The idea of Memory

FALL 2016 MEN'S READY-TO-WEAR

MILAN, JANUARY 18, 2015

Gucci’s philosophy today sits somewhere between Walter Benjamin and Snoopy, between highbrow and low culture. That you’re thinking with your head and not with your groin is enough of a shift from the Gucci of yore, which was sexy and ’70s, and seldom anything else. Benjamin hypothesized to the conclusion that history is written by the victors—which is key, I think, to understanding what Gucci is going through at the moment. (…) It is, however, terribly Gucci, and remarkably Italian.“There is a stereotype of Italian fashion, of houses like Gucci,” said Michele thoughtfully. “We have more than people think. I have a lot of things in my mind from the archive, but I don’t want to be a prisoner of the archive. It’s always the ‘idea’ that I have of the archive . . .” The idea of memory, rather than the actuality of history. And Gucci these days has no walls—genderless, seasonless, formal and casual mixed. It’s about a freedom. And that is, I think, why so many people find it invigorating, and ignore perhaps the fact that, as individual garments, Michele is offering not invention but reinvention, revival, and rehash.

by ALEXANDER FURY - Vogue.com