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For its new collection “Overture of Something That Never Ended Collection”, Gucci opts for 7 short episodes. The dedicated online page guccifest.com showcases them from November 16 to 22. This movie-series is born from the collaboration between creative director Alessandro Michele and film director Gus Van Sant.
The Gender Fluid Theme
In each short episode, Silvia Calderoni takes center stage. She perfectly embodies the ideal of the gender fluid person, thanks to the sharp features of her face and the extremely slender body. All these features are neither predictable nor stereotypical. Therefore, her image cannot be encaged into the common male or female appearances. The “nightly walk” episode shows exactly this concept, where Silvia wears a masculine-cut suit. Thus, her appearance clearly reflects a gender contamination in the dressing codes.
Several reflections on social issues dear to the brand enrich Silvia’s daily actions – such as going to the post office, having a coffee or visiting a vintage shop. Among them, gender identity and environmental responsibility.
While the viewer reads Silvia’s thoughts on a sheet of paper, Paul B. Preciado is talking during an interview at the background. He talks about the anatomical fiction of sex. The word fiction is used on purpose because it culturally distinguishes men from women. Thus, different labels such as hermaphrodites or intersex are passively assigned to anyone who does not conform to the “natural” distinction. A distinction that is indeed exploited as biological so as to oblige the binary identification with one category or another.
Following Preciado’s speech, he highlights how the concept of race played a primary role in legitimizing the action of colonialism. This is again a further system of social control and division. It is no coincidence that Gucci hires a culturally mixed cast, to open up to more possibilities of identification. Interestingly, linguistic differences coexist and mix confusing the listener. For instance, when an actor speaks in Italian the interlocutors reply in English or Chinese. This mixture of idioms stands for a clear celebration of multiculturalism in a full Roman setting.
The Cyclic Theme
When Silvia moves into a café, she talks to a friend about the image of the daisy. This image recreates the cyclical love and non-love game in our minds that all of us played once at least. This almost melancholy and bucolic image represents an unequivocal environmental damage, and is thus discouraged. This leads to Gucci’s commitment to reselling pieces on TheRealReal or using a Vintage Shop as an episode setting. It raises awareness on the theme of re- and upcycling in addition to adding a feeling of nostalgia towards the past.
The logic that Gucci conveys is a revolution with love as its main mission. Love is the only tool against any form of repression; where each one of us should behave a bit like a “monster” saying NO to the patriarchal and colonial logics.
Concerning the episodes, it’s interesting to see that they do not develop as a linear story, but they are more like sketches of daily life. This construction justifies the “never ended” theme of the collection, which is open and cyclical. It is a series that has neither the power nor the will to convey a predominant point of view, leaving room for free interpretation. Often a phrase of the song by Martin Gore appears
I just wanted to say that I could never forget the way you told me everything by saying nothing
In a Manner of Speaking, by Martin Gore
This sentence represents the series itself that speaks through the unspoken, and it goes out of any structure.
