NOW AND THEN: Gucci may be shaking up the fashion system with coed shows, but its chief executive Marco Bizzarri and creative director Alessandro Michele are dead set against see-now-buy-now.
The two men muse on multiple industry shifts in a 13,000-word article penned by Jonathan Wingfield — and illustrated with 50 pages of photos by Juergen Teller — in the next issue of System Magazine.
“Has anyone actually asked the customer if they want to have something available directly after the show? You hear that three bags are going to be released tomorrow in five shops, so you produce 15 bags. How many customers are you going to satisfy with that? Fifteen!” Bizzarri tells the biannual title. “Moving forward, if you want to stay away from fast fashion, I think personally we need to go in a completely opposite direction with what is being talked about.”
The executive and Michele are united about the importance of fashion shows — to a point.
“From a branding standpoint, the show represents only a fraction of our business, and the impact you actually have on the consumer is super, super tiny. I mean, what about the pre-collection?” Bizzarri says. “That is just as important as the show. So let us use the show to tell a story, and then if we need to do something to be closer to the consumer, let’s make sure that the shops today are no longer these mausoleums where you are afraid to enter.”
Adds Michele: “I love fashion shows: they’re the moment when you can give soul to the clothes. Otherwise, it is just a skirt. Fashion is about the dream and without the dream fashion doesn’t exist anymore. So I believe more and more in the fashion show, and I think that fashion needs to be more fashionable than ever before.”
The issue makes its debut Tuesday at Dover Street Market and Colette before rolling out to newsstands on May 9.
SARA DAL MONTE STYLE 