Gucci - spring 2009

Gucci’s press notes invoked "the new way in which youth and luxury can seamlessly coexist. " The notion that there might be a new generation hungry for her wares has been Frida Giannini’s career impetus. "We don’t care about the old folks talkin’ ‘bout the old style," indeed. Except it wasn’t that "old" catwalk classic that soundtracked her show. Instead, Giannini enlisted MGMT’s "Time to Pretend" ("this is our decision to live fast and die young") to help put her own thumbprint on the heritage of the house.

The Brooklyn duo’s florid style dictated the shape as well as the sound of the collection. The lean tailoring and the neat little leathers that Giannini loves were sneakily overtaken by a creeping jungle of tropical flora and fauna, embroidered, appliquéd, or airbrushed to spectacular effect. Even the shoes weren’t safe. Never mind the embroidered hibiscuses, they also had brightly colored heels of crocodile. Those same flowers were also embroidered on a python jacket, beaded on a biker jacket, and printed trailing up the legs of white jeans. They were so exuberantly, almost vulgarly, lush as to raise a smile. (Giannini did, after all, say that her definition of the collection was "happiness.")

She offered her Tropicana club kids jeans in dégradé shades of sunset or printed with palm fronds; shirts decorated with toucans and parrots; perforated-leather safari shorts…The guy in the parka and striped jeans, fresh off his Vespa, looked almost out of place. He was from Giannini’s old world. Now she has geographically relocated to a fantasyland of rich hippie/gypsy chic. Although the relative restraint of black-and-white jacquard tuxes with their tone-on-tone embroidery harked back to earlier collections when Frida was finding her way, the huge amethyst-and-malachite belt buckles she showed them with were definitely picking up signals from Planet MGMT.

by tim blanks

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