When Alessandro Michele became creative director at Valentino in March 2024, he released a statement praising the brand and its “collective history,” a history that included a rich “cultural and symbolic heritage.” What did he mean by that, and why would he emphasize the past when taking the reins of a fashion brand that has contemporary relevance? When he presented his first collection and unveiled his first advertising campaign for Valentino, his meaning was evident. Images of the “Avant les Débuts” campaign clearly referenced advertisements from Valentino’s archive, namely, from the 1960s featuring Marisa Berenson in the famous White Collection. The collective history of the brand was mined for present visual messaging and designs.
Michele’s visual citations to past Valentino campaigns and designs were not out of character. We have all seen what we might call nostalgia edits in fashion and pop culture. Did you know that Paris and Nicole are back for a Simple Life encore? As of New Year’s Day, you can even pick up a “re-edition” of the “iconic collaboration” between Louis Vuitton and Takashi Murakami.
Never immune to a nostalgia edit, mining the symbolism inherited from a brand’s past was central to Michele’s designs at Gucci. His debut for the Kering-owned brand in 2015 was recognized as much for his signature bohemian, eccentric, and androgynous style as it was for his subtle tweaking of Gucci’s own heritage. Who can forget Michele’s take on the classic Gucci loafer (a signature design of the brand since 1953, according to brand lore), which added fur and transformed the shoe into a slide? Vogue deemed it the “It Shoe of Fall 2015.”
Of course, if you are Alessandro Michele, taking inspiration from a fashion brand’s archive and nostalgia rooted in a brand’s cultural and symbolic heritage are not just a reference to the past. Mixing visual cues and design nods to Tom Ford’s 1990s velvet suits for Gucci with the Gucci horsebit and other equestrian codes (a whip! a harness!) to create a consumer frenzy on a brand’s 100th birthday is all in a day’s work.
And again, why stop at one brand’s cultural and symbolic heritage, when you can create contemporary, hot fashion with two? (More on the intellectual property implications of co-branding here.)
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