Gucci launches Vault vintage site during Milan Fashion Week
Vintage Gucci bags are displayed inside the new on-line concept store, called Gucci Vault, featuring refurbished vintage Gucci pieces and collections by young designers. The project was presented in Dazio del Ponente in Milan’s Parco Sempione, where a sampling of the items on sale were displayed during the Milan Fashion Week, in Milan, Italy, Saturday, Sept. 25, 2021. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)
MILAN (AP) — Fashion houses trying to figure out how to reach new eyeballs after the long ordeal of the pandemic have centered around a singular idea: collaborations.
Many are doing it, in big ways and small. Gucci, which famously “hacked” Balenciaga last season, is now launching an e-commerce site showcasing refurbished vintage Gucci products and capsule collections by young designers. Hatmaker Borsalino is collaborating with the French brand Ami Paris and the equestrian-inspired brand Acheval.
If the fashion industry is going to change, now is the moment, say insiders — even if the temptation to go back to old habits is great.
Highlights from the fourth day of Milan runway shows Saturday for next spring and summer:
GUCCI VAULT
Gucci on Saturday launched an e-commerce site featuring refurbished vintage Gucci pieces alongside capsule collections by young designers chosen by Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele.
Michele said the project was born out of his life-long obsession with collecting fashion, including Gucci items before he ever joined the brand.
“Yes, I do this work to tell stories. But I also do it because I truly love objects,’’ he told reporters in Milan.
The young designers featured included London-based Priya Ahluwalia. Of Nigerian and Indian descent, Ahluwalia’s upcycled collections have already found a broad audience ranging from sports figures like Lewis Hamilton to middle-aged hipsters.
“Completely out of the blue, I got a message from Gucci. I thought it was an advertisement or spam,’’ Ahluwalia said. “When I realized it was real, I was extremely happy.”
Michele said the brand has a vast network of sources for vintage Gucci, which it has been tapping to rebuild its archive. The launch includes a white Jackie bag meticulously cared for by its previous owner that he wanted to keep for himself.
Then, laughing, he said, “Who knows, maybe I will log on tonight and buy it myself!”
Gucci has stepped away from the Milan Fashion Week calendar, finding its own rhythms. Its next show is Nov. 3 in Los Angeles, coinciding with the 10th LACMA Art — Film Gala, which Gucci is sponsoring.
DOLCE&GABBANA LIGHTING UP FASHION WEEK
Dolce&Gabbana wanted to shine a light back on glamour with their latest collection — and they did. Their bedazzling looks shone a spotlight that could easily be visible from orbit.
The silhouette was unapologetically sexy, built around corsets, micro-mini dresses and skimpy lingerie, fundamental elements in the brand’s creative language.
This season, designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana went all out with light-refracting embellishments, covering garments in rhinestones, adding beading and indulging in metallic accents and fringe. Models walked down a mirrored runway under roving spotlights.
Densely bejeweled jackets contrasted with narrow camouflage cargo pants or distressed jeans. A series jackets had sculptured sleeves straight off the couture runway. Trousers were low-waisted, leaving room for studded lingerie to peek through.
The designers said the collection was a “reinterpretation of the aesthetic of the 2000s.” They paid tribute to Jennifer Lopez with a pair of J-Lo T-shirts.
Quieter moments were reserved for statement little black dresses with lace accents and open fronts revealing nearly sheer corsets, and even littler black body suits.
Shoes were stiletto sandals with laces, knee-high boots and mid-calf booties, which contributed a bit of a backup on the fast-tempo finale as models slowed down to descend the stairs. The boots came in satin, denim, camouflage and crocodile.
Each Dolce box handbag had a unique design.
Though in Milan for the show, the designers appeared virtually on a screen for their traditional post-show bow.
ARTHUR ARBESSER’S LOST AND FOUND
With the world ground to a near halt, Arthur Arbesser’s team primed their creative juices by recycling shipping boxes into cardboard flowers and crocheting fanciful hats.
The collection’s title “Lost and Found,” refers concretely to inspirations found in a family attic that spark happy memories, but it can also mean things lost and found in the pandemic, like the joy of making things in quiet moments.
“I realized that it is so important to do something with your hands because you get a sort of satisfaction, and we need satisfaction,’’ Arbesser said.
In the wake of the pandemic, the Milan-based Austrian designer has happily given up the runway for more personal presentations, transforming a storefront in Milan’s tony luxury shopping district into a creative studio decorated with a bespoke mural and displaying a new line of table clothes along with his latest collection.
Details from the mural became a decoration on a dress pocket. The long romantic silhouettes contrasted with crop tops. A mini-dress in black-and-white check was paired with a boxy print shirt, while a short skirt in tapestry had a youthful appeal. Prints of the season include naive drawings, colored checkerboard prints with a pixel effect, alongside gingham, retro plaids and stripes.
“The most important thing to keep going,’’ Arbesser said. “We’re happy because we think that our own well-being and that of your team and the people around you is so important.”
BORSALINO’S TRAVEL DIARY
There’s nothing like a pandemic shutdown to rethink a business.
The 164-year-old Italian hatmaker Borsalino used the time to focus on new collaborations, extending the brand into leather goods and scarves through licensing deals, relaunching its digital presence, optimizing production and getting the kinks out of machinery that otherwise could be idled.
“It was a great break. We took decisions that weren’t easy to do before,’’ said Philippe Camperio, Haeres Equita’s principal behind Borsalino’s relaunch.
To reach new audiences and expand distribution, Borsalino has collaborated with Paris brand Ami on a simple cloche with a wavy brim, and with Acheval on a raffia capsule collection featuring ribbons with horse silhouettes. The website now includes tutorials on how to size and wear hats. And Borsalino is working with young designers at the Marangoni Fashion Institute to make hats part of their styling language.
The Spring/Summer 2022 collection launched this week is a journey through Japan, Italy and South American. Dark denim baseball caps and bucket hats are personalized with charms or Geisha prints for a Tokyo hip look. A hand-crocheted raffia hat represents Sicilian craftsmanship. And Ecuadorean influences come through on Panama hats with distinctive ribbons.
Every brand has a different response to how the pandemic has changed or challenged them.
“For us it is to embrace today’s values, to be socially responsible, which includes sustainability and the circular economy, and diversity in terms of attracting everyone,’’ said creative director Giacomo Santucci.
FERRAGAMO’S TALE OF SUMMER
The Ferragamo woman for next summer is understated in an easy-to-wear silhouette with sexy moments.
Smock dresses have a deep-revealing V and open backs, while more form-fitting wrap dresses featured suggestive slits. Trousers were loose-fitting harem pants with wrapped details, paired, for example, with a crisscross top.
“I wanted the collection to feel feminine and sensual” said design director Guillaume Meilland.
Menswear included knit combinations, low-waisted trousers with braided belts, and leg-baring shorts under a coat jacket.
For women, footwear revived the Vara and Varina ballerinas in new materials including rattan, and an open-toed sandal for him.
Brooke Shields, accompanied by daughter Grier Hency, had front-row seats, along with American actors Ashley Benson, Madelyn Cline, Ashton Sanders and Ross Butler.
Janty Yates on Dressing the ‘House of Gucci’
In seasons past, Gucci held a runway show on the first day of Milan Fashion Week. This season, however, the new collection is scheduled to debut in Los Angeles on Nov. 3 — not long before the Thanksgiving weekend release in movie theaters of “House of Gucci,” a film based on the true story of the killing of the former chief of the Italian fashion house, Maurizio Gucci, by his ex-wife, Patrizia Reggiani.
The movie, which stars Lady Gaga and Adam Driver, was directed by Ridley Scott, with costumes by his longtime collaborator, Janty Yates. Here Ms. Yates talks about the experience.
Image The costume designer Janty Yates. Credit… Kerry Brown
How long did it take to prepare and produce the costumes for this film?
We started six weeks of research and development during lockdown and then production from September, ahead of six months spent in Rome shooting and making the film earlier this year. The movie spanned a 20-year period in which fashion changed dramatically — 1975 to 1995 — so there had to be real range in the costumes, plus everything had to be made for L.G. [Ms. Yates’s nickname for Lady Gaga], Adam Driver and other actors like Jared Leto. Naturally I concentrated on the stars, but there was a cast of about 80 in total, and I also rented all the costumes for all the crowd and extras. I am completely responsible for all of it. The buck stops with me.
With Gucci bags and Dyson appliances, Evergrande wooed retail investors
Cranes stand next to unfinished residential buildings at the Evergrande Oasis, a housing complex developed by Evergrande Group, in Luoyang, China September 15, 2021. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins/File Photo
SHANGHAI, Sept 21 (Reuters) - Lured by the promise of yields approaching 12%, gifts such as Dyson air purifiers and Gucci bags, and the guarantee of China’s top-selling developer, tens of thousands of investors bought wealth management products through China Evergrande Group.
Now, many fear they may never get their investments back after the cash-strapped property developer recently stopped repaying some investors and set off global alarm bells over its massive debt.
Some have been protesting at Evergrande offices, refusing to accept the company’s plan to provide payment with discounted apartments, offices, stores and parking units, which it began to implement on Saturday. read more
“I bought from the property managers after seeing the ad in the elevator, as I trusted Evergrande for being a Fortune Global 500 company,” said the owner of an Evergrande property in the conglomerate’s home province of Guangdong surnamed Du.
“It’s immoral of Evergrande not to pay my hard-earned money back,” said the investor, who had put 650,000 yuan ($100,533) into Evergrande wealth management products (WMPs) last year at an interest rate of more than 7%.
More than 80,000 people – including employees, their families and friends as well as owners of Evergrande properties - bought WMPs that raised more than 100 billion yuan in the past five years, said a sales manager of Evergrande Wealth, launched in 2016 as a peer-to-peer (P2) online lending platform that originally was used to fund its property projects.
Some 40 billion yuan of the investments are outstanding, said the person, declining to be named as they were not authorised to speak with the media.
China Evergrande did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday, which was a public holiday in China.
With more than $300 billion in debt, Evergrande’s liquidity crisis rattled global markets this week. read more The company has vowed to repay WMP investors.
CHRISTMAS PROMOTION
China’s years-long effort to deleverage its economy has pushed companies to resort to off-balance sheet investments in search of funding.
After Beijing further capped debt levels of property developers last year, the most indebted players like Evergrande felt even more pressure to find new sources of capital to ease mounting liquidity stress, turning to employees, suppliers and clients for cash through commercial paper, trust and wealth management products.
Evergrande Wealth started to sell WMPs to individuals in 2019 after a regulatory crackdown led to a collapse of the P2P lending sector, said the sales manager and another Evergrande employee who bought the WMPs.
To attract investors, the sales manager offered gifts such as Dyson air purifiers and Gucci handbags to each person who bought more than 3 million yuan of WMPs during a Christmas promotion last year.
A product leaflet provided by the sales manager seen by Reuters showed the WMPs are categorised as fixed-income products suitable for “conservative investors seeking steady returns”.
‘DE-FACTO EVERGRANDE PRODUCT’
In two products sold last November, a construction company in Qingdao was looking to raise up to 10 million yuan with annualised yield of 7% in one and 20 million yuan with yields ranging from 7.8% to 9.5%, depending on the investment size, in another. Minimum investments were 100,000 yuan and 300,000 yuan, respectively.
Evergrande also usually offers additional yield up to 1.8% to certain investors, which can push returns to above 11% for a 12-month investment, said the sales manager.
Proceeds were to be used for Qingdao Lvye International Construction Co’s working capital, the documents showed. The firm could not be reached for comment during a public holiday.
Repayment would either come from the issuer’s income or from Evergrande Internet Information Service (Shenzhen) Co, a subsidiary that runs Evergrande Wealth and promises to cover the principal and interest if an issuer fails to repay, the prospectus said.
The sales manager said the Qingdao company was working on Evergrande projects and would use the payment from Evergrande upon completion to repay investors.
“It’s a de-facto Evergrande product,” the person said.
Other highly leveraged Chinese conglomerates including HNA Group, which declared bankruptcy early this year, and China Baoneng have used similar products.
In a petition to various government bodies, a group of WMP investors in Guangdong accused Evergrande of inappropriately using money that should have gone to the issuers to fund its own projects, and not sufficiently disclosing the risks.
They also complained that they were misled by the stature of its chairman, Hui Ka-yan, noting that he was seated prominently during a 2019 celebration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
“The investors trusted Evergrande and bought Evergrande’s WMPs out of our love for and faith in the Party and government,” they wrote.
($1 = 6.4655 Chinese yuan renminbi)
Reporting by Zhang Yan and Tony Munroe, with additional reporting by Samuel Shen, Jason Xue and Clare Jim Editing by Shri Navaratnam
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.