a look back at alessandro michele's top moments at gucci

Alessandro Michele exits Gucci after 20 years

On November 23, 2022, Gucci announced that Alessandro Michele is stepping down as creative director of the Italian luxury brand. Michele has spent the last 20 years of his career with the iconic fashion house, serving at the creative helm since 2015. Prior to that, Michele was involved in the company’s footwear and accessories department.

‘There are times when paths part ways because of the different perspectives each one of us may have,’ Alessandro Michele shared on an Instagram post announcing his departure. ‘Today an extraordinary journey ends for me, lasting more than twenty years, within a company to which I have tirelessly dedicated all my love and creative passion. During this long period Gucci has been my home, my adopted family. To this extended family, to all the individuals, who have looked after and supported it, I send my most sincere thanks, my biggest and most heartfelt embrace. Together with them I have wished, dreamed, imagined. Without them, none of what I have built would have been possible. To them goes my most sincerest wish: may you continue to cultivate your dreams, the subtle and intangible matter that makes life worth living. May you continue to nourish yourselves with poetic and inclusive imagery, remaining faithful to your values. May you always live by your passions, propelled by the wind of freedom.’

Alessandro Michele bows after the Gucci Twinsburg fashion show | all images courtesy of Gucci, unless stated otherwise

How Alessandro Michele reinvented Gucci

Since his appointment as creative director, Michele’s groundbreaking creativity has been instrumental in making the brand what it is today. The designer is responsible for reinventing the Italian heritage label into a representative of inclusivity, promoting the cultural conversation around gender, sexual identity, and race. The eccentric, androgynous, and glamorous aesthetic he introduced is now considered Gucci’s trademark. Michele is also responsible for growing the brand’s sales exponentially.

‘I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to meet Alessandro at the end of 2014, since then we have had the pleasure to work closely together as Gucci has charted its successful path over these last eight years. I would like to thank him for his 20 years of commitment to Gucci and for his vision, devotion, and unconditional love for this unique House during his tenure as Creative Director.’ said Marco Bizzarri, President and CEO of Gucci.

‘The road that Gucci and Alessandro walked together over the past years is unique and will remain as an outstanding moment in the history of the House. I am grateful to Alessandro for bringing so much of himself in this adventure. His passion, his imagination, his ingenuity and his culture put Gucci center stage, where its place is. I wish him a great next chapter in his creative journey.’ added François-Henri Pinault, Chairman & CEO of Kering, the global luxury group that manages Gucci.

While everyone is curious to see what comes next for the Italian designer, designboom takes a look back at some of his most iconic moments during his time at Gucci.

‘today an extraordinary journey ends for me,’ shares Alessandro Michele in an instagram post announcing his departure

blurring the lines between masculine and feminine

Alessandro Michele caused a stir with his first collection, the Gucci Men’s Fall/Winter 2015-16. In this collection, the Italian designer made a 180-degree turnaround in terms of the brand’s foundations, which until then had been based on a minimalist, sophisticated. The change was evident right from the first look on the runway: a male model wearing a bright red pussy bow blouse. The feminine touch in the men’s collection was representative of Michele’s decision to take Gucci into more experimental territory, blurring the lines between masculine and feminine. From the garments to the accessories and styling of the models, androgyny was emphasized in this collection, marking a turning point for the famed fashion house.

Gucci Men’s Fall/Winter 2015-16 collection

Gucci Art Walls

The iconic Gucci Art Walls project was launched in 2017 under the creative direction of Alessandro Michele, who decided to create a collaboration between street art and the famous Gucci aesthetic. The Gucci Art Walls showcased the brand’s collections, including the Gucci x The North Face 2020 collaboration, and sometimes even conveyed a deeper meaning. The first murals appeared on the streets of Milan and New York, but the campaign has since gone global with murals in Australia, Hong Kong, and Shanghai.

Gucci art wall in Milan promoting the ‘Gucci Hallucination’ campaign | image via @ignasi

revealed in 2018, in Hong Kong, the Gucci Art Wall features an image from the Gucci Pre Fall ’18 campaign

the Gucci x The North Face 2020 collab art wall in Milan | image by Daniel Shea

a Rennaissance-inspired Gucci Hallucination

Dubbed ‘Gucci Hallucination’, the brand’s Spring/Summer 2018 campaign fused the works of old masters with the colorful and printed designs of Alessandro Michele. Created in collaboration with illustrator Ignasi Monreal, the series highlighted Michele’s Renaissance-inspired vision, which he infused into the Gucci identity. The collection contributed to the whimsical aesthetic of the luxury house, which is known to blend physical and imaginary elements.

Gucci Spring/Summer 2018 campaign

Severed heads, baby dragons, and a third eye

One of the most memorable Gucci moments so far is the 2018 Fall/Winter fashion show, which featured a rather odd accessory – a severed head – and that wasn’t the only oddity. In the show, which drew on ideas about posthumanism and hybridization, creative director Alessandro Michele sent models with horns and third eyes, baby dragons, and even cyborgs down the runway. The show served as a continuation of the fantasy world from which Michele draws his inspiration. To create the stunning replicas included in the presentation, Gucci turned to the techno-artists at Makinarium, a Rome-based factory that creates custom special and visual effects.

Gucci Fall/Winter 2018 fashion show

twinning!

At Gucci’s Spring/Summer 2023 show, Michele once again surprised the audience by sending sixty-eight pairs of identical twins down the runway in matching looks. The collection emphasized the beauty of twins and featured dazzling gowns with cutouts, tailored silk dresses with cherry blossom embroidery, and colorful spangly jackets – all in pairs. With his fascination for asymmetrical reciprocity, Alessandro Michele presented his latest fashion show on two runways, each a mirror image of the other.

In his notes on the show, the creative director wrote, ‘As if by magic, clothes duplicate. They seem to lose their status of singularity. The effect is alienating and ambiguous. Almost a rift in the idea of identity, and then, the revelation: the same clothes emanate different qualities on seemingly identical bodies. Fashion, after all, lives on serial multiplications that don’t hamper the most genuine expression of every possible individuality.’

Gucci’s Spring/Summer 2023 Twinsburg fashion show