Creative director Alessandro Michele has chosen Castel del Monte in Italy's Apulia region as the location for the Cosmogonie fashion show presented yesterday by Gucci.
In occasion of the show, the House continue its commitment to sustain, preserve, and promote cultural and artistic heritage by supporting an enhancement project of Castel del Monte, which will improve the visitor experience of the World Heritage Site.
From its very inception in 1240 by Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, Castel del Monte has been imbued with symbolic significance, which reveals itself through precise geometry. The number eight becomes a leading theme in the medieval structure, demonstrated through the central octagonal floor plan divided into eight rooms and surrounded by eight octagonal towers.
Crowning a hill in the Apulian city of Andria, the monument sits seemingly isolated 540 meters above sea level where it is bathed in light at every hour of the day. Given its formal perfection and harmonious blending of various elements from Northern Europe, the Islamic world, and classical antiquity, Castel del Monte perfectly represents a crossroads of the different peoples, cultures, civilizations, and religions that have shaped the Mediterranean.
Gucci put on a show that looked to honour the ingenious teachings of German philosopher, Walter Benjamin. “It’s not that what is past casts its light on what is present, or what is present its light on what is past; rather, image is that wherein what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation”. And, this is where Alessandro Michele draws his inspiration from. This constant tension between the past and the present is a relationship of beauty and this is what Gucci has looked to honour in the timeless, era-transcending collection that is Cosmogonie.
Take a look at the show:
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