Frida Giannini: No Longer A Gucci!

  IT HAS BEEN A MONTH! since the news broke that  Gucci’s designer of the last 10 years, Frida Giannini would leave the brand after her next women’s wear show, in February, and the speculation about who should take her place has only become more heated in the days since. (Should it be Riccardo Tisci of Givenchy? Joseph Altuzarra? What about Christopher Kane? Anthony Vaccarello? Thomas Tait? Or even — the weirdest one I’ve heard —the ex-Hermès designer Christophe Lemaire.)

What’s interesting, however, is that in all the who-ing and fro-ing, what hasn’t come up is just how pointedly Ms. Giannini’s departure reflects on current fashion industry wisdom, and the idea that what is needed right now are “clothes for real life.”

(And, yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds, since aren’t all clothes supposed to be made for real life? But in the context of a runway, it translates as less “made for marketing” — that is, eye-catching photo shoots — than “made for customers” — the sort of clothes you might wear every day without thinking.)

This approach, championed by Nicolas Ghesquière at Louis Vuitton and Hedi Slimane at Saint Laurent (and to a certain extent by Raf Simons at Christian Dior), places an emphasis on wardrobe — dresses, knits, slick jeans — and values relatively straightforward clothes over theme and narrative. It has been so apparently successful, both critically and commercially, that it was part of the stated reason for Marco Zanini’s recent departure from Schiaparelli, where, in obliquely discussing what was needed, the house said it was looking for a “contemporary spirit” — not a full-on ode to Elsa Schiaparelli’s Surrealist past.

Yet in many ways the whole “wardrobing” thing was actually pioneered by Ms. Giannini back in the day (O.K., in 2006), during her debut women’s wear show at Gucci, when she executed an about-face from the former creative director Tom Ford’s steamy sex-'n'-hedonism styles, and opted instead for …­ well, flirty floral tea dresses, easy blouses, Bermuda shorts, striped polo shirts and skinny cropped trousers.

Yes, you read that right: Bermuda shorts. At Gucci.

Everyone cheered (Yea! Fashion that is not fraught!), and not long after Ms. Giannini told People magazine: “My woman likes to party but also likes to work. She’s more balanced. She has a real life, with family and maybe children.”

Now consider what Mr. Ghesquière said, eight years later, after his Vuitton debut: “The thing about this house is, it belongs to everyone. So I felt we had to be very pragmatic.”

Or, for that matter, how the former New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn described Mr. Slimane’s clothes at Saint Laurent earlier this year: “he has kept his message stunningly simple — to the point where his clothes, while clearly high in quality, have the attitude of a trendy street label.”



Fashion has a notoriously short memory, and there is truth to the adage “you are only as good as your last show.” And, yes, every brand and every designer is different. But before everyone jumps on the wardrobing bandwagon, it might behoove the whole industry to take a step back and cast a wide eye on the arc of Ms. Giannini’s Gucci career.

It has interesting implications for everyone (including, dear reader, you the consumer). Perhaps it is time to learn from history before another designer repeats it — or becomes the victim of it. Because the thing is, after the initial unveiling at Gucci, it did not take long for the rumblings to start.

Though Ms. Giannini punctuated her boy-cut trouser suits and flirty dresses with the occasional foray into glam-rock Lurex and keyhole cutouts, by the spring 2009 show, which featured red, white, blue and khaki, the critic Sarah Mower assessed the situation on Style.com with the equivalent of a prose yawn: “Gucci now is a clearly segmented, businesslike collection with no pretense of being anything other than hip, immediately understandable clothes for a young global audience.”

And the next thing you knew, perhaps as a result — pressure to make some noise, the constant fashion imperative to move on, a fear of being irrelevant — Ms. Giannini changed tact. The aesthetic ante was raised; identifiable references were introduced; everything was given a visual hook. Perhaps too many visual hooks.

There was the Anjelica-Huston-meets-Florence-Welch collection of fall 2011, all python and fur and jewel tones, and the Marella-Agnelli-meets-Marisa-Berenson collection of spring 2013 (think 1960s/'70s Riviera ruffled hostess dressing).

There was the spring 2014 Erté-meets-Rihanna mesh sports bras and stained-glass silks collection, and last September’s Jimi-Hendrix-has-a-love-child-with-Ali-MacGraw-in-Kyoto parade. It got a little confusing.

Arguably Ms. Giannini simply did not have the courage of her convictions, and it was that insecurity, more than what she actually made, that led to the problems: At a certain point it became very hard to identify what Gucci stood for, aesthetically, anyway, aside from bamboo-handled, made-in-Italy leather goods.

But it is also possible that, as attractive as the idea of “wardrobing” is, it serves more as a palate cleanser — a soupçon of lemon sorbet — for a brand as opposed to an identity. It is, ultimately, not satisfying enough, or sustainable enough. There has to be something more, and it was Ms. Giannini’s inability to define that “more” that was the real issue.

The fact is, fashion works according to Newton’s third law of motion: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If a brand is known for concept and fantasy, it will feel “fresh” to go back to basics and simplicity (even if there is nothing fresh about basics, which are, by definition, perennial); if it swings from one extreme to another, consistency will seem radical.

This is one of the reasons, I would guess, that everyone has responded so powerfully to Mr. Ghesquière’s shows: In their simplicity they have provided an antidote to his predecessor Marc Jacobs’s zeitgeist-switching signature. At Saint Laurent, Mr. Slimane’s highly merchandised vision lent clarity to the former designer Stefano Pilati’s more confused archival experimentation. And at Dior, Mr. Simons’s emphasis on modernity counteracted the historicism of the erstwhile creative director John Galliano.

Each man is unquestionably a talented designer, and their clothes have been very good, but they remain, largely — well, clothes. And the Gucci story suggests, at some point, possibly soon, fashion, and those who buy it, may demand they take the next step. It’s the cycle of the catwalk (if not of life). As a lesson, it may be Ms. Giannini’s most resonant legacy.

  New York Time Article stated December 16, 2014