Introducing #GucciPrêtÀPorter, Alessandro Michele’s Campaign Vision For AW19

Alessandro Michele’s tenure at Gucci has been defined by the myriad pools of inspiration he dips in and out of as a hyper-historicist and designer. For the house’s autumn/winter 2019 campaign, it was not a specific strand of mythology or folklore that sparked the creative director’s imagination, his cross-cultural research took him to the beginning of prêt-à-porter, and the iconic imagery that spanned the decades afterwards in its heyday.

In the Glen Luchford-lensed pictures, “fashion in its ready-to-wear version once more makes the headlines, becomes the protagonist, as might have happened 30 years ago, when sensational headlines on covers were devoted to a must-have hemline, a seasonal colour, a fabric,” writes the house in the campaign notes.

#GucciPrêtÀPorter continues the conversation around Michele’s autumn/winter 2019 collection and the show, which was staged in an LED-walled dome erected within the brand’s Milanese headquarters. Voguefashion critic Anders Christian Madsen likened the setting to the “non-stop, ever-accumulating regurgitation of information and impressions we experience every day and every second on social media,” and Michele commented on the current culture for over-sharing: “Young generations should arm up and defend the beauty of knowledge,” he told Vogue. “Personally, I always try to defend myself against those who want to take away knowledge and culture. I have a fear that beauty is disappearing; the beauty of the knowledge we have conquered in the past.”

The autumn/winter 2019 campaign, with art direction by Christopher Simmonds, is just the current chapter of Michele’s ultra-referential Gucci storybook that is about igniting imagination away from our screens.