Gucci HA HA HA a collaboration born from the creative complicity of Alessandro Michele and Harry Styles

Dear Shaded Viewers,

Anyone following Gucci knows that their is a deep friendship between Gucci’s Creative Director, Alessandro Michele and the always smiling and making fun, British singer-songwriter and actor, Harry Styles. For one thing Gucci HA HA HA is a printed motif on a label but also is about the shared perceptions of two different consciences, its about the creative relationship between Michele and Styles that self-generates from amusement and ends up with the tangibility of a product. I’m sure you want to understand the HA HA HA well, if you have not figured it out it is the serial crasis of the initials of ‘Harry’ and ‘Alessandro’ but it is also the onomatopoeic sound of the written essence of an emoji, the ‘laughing face’. For years the messages passed between Alessandro and Harry have always ended with this neological expression ‘hahaha’ . Their relationship is one of complicity, continuous exchanges and in the end defines the word friendship.

Alessandro Michele and Harry Styles met each other many years ago, right at the beginning of their careers as soloists: Michele following his debut as Gucci’s Creative Director and Styles just as he released his first album. The encounter immediately generated a relationship of exchange, of continuous creative contamination, and the drive to explore.

 

“Harry has an incredible sense of fashion. Observing his ability to combine items of clothing in a way that is out of the ordinary compared to the required standards of taste and common sense and the homogenization of appearance, I came to understand that the styling of a look is a generator of differences and of powers, as are his reactions to the designs I have created for him, which he has always made his own; these reactions restore me with a rush of freedom every time. The idea of working together came to me one day while we were talking on the phone: I proposed creating a “dream wardrobe” with him, starting from those small oddities that come together in childlike visions. We ended up with a mix of aesthetics from 1970s pop and bohemian to the revision of the image of the gentleman in an overturned memory of men’s tailoring,” says Alessandro Michele of an endeavor that connects two “I’s” to obtain an absolute “us” in which each resulting element is a plural creation that highlights the contamination of ideas and produces a singular organism.

Gucci HA HA HA therefore is an imaginative connection between Alessandro Michele and Harry Styles and gathers within a collection many elements that characterize the creative paths and peculiarities of the two artists, bringing them together in the synthesis of Gucci. Elements of English tailoring transformed in romantic accents from a new meaning of masculinity through the eccentric use of Prince of Wales check to create double-breasted coats, the essential preeminence of artisanal processes seen in the construction of jackets or in the details of covered and mother-of-pearl buttons of shirts. An artistic imagination that comes from creative instances that apply themselves to diverse expressions contaminate each other and become clothes that highlight formal developments of the historical significance of menswear: this is why alongside sartorial suits, treated denim jackets, and velvet suits in irregular hues, are unexpected printed pajamas and bowling shirts, lined coats with hoods and frog fasteners, and pleated kilts with leather regulating straps. All to underline the continuous acknowledgements of two creativities in each design that comprises the Gucci HA HA HA collection.

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Diane Pernet

A LEGENDARY FIGURE IN FASHION and a pioneer of blogging, Diane is a respected journalist, critic, curator and talent-hunter based in Paris. During her prolific career, she designed her own successful brand in New York, costume designer, photographer, and filmmaker.

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