worst Gucci show in years

Where to start with this Gucci collection? The worryingly thin models? The teeny chain “top” that barely covered someone’s nipples? The transparent, nylon-y looking pencil skirts worn with fishnet, red tights, the waistbands of which were carefully styled to be visible? The garish colours and teeny red-mesh bras with what looked like bondage choke collars attached?

Perhaps the team responsible for this collection, which was apparently inspired by the past 30 years of Gucci’s archives, truly thought this was ok. After all, the notorious  “heroin chic”  pictures of Kate Moss that landed her and photographer Corinne Day in hot water in 1993 and which shared a similar aesthetic with this show, have since featured in an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery.    

But presenting an infamous image in a museum with the aim of providing some kind of narrative to recent fashion history, is not the same as shoving something on a catwalk that fetishises the look of lean, desperate sex workers for contemporary consumers. Sleazy and misogynistic, this was bad look after bad look meeting utter tone deafness.

There was more – 98 per cent of the collection was a case study of expensive clothes made to look cheap. The other 2 per cent consisted of a chic beige trenchcoat, jeans, shirt and a couple of trouser suits – a strangely anachronistic reminder that this is one of the most successful luxury Italian brands of the past 30 years. Even more puzzling: the ugly bags, which probably were straight lifts from the early Noughties, an era of terrible accessories with clumsy hardware.

It’s certainly true that Gucci’s recently departed designer,  Alessandro Michele, was running out of steam with his geeky, 1970s schtick. It’s also worth remembering that his first collection for Gucci, back in 2015, was a complete volte face for the brand, and was considered a big risk at the time.

After eight years in the top job, during which he took Gucci from a dull, €181million a year workhorse to €10.5billion, Michele left suddenly at the end of 2022.

As it is, Sabato de Sarno, Gucci’s new creative director, who previously worked at Valentino, has barely been in situ a month. Gucci was at pains to stress this collection had been put together by the design team. Out they trooped at the end. What must they have made of the muted reception? A posse of influencers, some of them literally dressed as clowns in pierrot diamond patterns from the last Gucci collection, applauded enthusiastically, but the rest of the audience seemed to be wondering what happens next.

One thing’s for sure, Salma Hayek, the glamorous, high achieving actress/producer wife of Francois-Henri Pinault, CEO of Kering, the group that owns Gucci, will be hard pressed to find her next red carpet outfit here. Pinault has some challenges elsewhere too. Balenciaga, another of his brands, tripped into a news storm last autumn over an advertising campaign showing young children carrying “teddy-bear” handbags wearing what looked like bondage.

However, Pinault is an extraordinarily shrewd and bold leader of his brands. If he and Sabato work fast, they can rescue this by September. Meanwhile, the calculated risk taker in him may have decided that while the safe option with Gucci would have been to show a collection entirely composed of chic trench variations, this way, as usual, one of his brands has got everyone talking. 

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