Gucci Is Dropping a Super-Limited Book Inspired by Legendary Post-Punk Band New Order
You'd have to be dead under a rock to have missed the alchemic, genre-busting powers of Alessandro Michele since he assumed the role as the creative director of Gucci early in 2015. Since then, his fashion collections and the imagery that accompanies them have defined a new wave of creative disruption that the rest of the fashion industry has been at pains-with varying degrees of success-to ride along with.
Yet for all his gender- and genre-busting, in some ways Michele is a rather old-school designer-with a seemingly bottomless well of cultural and societal references that derive from far beyond the narrow, self-referential, self-reverential world of the runway. Witness Michele’s new limited-edition book, published by London creative house Idea Books, which merges the music of UK post-punk band New Order, legendary documentary photographer Martin Parr, and Gucci's 2019 Cruise collection.
Parr has been casting his ironic, all-seeing eye over the gritty idiosyncrasies of the British at the seaside for decades. But with Gucci he shifted gears, headed south, and went upmarket. The new book-released in a very limited 1,000 (you snooze, you lose) copies worldwide on November 29-centers on "World (The Price of Love)," the 1993 New Order song whose lyrics form the text on the book's cover.
The original promo video for New Order’s single, directed by Billie Walsh, was filmed in four long Steadicam shots in Cannes on the Cote D’Azur, snaking through the Carlton Beach Club, across the famous Croisette, and into what is now called the InterContinental Carlton Hotel. A fictional impression of the more depressing side of beach culture (including passing cameos by each member of the band), it clearly provided the unmissable inspiration for Michele and Martin Parr, who 25 years later shot beach and pier scenes in the same location, featuring models in Michele’s new pre-spring collection mingling with the Riviera sun-worshippers.
Plus ça change…
('You Might Also Like',)
