When Alessandro Michele came to Los Angeles for the first time 20 years ago, he hated it. “I didn’t understand the city, there was no city…no square; I couldn’t walk. I thought it was not beautiful,” the designer said during an interview backstage ahead of his runway show for Gucci on Hollywood Boulevard Tuesday night. “And now I’m totally in love.”
“This show is a declaration of love for the city, for California, for the United States. After years of going back and forth, I started to find places and friends, and this land is pretty fascinating because it’s full of dreams and dreamers.”
Michele came to consider Hollywood a mythological place. “After the Greek gods, it’s the second chapter,” he said, noting that his mother, who worked in film, was the one who first introduced him to the silver-screen classics. “I grew up with all the stories and faces,” he said. “And like the Greek gods, they are inside of us even if we’re not conscious of it. When you want to be beautiful, you think about Marilyn Monroe and Jean Harlow.”
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Hollywood is also part of the making of the Gucci myth, from the street-style images taken by photographer Ron Galella of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and others in the ’70s, to Lady Gaga and Adam Driver starring in the upcoming “The House of Gucci” film opening Nov. 24. (More on that later.)
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If Hollywood is the realm of gods, Hollywood Boulevard is the American Olympus, as he called it.
“I remember the first time I came here, I was in front of the stars and Shirley Temple’s handprints and Jean Harlow’s. It was unbelievable. And the [Grauman’s] Chinese Theatre, you think in the beginning of the century they built this exotic building. I like to go back to the fantasy of that time.”
“Vertigo” and “All About Eve” were favorite films he watched over and over growing up. And he still has a love of old Hollywood, as seen in the noir-ish “Love Parade” invitations — evidence packets containing a lipstick and cocktail napkin scrawled with the date, time, address and his signature.
“There’s something creepy and fascinating about L.A. It’s not just the sun, it’s also the dark side. I was thinking about Marilyn Monroe, an appointment with a Venus and you don’t know if it will be love or murder,” he laughed.
Monroe is a fascinating and tragic figure for the designer.
“I was going through a book of her drawings and poems, and she was talking about her body, the way she felt about herself, and I was thinking how much has changed from that Hollywood to this one, it’s pretty unbelievable.”
Naturally, when Michele landed in L.A. last week, the newly opened Academy Museum of Motion Pictures was on the top of his list. “I get more inspired by costume design than fashion design,” he said. During a visit to the museum, he stood in front of Dorothy’s ruby slippers, made by Adrian. “That ‘Wizard of Oz’ room is like the Sistine Chapel,” he said.
(Michele made his own version of the famous footwear for Harry Styles to wear on stage for his Halloween show. “His Dorothy was unbelievable, not for my costumes, but the idea he asked to be Dorothy. It is totally another era.…He’s brave,” the designer said.)
Back in the costume gallery, he was also obsessed with Shirley Temple’s silver sequined and rhinestone dress and starry bow tiara created by costume designer Gwen Wakeling for the 1938 film “Little Miss Broadway.” “The bow on the tiara, I did a million of that bow and tried to replicate exactly that,” Michele said.
He also marveled at William Travilla’s red sequined gowns for Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” “I was looking at the sequins and the rough way they didn’t care, but in another way they were perfect.…There’s something about it that makes me feel curious. They care less about the fabric and more about the idea.”
Clothes that build character, not blur it into fashion or trend, perhaps.
“It’s almost the story of the aesthetic of this city. People dress how they feel, not just for fashion, but for representation of ego, and personality; it’s about human beings.”
His devotion to individualism guided his approach to the Love Parade runway show. “It’s about Hollywood outside the stage and in the street, mixing with people,” he said of how celebrities Jared Leto, Jodie Turner-Smith, Jeremy Pope, St. Vincent, Miranda July and Macaulay Culkin — yes Macaulay Culkin — walked among the mortals.
“He is so powerful and different and he has gone through a lot. I think it’s beautiful to put on the catwalk human beings,” Michele said of choosing the fallen star.
Gucci will have another brush with Hollywood, albeit not one of its own scripting, when MGM’s “House of Gucci” hits theaters. Director Ridley Scott was at the runway show, and the brand is inviting guests to a studio screening of the film later this month at the Academy Museum. But Gucci had no involvement in the production aside from lending a few costumes.
“I didn’t watch it, but I think the most beautiful thing about the movie is it proves that Gucci is pop,” said Michele, who admits to wanting to direct his own feature film one day. “I don’t care if it’s a good movie and maybe it’s not, but it proves Gucci can be everything.
“Nobody did the movie of Louis Vuitton because Gucci is pop with a pop history, and for us, it makes sense. The roots of the brand are Hollywood stars. When they became famous, they started to buy things in New York and Rome when Cinecittà was big. After the pandemic, I’m looking again inside the roots. We are not like an old French brand, or related to monarchy. As Italians, we found the monarchy and the royalty in Hollywood. Being here is like being home and starting again the trip of Guccio Gucci.”
Where will Gucci be after another 100 years?
“From the beginning when I started, I tried to push a different kind of conversation. I understood…it’s not just a boutique or a pair of shoes, it’s a platform, a stage, and there is something very interesting in the strength of the brand. It will be big; we will talk to people more and more. I get the impression that politicians are no longer capable of playing the game. So music and art are trying to interpret the needs of people. For me, I would love to see Gucci be like a big channel.”
Its own Hollywood studio, perhaps?
SEE ALSO:
Gucci Love Parade Honors Hollywood as American Olympus
‘House of Gucci’ Reveals New Trailer and Posters Ahead of Release