Alessandro Michele Debuts Gucci Collection On Runway Of Persian Carpets

The new creative director for luxury fashion powerhouse Gucci made a bold statement in his American debut in the New York Arts District. Alessandro Michele has been working with the Italian design house for more than a decade, when he worked under the legendary Tom Ford. Now that Michele is in charge, the designer is going his own way. The clothes and stick-thin models may have taken center stage during the June show, but the designer also turned heads with a unique artistic choice — the models flaunted new fashions on a runway lined with antique Persian carpets and Oriental Rugs.

Before mentioning any of the styles or celebrity spectators (“50 Shades of Grey” star Dakota Johnson was in the front row), Vogue commented on the strange choice Michele made in setting the stage with such a non-traditional runway.

“It’s clear that the Roman-born designer is intent on steering the brand in a completely new direction. With crumbling brickwork and antique Persian rugs piled on the floor end to end, the show space in Chelsea today looked like something out of a Wes Anderson movie, and was a million miles away from a Milanese milieu.”

Obviously, you don’t ascend to the role of Creative Director at Gucci without a discerning eye. The “knife-pleated lace skirts,” “faded pastel shades,” and “long-sleeved evening dresses that tumbled to the floor” looked absolutely stunning on the classic patterned rugs. Although fashion houses are often known for eschewing the old for the new, the choice of decor belied a stylistic throwback to another time. The earliest Persian carpets date all the way back to 641 CE, setting a classic tone for the thoroughly modern event.

Refinery29 quipped that Michele “Borrows From Weirdo Women Of Yore,” while also admitting that it’s his very “willingness to throw a wart into the mix that makes this collection feel braver than any fit-and-flare that’s come down the runway, and far more interesting at that.”