Gucci to Go Seasonless, Will Only Show Twice a Year

[dodencebt]

I truly don't care about Gucci but I'm excited about the potential ripple effect this might have on the entire industry, given that Gucci is Kering's leading brand right now. We definitely need no more than two collections a year, and I'm sure brands and fashion councils will collectively work out the schedules for future shows should everyone agree to a change. I feel like fashion hit a rock bottom recently and there is nowhere but up from this point.

 

[Deleted member 119799]

i don't understand why people think there's only going to be 2 collections a year from now on?
that's not what i'm reading, what he's saying is that it's going to be just 2 shows a season and drops in between.

which i guess is improvement but not exactly the big change we need. he's merged his mens show into his womens before. the only new thing is that he's skipping showing resort, how brave.

we need less stuff and more considered stuff, everything he does looks like it's designed by an algorithm and feels very throwaway.

 

[Royal-Galliano]

i don't understand why people think there's only going to be 2 collections a year from now on?
that's not what i'm reading, what he's saying is that it's going to be just 2 shows a season and drops in between.

which i guess is improvement but not exactly the big change we need. he's merged his mens show into his womens before. the only new thing is that he's skipping showing resort, how brave.

we need less stuff and more considered stuff, everything he does looks like it's designed by an algorithm and feels very throwaway.

exactly. at least in high fashion (if you dare call gucci that), it's economically impossible to have only two collections a year, you just have to keep churning out new stuff in between seasons because that's what your customers expect. i guess one of the reasons they're doing is because the concept of fashion shows is super expensive and dated. everything happens on social media nowadays.

 

[Lola701]

exactly. at least in high fashion (if you dare call gucci that), it's economically impossible to have only two collections a year, you just have to keep churning out new stuff in between seasons because that's what your customers expect. i guess one of the reasons they're doing is because the concept of fashion shows is super expensive and dated. everything happens on social media nowadays.

Is it really dated when a lot of the content on Social media is mostly « Fashion shows related »? From streetsyle shots to pictures of the people invited in the shows to the actual pictures of the shows. I don’t know if lookbook shots can that exciting on a long term...If they are done by everybody.

 

[Royal-Galliano]

Is it really dated when a lot of the content on Social media is mostly « Fashion shows related »? From streetsyle shots to pictures of the people invited in the shows to the actual pictures of the shows. I don’t know if lookbook shots can that exciting on a long term...If they are done by everybody.

But this content can be easily "staged". You can organize shoots with influencers and celebs, do it continuously, live stream anything (not necessarily a fashion show) or simply shove the things to them and let them create their own content, there are no artistic limits to it. The environmental issues might play a more and more important role in this as well.

 

[Lola701]

But this content can be easily "staged". You can organize shoots with influencers and celebs, do it continuously, live stream anything (not necessarily a fashion show) or simply shove the things to them and let them create their own content, there are no artistic limits to it. The environmental issues might play a more and more important role in this as well.

Fashion shows or fashion weeks are professional events as much as they are social events. There are too many businesses non-related to fashion for fashion shows or weeks to disappear.

I think it’s important for brands and designers to have a control of their vision and sending things for people (Who aren’t professionals) to create content with it is not really as environment-friendly as we would love for it to be, but it’s also a danger...Look at the endless unimaginative selfies we got now.

I think it’s time to put things back in perspective. We don’t need 1000 people at shows. Brands who have their stores can easily organize shows in their stores. A presentation at a showroom can be as good as the show. It all can be filmed (that’s how Alber used to present his precollections).

On a personal note, i hate fashion films to present collections. It’s most of the time very pretentious.

Livestreaming offers the opportunity to speak to a larger audience. So the show itself can afford to be much more intimate.

 

[bc collector]

i guess one of the reasons they're doing is because the concept of fashion shows is super expensive and dated. everything happens on social media nowadays.

This is a very old issue indeed, it reminds me of the famous quote attributed to Churchill on democracy: it's the worst form of government, except all the others.

Every now and then, designers try to break the mould, then they go back to the good old catwalk (Rifat Ozbek is the first I can think of, with his SS90 collection shown on CD, then others come to mind: Romeo Gigli, Helmut Lang, Gareth Pugh...). There must be a reason why digital only does not really work (which I think has mainly to do with the fact the clothes are physical objects and their features cannot be fully communicated via film).
Plus, I would add, doing catwalks would not exclude other more experimental ways to show your work - wouldn't it be great, for example, if resort and pre-collections of sort, instead of the lavish (sometimes tacky) extravaganzas at the four corners of the world we got used to, were shown digital only? IG works to peddle products - which ultimately is all CEO's care about these days -but when it comes to real Fashion, catwalk seems irreplaceable: could we imagine the work of Galliano or McQueen without the shows? Even the brisk affairs that HL used to call "seances de travail" were integral to his message.
Of course, these are top creatives that we are talking about, the same could not be valid for Virgil or his various clones, but still...
One last thought: shows can be expensive but can also not be, depending on whether you use them as a tool for professionals or a marketing stunt. And I guess paying a crowd of influencers does not come cheap either - at which point I'd rather keep the crappiest show rather than seeing another IG selfie from a nobody preening about.

 

[Fiercification]

If you're showing 2 times a year, presumably it's going to be spring/fall anyways so there will still be seasons??? All for having lessened show schedule tho.

MTE, such a stupid statement to effectively say "oh heyyy! we r gonna give you the same clothes u can wear all year - so revolutionary people!". Sure, there are some pieces that can be worn in different seasons, but it's not like you can pedal white cotton short sleeve shirts for November and mohair jumpers for June?

The problem is the proliferation of in-between season collections and the promotion/presentation of these. Yes, clothes need to be in the shop window and online all year around, but there's no need to have 40-50 pieces at these times, especially when they are just a weak/diluted version of what's been shown in the main show season, which is what the vast majority of pre-fall and resort collections have been to me since the beginning.

But what will be different in Michele's case? His shows already show no discernible differentiation in terms of season, gender etc. So it will be business as usual I guess. Just a whole load of hot air.

 

[dodencebt]

MTE, such a stupid statement to effectively say "oh heyyy! we r gonna give you the same clothes u can wear all year - so revolutionary people!". Sure, there are some pieces that can be worn in different seasons, but it's not like you can pedal white cotton short sleeve shirts for November and mohair jumpers for June?

I think if you look at it from a market globalization point of view, it starts making a lot more sense. If you live in LA, you wear white cotton short sleeve shirts nearly all year round; if you live in Latin America, South Africa - two promising markets - or Australia, you need short sleeve shirts in November and mohair jumpers in June because their seasons are the opposite from the seasons in the Northern Hemisphere. I think Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter made sense when high fashion was still a smaller industry sold exclusively in Western Europe and the US. The market is too diverse nowadays to say "this is when we release a fall collection, this is when we release a spring collection" because the weather is different in each part of the world, and (thankfully) every market counts.

 

[jeanclaude]

I live in Canary Islands; and here we are already feeling the climate change: the weather is totally mixed all year long. It can be hot in winter...and it can be lightly cold in summer...so it is very unpredictable!

And as this climate change goes on, what´s the point of the seasons? You need all kind of clothes available, just in case the weather changes.

 

[dodencebt]

I live in Canary Islands; and here we are already feeling the climate change: the weather is totally mixed all year long. It can be hot in winter...and it can be lightly cold in summer...so it is very unpredictable!

And as this climate change goes on, what´s the point of the seasons? You need all kind of clothes available, just in case the weather changes.

Yes, climate changes too! The weather alternated between a harsh winter to a rather warm summer for weeks this "spring" where I live, and then quickly transitioned into a constantly warm weather. Even without the lock down, I wouldn't have worn any of my spring clothes this year, let alone buy new ones. If I was shopping for new items, I would've gone for a mix of warm clothes and summer T-shirts because I had no idea what the weather would be like the next day.