Before sex, the straitjacket?

The Gucci show that closed Milan Fashion Week on Sunday afternoon came as something of a surprise, though not for the reasons anyone would have guessed.

It was not, for example, surprising because Alessandro Michele, the creative director famed for his embrace of sequins and sports memorabilia and old lady lunch suits and underground rockers — and pretty much all things, all at once — did an about-face to restraint. Though he did, relatively speaking.

It was not because of any celebrity who showed up, though there were a number: Iggy Pop, ASAP Rocky, Sienna Miller, Jared Leto, Jeremy O Harris, Gucci Mane.

It was because guests entered a room bathed in red light, strafed by four moving walkways, and were guided to seats under a ceiling speckled by stars. On either end were arched doorways shut tight by rolling steel garage doors. Was it an oven, some wondered? A red light district?

Then the lights went up, the walkways started moving, and out came the models — barefoot, staring catatonically ahead, in white clothing that resembled nothing so much as straitjackets of many styles.

There were straitjackets that looked like giant coveralls, straitjacket smocks, straitjacket anoraks. Straitjackets that buttoned up, laced up and buckled up. There were 20 in all, including one worn by a nonbinary model named Ayesha Tan Jones who, instead of keeping hands down like all the other models, held them up to display the words “mental health is not fashion.”

Later the model, who uses the pronoun “they,” posted a photo of their protest on Instagram, along with a longer statement: “As an artist and model who has experienced my own struggles with mental health, along with family members and loved ones who have been affected by depression, anxiety, bipolar and schizophrenia, it is hurtful and insensitive for a major fashion house such as Gucci to use this imagery as a concept for a fleeting fashion moment.”

And it was, indeed, hard not to wonder: What was Michele thinking?

Especially because right after the last white-clothed figure rolled by, the lights flickered off and on, and an entirely different show began, one full of long black pleated gowns (black! from the man who has always rejected the dominance of the little black dress) left mostly transparent to display the body beneath; deep, scoop-neck leotard tops over skirts slit to the thigh; men’s coloured lounge looks flashing patches that read “Gucci Orgasmique,” “Kitten,” and “Eterotopia” (more later on this word, which seems like “eroticopia” but is not); and lingerie-inspired slip dresses that mixed lace and chiffon and oily black vinyl.

There were shift-like hostess dresses with a four-petal flower cut out around the centre of the breast bone and a bit of dominatrix business suiting. There was not much pattern, but there was a lot of color blocking. Accessories were mostly big sunglasses held on by a chunky chain and a few riding crops.

What was Michele thinking?

In the welcome note emailed to attendees, the designer had name-checked Michel Foucault (source of Erterotopia or, in English, Herterotopia, and refers to Foucault’s worlds within worlds) and his theory of “biophysics” and the way the power of the dominant social group that “imposes conducts and paths, that prescribes thresholds of normality.” In an interview before the show, Michele had talked about a desire to challenge himself; to confront, for the first time, the idea of “sexiness” he had grown up with in the 1990s; to play with “elegance;” to “work with less.” To stop simply breaking all the rules, but to try understanding them. He had giggled that “fashion is like an orgasm: very quick and very deep.” Ummmm. If he says so.

Then, standing before a board tacked with photos of the run of show, he had gestured at the white series that began the collection and talked about it as a sort of wiping the slate clean; a way to have a fresh start; to break free.

So what was Michele thinking?

A lot, as always; he has a magpie mind that leaps from reference to inference to imagination with nary time for a breath; that alights on one idea only to fly off to another; that has found expression in a glorious jumble of enthusiastic self-expression.

It has given Gucci a new identity, one that has been adopted with alacrity by a growing tribe of acolytes, and has helped make the brand the envy of the market. But it has also gotten it in trouble before: First in 2018, when Michele set his show in an operating room and then sent models in what looked like Sikh turbans down his runway, provoking charges of cultural appropriation, and then, earlier this year, with a sweater that resembled blackface.

The latter mistake provoked apologies and systemic company change, including establishing a diversity and inclusion council. Some of their advisers, including Dapper Dan, were on the front row of the show.

What was Michele thinking?

“I wanted to show how society today can have the ability to confine individuality and that Gucci can be the antidote,” he said later. “For me, the show was the journey from conformity to freedom and creativity. Uniforms, utilitarian clothes, such straitjackets, were included in the fashion show as the most extreme version of restriction imposed by society and those who control it. These clothes were a statement for the fashion show and part of a performance.” Given the show was partly about freedom, Gucci felt the model should be free to protest.

Hari Nef, a trans actress, who was also at the show, wrote on Instagram that she saw it as “more a provocative reminder of submission than a glamorisation of insanity.”

And perhaps the mere fact the conversation exists is a good thing. It is part of fashion’s job to provoke; to challenge conventional wisdom and forms of identity; to give physical expression to emotional ideas.

The fact that Michele refused to rest on his come-one-come-all laurels and instead tried something newish, though it may disappoint some of his fans, gave his actual clothes, not the performance clothes, a more streamlined, less frenetic presence. They didn’t jabber all at once. They chose their moment — and that idea of choice (to protest, to reveal, to conceal) is powerful.

Michele thinks about that. Not enough designers seem to. It’s just that he doesn’t always seem to think it through.

© 2019 The New York Times Company