FROM FASHION

IS THE FASHION SYSTEM RUNNING TOO FAST?

Alessandro Michele is leaving his role as creative director at Gucci and Raf Simons brand is closing his eponymous label. Too much importance to numbers (which must keep on growing) and less to creativity?

Angelo Ruggeri

November 2022, a month of reasoning for fashion. Important ones, I might add. Two unexpected shocks in less than two weeks have shaken the international fashion world. The visionary designer Alessandro Michele has left his role as creative director at Maison Gucci after more than seven years. Enormously successful years if one analyses the numbers, the great stylistic targets reached and the values shared with the new generations. “There are times when paths diverge due to the different perspectives each one of us may have,” said Alessandro Michele in a statement about his leaving the Kering group. “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 sincere wish: may you continue to cultivate your dreams, the subtle and intangible

matter that makes life worth living. May you continue to nurish yourselves with poetic and inclusive imagery, remaining faithful to your values. May you always live by your passions, propelled by the wind of freedom.” What are the reasons of this unexpected departure? According to rumors, his creativity was good, but not great; sales did not shine as before; his style was considered a little too static. And the group, always according to rumors, wanted to increase revenues. In a few seconds, seven years of stylistic achievements, spectacular product placements (like those with Måneskin and Harry Styles), of values shouted on the catwalk, have been forgotten. Did numbers win out over creativity? Another recent example. Always in November, Raf Simons announced in a surprise press release that he was shuttering his namesake brand after a creative journey lasted 27 years. Business was good, the community of customers and fans was strong, but perhaps the goals (also economic) were too difficult to reach (since April 2020, the Belgian designer has also been co-creative director with Miuccia Prada of Prada). Here too, did the 'fast and ruthless' numbers win out over creativity? Surely yet another episode on which to reflect.

Above: Fashion designers Raf Simons and Alessandro Michele