YOU DON’T NEED TO DESTROY EVERYTHING TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

I’m reading many comments about the Gucci show right now. Several people catch a real point: the idea of calculated shock, intentional polarization, a discontinuity designed to put the brand back at the center of conversation. It’s an understandable strategy. Especially when a brand feels the need to change pace.

That said, I keep asking myself if transition must necessarily go through a programmatic demolition of codes. As if it were the only way to ‘be reborn.’ Fashion history proves otherwise: visions can change radically without abandoning craftsmanship. The most solid innovation often doesn’t erase. It transforms.

There’s also a point that, for me, is essential. A maison cannot survive on statements alone. Nor on continuous archive digs as if putting the past back in the window were enough to call it the future. The archive is an asset, not a life raft. It serves to add depth, to remember the grammar. But it cannot become the only content. And above all: it makes no sense to erase what exists. As if a hundred years of building—made of vision, work, craftsmanship, and sacrifice—were an obstacle to eliminate rather than a foundation to surpass with intelligence.

Art and fashion are both creative expressions. But they have different pacts with reality. In contemporary art, a minimal gesture can be enough. Even a provocative one. The object gets loaded with meaning by context, discourse, a system of legitimization. It’s a mechanism that divides and takes time to digest. Fashion, however, cannot rely on the same alibi. The idea matters, absolutely. But it must take shape in a resolved form. Because fashion is not just looked at: it’s worn. It’s not just image. It’s experience.

That’s why, when I look at a collection, I don’t separate ‘concept’ and ‘product.’ I look at everything: shoes, bags, belts, outerwear, shirts, pants. The total look is not a side dish: it’s the substance. Accessories must be desirable and functional. But garments must also remain central. Not conceptual scaffolding, not pretexts, not simple supports to make something else shine. A well-made shirt, a resolved coat, a classic cut in the noblest sense are not a step backward. They are the foundation that makes any evolution credible.

Added to this is the representation of the feminine, which deserves attention. The finale that revisits a historic idea—the thong as a sign of rupture—was born in another context. With a precise balance between eroticism, power, and control. Here, instead, that reference is pushed to saturation. Transformed into a dazzling, almost ornamental element. More interested in shock than meaning. The question, at that point, is inevitable: exalting what, exactly? A body? An idea? Or just the audience’s reaction?

When the gesture doesn’t add vision but only turns up the volume, we’re no longer in provocation. We’re in noise. And when the feminine becomes a scenic device, fashion stops elevating the person and starts using her. It’s not a question of transgression. It’s a question of measure.

Fashion can be edgy, ironic, even aggressive. It can divide. But in luxury, one point remains firm: buyers don’t pay to stumble over an idea—just as they wouldn’t with shoes. They pay to wear it. And when everything comes together—fit, proportions, comfort, construction—then the message, without needing to shout, travels further.