Now it is a certainty: Covid and everything it has involved have shaken up the fashion system and the results are already being seen. On the one hand a profound crisis of fast fashion chains with closed stores, turnover at historic lows, stocks accumulated in warehouses, on the other a position taken by luxury brands, determined to radically change approaches and production methods (we have already talked about the Open Letter to the Fashion Industry manifesto wanted by Dries Van Noten) towards a more marked sustainability.
In this sense, Gucci has also been showing for some time its intention to move towards increasingly ethical production, attentive to the environment and workers’ rights; their Gucci Equilibrium platform was created to explain and provide updates on the social and environmental practices of the brand with direct links to the policies of the company and the group as a whole.
The creative director of Gucci, Alessandro Michele, not even a month ago, has announced that he wants to eliminate three appointments from the calendar of the fashion shows because “making 5 shows is no longer acceptable”; also for Michele the time has come to slow down by giving “oxygen even to the little ones, because the system allows only the big ones to run”.
Confirmation of the direction taken is ‘Gucci Off The Grid’, the brand’s first sustainable line made using only organic recycled materials from renewable materials; the collection, which includes ready-to-wear items, accessories, footwear and luggage, all genderless as it is in Michele’s style, has an exceptional testimonial, Jane Fonda, who at 82 years of age does not lose her fighting spirit by dedicating herself to environmental struggle (a few months ago she had been arrested for protesting against climate change).
One of the materials used for the collection is Econyl, the regenerated nylon produced by the Italian Aquafil, now chosen by many brands both for accessories such as bags and backpacks, and for clothing and swimwear.
And also the setting of the ‘Gucci Off The Grid’ campaign is themed, with a community that moves to a treehouse in the heart of a metropolis surrounded by concrete and glass skyscrapers trying to live, in fact, ‘off the grid ‘.
Alessandro Michele says of the collection: “I imagined that we could all build together, a bit like children playing in the park, a tree house in the center of a metropolis, because we all need to build this house or find out that the planet exists even where it seems to us that it is not there or that it is far away ”.
