Introducing...Gucci Liberty
For Gucci’s Autumn/Winter 2020 collection, the House worked with the Liberty Fabrics design studio and archive to bring nostalgic florals into a new fashion context
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Gucci Liberty
For Gucci’s Autumn/Winter 2020 collection, the House worked with the Liberty Fabrics design studio and archive to bring nostalgic florals into a new fashion context
Playful and free of constraints, Gucci’s Autumn/Winter 2020 collections see classic Liberty florals spun into gender-fluid accessories and ready to wear. Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele and his team worked with archivists in the Liberty Fabrics studio to select the prints, which appear on classic handbags, a puffer jacket, dresses and scarves – fresh new pieces tinged with nostalgia.
The House uses the evocative nature of Liberty prints to conjure memories in a playful interlayering between past, present and future – underscored by the prettiest florals. “The majority of the prints were from our classic collection, designed for Liberty by artists between the 1910s-1930s,” explains Liberty archivist Anna Buruma. “Iconic prints such as Poppy & Daisy and Elysian, both designed in the late 1910s, were recoloured. Other designs were redrawn by our in-house design studio to create unique prints for the Gucci Liberty collection.”
To present the final womenswear and menswear collections, Alessandro Michele explored the idea that beauty can appear, unpredictably and wonderfully imperfect, through the absence of control – letting the models create their own images at home. This need for instinctive, childlike creation coupled with a yearning to return to the familiar taps into a current mindset. Managing Director of Liberty Fabrics, Andrea Petochi, notes: “Some of the early flower designs feel spontaneously hand carved - abstract in a kind of childish way - which creates a garden of fantasy.” Classic Liberty prints offer “a return to a safe world made by natural beauty and human warmth, family or maternal love” and, in 2020, “caring to protect the pure and creative nature is the only way to protect the artistic truth of human nature too.”
