"A playground of emotions", thus the creative director of Gucci Alessandro Michele defines the immersive multimedia experience that for the 100th anniversary of the brand arrives in Florence celebrating the creative vision of the maison: it is Gucci Garden Archetypes, an exploration of kaleidoscopic vision of the designer between music, art, travel, popular culture. From Tokyo to Los Angeles, from Northern Soul to May '68, the exhibition curated by Michele himself features mythical arks builders, intergalactic explorers, horses, dancers, angels and aliens. “I thought it was interesting to accompany people in these first six years of travel, inviting them to cross the imaginary, the narrative, the unexpected, the twist, the glitter.I created a playground of emotions that are the same as advertising campaigns, because these are the most explicit story of my vision. " , says Alessandro Michele.
Look at the photos
Gucci Garden Archetypes, the maison's imagery in 10 photos - Lifestyle
Cutting-edge technology, elaborate handwork and an innovative interior design: all to create a sequence of different immersive worlds, designed by Archivio Personal, the design studio that transformed Alessandro Michele's vision into narrative spaces that reflect and enhance the uniqueness of its aesthetics.
The exhibition is accessed through what appears to be a behind-the-scenes operations center;
visitors find themselves in front of a split-screen that sends real-time images of the exhibition they are about to see.
Inside, a succession of thematic spaces and corridors give life to the intricate world-building of 15 Gucci campaigns.
Gucci Beauty's 'bold, bright and beautiful' lipstick campaign is transformed into a multi-screen extravaganza in which you are dazzled on all sides by the flawed smile of punk singer Dani Miller, who has completely upset the conventions of the world of beauty.
Viewers also enter Gucci Bloom's fragrant floral paradise, a hidden imaginary garden that becomes a place of freedom for the campaign's three stars, actress Dakota Johnson, feminist artist and photographer Petra Collins and actress, model and woman. trans Hari Nef. Charismatic and unconventional, this group of women proposed for the first time the new and inclusive vision of femininity according to Alessandro Michele.
In one room, a circular projection creates the immersive feeling of being "on the dance floor" with the Northern Soul dancers who took part in the Pre-Fall 2017 campaign. The casting, made up entirely of Black people, is described by Michele as a " homage to the elegance and creativity of the Black culture ". By putting it in the foreground, the campaign responded to the need for a fairer representation of the Black community in the fashion scene.
The tribute of the Pre-Fall 2018 campaign to the Parisian youth of 'May' 68 ', on the occasion of the 50th anniversary, is evoked by a staircase covered with graffiti, which connects the two floors of the spaces. For Spring-Summer 2018, the interdisciplinary artist Ignasi Monreal has created, in almost 900 hours of painstaking work, a gigantic hand-painted mural that covers the walls and ceiling. Elsewhere, 150,000 sequins cover the walls in a blinding reinterpretation of the Tokyo trip from the Autumn-Winter 2016 campaign, while a museum-style diorama guides the creatures, aliens and explorers of space travel. of the Fall-Winter 2017 campaign.
The obsessive collections of the Fall-Winter 2018 campaign instead fill an earth-sky space where visitors are surrounded by shelves filled with thousands of butterflies in the display cases, hundreds of cuckoo clocks, colored wigs and sneakers. Guests can also find themselves in the bathroom of the 80s nightclub of the Berlin set of the Spring-Summer 2016 campaign, and behind the scenes of a sprawling modernist villa, that of the 'party of the century' of the Cruise 2020 campaign.
Visitors can also brave a labyrinth of mirrors to enter a stately home like the one in the Cruise 2016 campaign, step into the epic world of Cruise 2019's arche builder community, and take a ride on the Los Angeles subway in an identical carriage. to the one that appeared in the Fall-Winter 2015 campaign, the first of Alessandro Michele.
The Gucci Garden Archetypes catalog will be the continuation of this
journey into Alessandro Michele's imagination
, a real inventory of the creativity on display and a collection of images and surprises, all accompanied by original texts by personalities from the cultural scene such as the critic Achille Bonito Oliva, the philosopher Emanuele Coccia, the artist and researcher Anna Franceschini, the curator Antwaun Sargent and the sustainability and culture advisor Shaway Yeh.
Consistent with Gucci's work in digital research, a virtual tour will also be available on Gucci.com, offering the opportunity to visit the exhibition.
