Gucci Goes Seasonless As Coronavirus Changes the Fashion Industry

The luxury fashion house bids farewell to the fashion week calendar.

Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele announced that the luxury fashion house will no longer follow the traditional fashion week calendar moving forward. In a series of diary entries posted on Michele’s Instagram page titled “Notes from the Silence,” the designer said that Gucci will reduce its number of shows from five to two, displaying “seasonless” co-ed collections only twice a year.

The designer stated that the fashion week calendar is now obsolete, adding that he hopes to “abandon the worn-out ritual of seasonalities and shows to regain a new candence.” As the post suggests, this decision stems from Michele’s growing unease about the hectic fashion week system, with its excessive waste, speed, and cost, hindering creativity and also raising major environmental concerns.

“I would like to leave behind the paraphernalia of leitmotifs that colonized our prior world: cruise, pre-fall, spring-summer, fall-winter,” he wrote. “I think these are stale and underfed words.”

The fashion industry has taken a considerable hit during the coronavirus pandemic. After the cancellation of men’s and couture fashion weeks in June and July and the “up in the air” state of September fashion weeks, several fashion houses have begun to rethink how the industry will operate after the pandemic, both for safety reasons and taking into account the environmental impact. Gucci’s seasonless move is a huge step towards a more sustainable fashion industry and will significantly reduce material waste and travel for shows.

On Monday, Michele hosted a virtual conference from his studio in Rome to share his thoughts on the decision. “We should not start over in the same way, breathless. It’s been too difficult,” he said. “I want to start over with a breath of fresh air, with oxygen.”

Although the two shows are set for the fall and the spring, a September show may be too soon for Gucci. However, with this sudden but necessary shift, will other major brands follow in these footsteps and change the fashion game for good?

You can find his Instagram post below:

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*DIARIO*

A post shared by Alessandro Michele (@alessandro_michele) on

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