Gucci puts masks on display

(ANSA) - Milan, February 21 - Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele put a series of masks on display in his latest runway show, which took place Wednesday in an elliptical space with mirrored surfaces and walls punctured with 120,000 LED lights.
    "Clothes are our mask, that reveal and hide together," Michele said.
    "I came across an auction of French collars from the late 1600s dedicated to dogs who were faithful in protecting their owners, and I put them together with the masks, to show that even a kind soul can be forced to say, 'Careful, I'm here, and I want to defend myself". Even I had to do so and I was a kind young man," Michele said.
    The runway show was filled with collars and quills, and ear covers inspired by the 1968 Vogue photo shoot by Eduardo Costa "Fashion Fiction #1".
    "We're all wild animals, bound by rules, and our lives are filled with fears," Michele said after the show.
    "We are blind, fearful, dazed, and we ourselves are beasts with others," he said.
    Beasts, perhaps, but sensitive beasts, with a need to defend that which seems to escape us.
    In this sense, Michele admits that "fashion is always politics".
    "I try to stay far from politics, but fashion is part of the culture that comes at you, without needing to go into a book shop. Perhaps unconsciously my work is a political act with which I try to defend myself from those who want to take culture away from me," he said.
    The runway show displayed 44 men's and 43 women's designs.
    The looks, which included tailored suits with stitched logos, a fur stole, a pullover with ironic writing, a lamè dress with lace stockings and kneepads, wide trousers tucked into sandals, and an inside-out jacket with metallic pleats, all held together in a new, condensed balance with respect to previous shows.
    It wasn't by chance that the show's invitation was a papier-mache hermaphrodite mask.
    "The ancient world sang of the wonders of being between two sexes. Nowadays it's one of the most difficult masks to wear.
    But being hybrid is a blessing," Michele said.