LONOKA: Gucci. New Era

Fashion loves a debut. The fashion world finds itself standing back spectating on the sudden arrival of a multicolored, sparkly, life-affirming parade. Alessandro Michele is in the spotlight as the Pied Piper of change—a risk-taker and revolutionary who has not so much wiped the slate clean at Gucci as doodled all over it, colored it in, stuck sequins on it, and tied it up with a grosgrain bow. His Spring lineup was a very much amplified, filled-in, decorated, and dazzling accessorized extension of the girly, geeky, vintage-like collection that he launched last season in the incongruously dark nightclubby surroundings of the show space the company had been using since the ’90s, when Tom Ford was grooving the disco ’70s at the brand. As Michele said backstage, surrounded by a visual kaleidoscope of glittery, flower-embroidered satin, chiffon, Lurex knits, brocades, and trimmings.

"It’s a big trip! Of course I am interested in personal style and quirkiness. There are things here that look vintage, but don’t really exist as vintage - it’s the illusion of it. I’m not nostalgic! I’d like to shake it up again. I love the idea that a dress has a memory" - Alessandro Michele said.

His Gucci girl is an ingenue with an eccentric side, one who looks as though she's picked out her clothes at estate sales and vintage stores, and mixed them magpie-style. He’s worked on the design team since 2002, when Tom Ford was at the helm, it’s clear that the Roman-born designer is intent on steering the brand in a completely new direction.

No high heels. No disco beat. No red carpet dressing. With one fell gesture of a fur-lined, bedroom slipper–like, backless loafer, he swept all that off the runway. His set even hinted at an urge take a step beyond the runway and into reality—it was designed to evoke a subway tunnel. “Contemporary fashion,” he said “is something that can happen on the street.” Say again? No sexiness? He shook his head, smiling. “No! Sensuality is what’s inside.”

What’s inside Michele himself is a feeling for fresh-faced, virtually makeup-free girls in glasses wearing A-line, pleated, leather midi skirts, vintage-genre silk dresses, and fluttery floral chiffons.

Michele's Gucci is colorful, eccentric, and unabashedly retro. That's an aristocratic kind of glamour.

Michele said he has been thinking about the Renaissance and the 1970s—both great eras for Italy in their own ways—but that his whole point is to express personality and emotion through his clothes.