Alessandro Michele looks to the City of Angels in all its glitzy glory for a collection that melds the seduction of old Hollywood and modern-day streetwear.

In one form or another, the idea of glamour has always been synonymous with Gucci. From its jet-set roots as a luggage brand to the recent film adaptation, 'House of Gucci', which featured Lady Gaga, the house has had no trouble keeping its name in the spotlight. So it seems fitting that for Spring/Summer 2022, Gucci finally returned to the place where the very concept of glamour originated.

Gucci Blondie bag

For Alessandro Michele, his reason for centring the collection around Hollywood looked to his own past, his upbringing to be exact. He recalls being a young boy in his humble childhood home in Rome, as his mother, an assistant at a production company would tell him stories about Tinseltown. &ldquo;Mum worked in the film industry as an assistant in a production company. I remember all the stories she told me, and the details and the sparkles, about that dream factory,&rdquo; he reveals in the show notes. &ldquo;There were the black satin gloves of Rita Hayworth and Veronica Lake&rsquo;s velvet hair, as well as the bewitching allure of Rock Hudson and Kim Novak&rsquo;s dizzying transformative power. Everything felt like a fairy tale.&rdquo;

To make that fairy tale a reality, he chose the Hollywood Boulevard to stage the show, shutting it down for one night to show his epic collection. It brought out some of the entertainment industry&rsquo;s brightest stars: Gwyneth Paltrow, Dakota Johnson and Jared Leto, as well as Anjelica Huston and Diane Keaton, silver-screen legends in their own right.

The collection, however, was not an exercise in nostalgia. Michele instead looked to the other side of Los Angeles &ndash; the athletic, streetwear loving side of the city to modernise the tropes of old-world glamour.
It came in the form of day-glow performance mixed with traditional suiting, a lace gown contradicted with cowboy boots, and a twin-set rendered in the print of a souvenir shirt. It reconciled the polarising edges of the Los Angeles style and put its eclectic contradictions on full display.

And then there is the element of lust. For it wouldn&rsquo;t be an Alessandro Michele production without the suggestion of something more provocative bubbling up. Of the place that inspired the collection, Michele says: &ldquo;Hollywood is, after all, a Greek temple populated by pagan divinities.&rdquo; While perhaps not strictly paganistic, the element of kink, in the form of sex-toy jewellery and flashes of latex, were welcome bits of naughtiness. They gave the cast of characters in his silver screen fairytale a very human sense of desire. Those exposed underpinnings and patterned thigh-high stockings all made sense, somehow, in this homage to Hollywood in its entirety, R-rated grit included.

Meet the Blondie, Gucci&rsquo;s latest bag that just oozes glamour. A fitting accompaniment to Alessandro Michele&rsquo;s tribute to Hollywood, the saddle-shaped flap bag comes in a messenger version and a shoulder bag style. The bag prominently features a medallion of large interlocking G&rsquo;s from the 1970s that lend it a vintage charm.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND STYLING Gregory Woo
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In the Spotlight: Gucci's Love Parade Collection and Its New Blondie Bag

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