Gucci Cosmogonie

A sincere and devoted homage to thinker Walter Benjamin illuminated the night of 17 May 2022, beneath the constellations at the beautiful Castel del Monte. And one name dominated among an impeccably-dressed Maneskin and a pantheon of celebrities who had travelled to Puglia from around the world: Benjamin. Hannah Arendt dedicated to him her essay entitled The Angel of History, published in 1968, 28 years since his tragic death as the two fled the Nazi regime.

And this essay, based on the philosopher’s final thoughts, in turn inspired the thinking of Alessandro Michele, who attributes to Benjamin an extraordinary ability to unite past and present, History and Now, distant points in time and space, by weaving together ‘explosive constellations’. The collection was created as a tribute to this extraordinary man, compared to a pearl diver for his ability to collection quotations from the past, bringing them to the surface in the present as though they were pearls from the depths of the ocean. And perhaps it was precisely his complete inability to live while renouncing the thoughts he had collected that led him to his death.

Benjamin’s pragmatism and his intelligence in creating connections between quotations, turning them into profound and innovative thoughts, makes him in Michele’s designs the emblem of a creator of constellations. The Gucci pieces, presented as multiple cosmogonies, are dedicated to those who do not renounce their thoughts, those who do not live without the thoughts of others, those who weave history together while creating new constellations. The clothes in the show reverberated with glitz, stones, sparkling and psychedelic effects, in a whirl that conveyed all the energy of the present and the echoes of the past… as per the DNA of Gucci by Michele.