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TIMELESS
FINNIES THE JEWELLER
MIRACLE
MAN
ALESSANDRO MICHELE HAS TURNED GUCCI FROM A BRAND TIREDLY REHASHING ITS GREATEST HITS TO ONE OF THE MOST INTERESTING FASHION BRANDS AROUND TODAY. AND HE’S WORKED THE SAME MAGIC ON THE WATCHES AND JEWELLERY TOO, AS LAURA MCCREDDIE-DOAK EXPLAINS
It used to be that the phrase “fashion watch” was used in a slightly dismissive manner, implying that fashion houses really can’t make timepieces of substance; that they are just used as line extensions to allow more people to buy into the brand.
If ever there was a brand that has subverted that notion it is Gucci. Since the 1970s, when the brand brought out its first watch collection, it has been an integral part of the house, mirroring the codes of its ready-to-wear collections and, with some details, such as the bamboo-bezelled watches, even employing the same craftsmen.
As interwoven as the two strands of the business has been, it has never been as obvious as it has now been since Alessandro Michele took the role of creative director.
After his standout womenswear show in February 2015 featuring strange- looking bohemian girls bedecked in what looked like the finds from their rich grandmother’s attic, if their grandmother had once been a princess in ancient Rome, there were questions, at Baselworld two months later, as to whether Michele would be working the same magic on the brand’s watches and jewellery.
The answer, which was given at the fair a year later, was a resounding yes. Gone were the bamboo bezels and horsebit bracelets and in their places, as illustrated in the fabulous Le Marché des Merveilles collection, were bees, hearts, stars, snakes and lions. The Gucci colours of red and white were there but coated in plexiglass, on top of which was a see-through quartz dial. All of this was accompanied by a campaign that had all the dreamy references of the ready-to- wear collections; those same beautifully ethereal girls who looked as though they had wandered in from a 1920s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream put on by a group of aristocrat bohemians at a house party.
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