Gucci's Latest Collection Will Give You Goosebumps

While Louis Vuitton’s cruise collection featured Grace Coddington’s light-hearted images of felines, Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele decided to showcase a darker side of fashion.

The brand's 2019 cruise show took place in an actual cemetery filled with Roman rulers, and the clothing was shown on a runway split with fire, because, according to Michele, the collection was about “the idea of death as a fascination.” And if what Michele presented to his 400 or so guests is any indication, we have to say, the mind reels.

“Alyscamps is a Roman cemetery, but it’s also not a cemetery, it was a promenade, it became a walk in the 1700s; it is hybridized, it does not look like a cemetery because it is and it isn’t. I like things that seem like something but are not,” Michele said on Instagram of the setting. This is important because, according to Vogue, his models were dressed to resemble “widows attending graves tires, kids playing rock ‘n’ roll stars, and ladies who aren’t ladies.” In reality, there were what The Cut is calling “death masks” (a cast of a face made from the corpse after a person dies), crosses, decaying bouffants, and long, lacy Victorian gowns.

Similar to what Jared Leto and Lana Del Ray wore to this year's Met Gala, there was religious vestments-style embroidery featured on the backs of coat, as well “as a hat with a feather inspired by a vintage design by the late milliner Frank Olive,” the brand shared on Twitter. There were no shortage of death motifs either, including “symbols from ancient graves” like flames and flowers.

The show seems to be a proper introduction to the Parisian way, considering Gucci announced earlier this month it would skip Milan Fashion Week in September in favor of Paris Fashion Week, or what it's calling a “three-part homage to France.” And is it too soon to say we die over this creative homage? Because if this is the period of mourning that awaits us, well, count us in.