Sometimes the big takeaway from a fashion show isn’t what was worn but how it was worn. Take, for example, today’s Gucci show, Demna’s latest missive from the storied Italian luxury label. Shown in a creamy space intended to evoke the designer’s vision for the brand’s new retail outposts, the collection was a taut, clear-eyed riff on a spate of highly specific sartorial archetypes (old-money equestrians, Italian sexpots, grunge-y prepsters) and inspired, in part, by the Savoy Hotel as a crossroads of different aesthetic sensibilities.
Hidden among the slouchy pants, cropped leather jackets, sharp-shouldered blazers, and, later, the generously cut tailoring was, for men, a passage of everyday sportswear separates. Think: a rugby polo over a funnel-neck sweater, or a turtleneck under a button-up under a zippered hoodie. Plopped right on top of each look was a lightweight jacket—maybe a long mackintosh, a blouson-style leather coat or biker jacket, or a cropped Harrington. And in a succession of 11 guys (many sporting a striking smoky eye), the jackets were worn sliding down the body, half drooping off the torso, with one shoulder covered and the other exposed. (They also all had their hands jammed in their pockets.)
A word that I’ve been hearing a lot of fashion folk use lately is “gesture,” as in people looking to recreate the gesture of some attractive attitude in their designs. I’m usually flummoxed by the phrase, but here its meaning is clear. To leave a jacket pouring down one shoulder instantly projects a sense of motion and insouciance: someone dressing in haste, leaving somewhere in a hurry, looking both rushed and utterly casual.
Demna, of course, is no stranger to shoulder-play like this—my favorite collection of his to date remains his debut at Balenciaga, where he showed a series of anoraks, puffers, and hoodies with collars that stood away from the body, suspended like a half-peeled banana.
Photo: Monica Feudi / Indigital.tv
Photo: Monica Feudi / Indigital.tv
As we enter a season of unreliable weather, when temperatures can shift dramatically in the space of an afternoon, isn’t the idea of half-wearing a jacket somewhat appealing? A perfect in-between gesture (!) for in-between seasons. It reminds me a little of the mania for draping your coat over your shoulders (what we dubbed “coat slinging”) in the early 2010s—another easy, offhand look that was, in fact, totally premeditated.
The same can be said here: it’s an intentional stylistic flourish meant to conjure the feeling of nonchalance, of carelessness. It’s not every day you see a new way to wear an old staple; leave it to Demna to find one.
