How to Channel Lady Gaga's Gucci Movie Wardrobe
Earlier this year the internet collectively erupted in excitement over a photograph of Adam Driver and Lady Gaga. This was not just any picture: The pair were costumed to the hilt as mid-’90s Maurizio Gucci and Patrizia Reggiani for Ridley Scott’s forthcoming film House of Gucci.
As the behind-the-scenes snaps poured out, it became clear that there was far more at play than the hormonal response elicited by charismatic celebrities, or the promise of a dishy true crime flick.
There was fashion: several decades’ worth of statement-making suits, jewelry, and sumptuous textiles gathered in eye-popping ensembles glimpsed through a paparazzo’s long-range lens (and sometimes Gaga’s Instagram account). You didn’t have to spend much time sifting through the swooning commentary to see that after all the hideous trials of 2020, and this year’s strenuous strides toward recovery, we are all in desperate need of some big-time, grown-up glamour, and for that there’s really only one place to look.
It was Italy that gave rise to the kaleidoscopic color wheels of Emilio Pucci and the zigzag zealotry of Missoni, the supermodel armor of Gianni and Donatella Versace, the va-va-voom decadence of Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, the streamlined soigné of Giorgio Armani, the feathered flounce of Valentino, and the cool confidence of Prada. Nowhere else really comes close, even now. Perhaps especially now, after a year of elastic waistbands and Zoom fits.
“Italian style is joyous, happy,” says Margherita Missoni. “It’s quite outspoken, not shy. To me it is bold: solid colors and gold.” To this day, she and her husband can identify European nationalities just based on wardrobe. Italians are easy. “The style is always quite luxurious, quite dressed.”
Italians have been known for their sartorial skills since well before the author Baldassare Castiglione coined the term sprezzatura in 1528, though what they called it until then is anybody’s guess. Later, Guccio Gucci was among the craftsmen who set up their businesses in the aftermath of World War I and helped Italy rebuild its economy following the devastation of World War II thanks to such signature items as the Bamboo bag, which went straight from the gilded Florentine salas of the 1950s into the arms, and era, of the dolce vita jet-set.
By the 1970s, when Gucci, the founder’s grandson, and Reggiani met and married, the world’s attention had shifted to Milan, where a ready-to-wear revolution was underway, led by the likes of Armani (founded in 1975) and Versace (1978), which were designing clothes for café society to see and, more important, to be seen in. The ’80s and ’90s only pumped up the volume, fortissimo.
“Italians have a real pride for beauty and style,” says J.J. Martin, the California-born, Milan-based designer behind La DoubleJ. That’s true of their country’s outlook in general, she says; Italians take their sensual pleasures seriously, whether it’s what they put on their bodies or on their dining tables. “I grew up skiing Mammoth Mountain. It was not chic at all. My family would have their tuna fish sandwiches squished in their fanny packs for lunch,” she says. The Guccis après-ski in St. Moritz it was not.
Meanwhile, Francesca Ruffini, the founder of the world’s most elegant pajama brand, For Restless Sleepers, grew up in Como, where she learned to host and entertain with a bit more…panache. As Italians, “we are surrounded with beauty,” she says. “We are raised with traditions that have handed down strong values and the need to preserve beauty and its integrity. To make this happen, we have to be elegant in the soul. This fascinates and enchants everyone.”
In other words, the rapturous international reception to the candid images of Gaga and Driver on set—in close-cut cashmere, with ’70s stripes, checks, and florals, and heaps of gold and pearls, no less—is rooted in a kind of arrested wish fulfillment: We want to go there, subito.
“It’s about the package,” says Bianca Arrivabene, the Venice doyenne and deputy chair of Christie’s Italy. “In Italy you get the blue skies, the beautiful beaches, the beautiful art, the Duomo di Firenze, the Piazza San Marco, the piazza in Naples, la Costiera Amalfitana, Palermo… These places touch all your senses at the same time.”
Italians reacted less to the Hollywood take on the ill-fated Guccis, a lurid tabloid tale still fresh in the minds of many, than to the bravado of the period, a boom time for an industry that is celebrated as a source of national pride.
“There still was a freedom then for designers to create what came from their hearts, not obliged to respond to what the market wanted,” Arrivabene says. “Less Excel sheets and market research, more instinct and creativity.”
As for those of us looking to take a page from the Italians and appear a little different from the rest of the pack post-quarantine, take heart (and a floral headscarf).
Arrivabene, who is planning to vacation this summer in Greece with a small group of friends, is packing new red Prada sandals and her gold Madina Visconti necklaces to dress up her shorts and bikinis. She says she hopes for a more sustainable approach going forward—“to fashion, to writing emails, to driving our cars,” to buying things that are bello e ben fatto: beautiful and well made.
More immediately, Arrivabene anticipates a feeling Venetians know well: euphoria. “I think that’s what’s going to happen to all of us. We’re going to be dancing and having fun and hugging each other like mad,” she says.
One thing you can count on: The Italians will be dressed for the occasion. “I rarely wear high heels,” Missoni tells T&C, “and I just bought a pair of lime-green pumps, because I cannot wait to go out.”
This story appears in the Summer 2021 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW
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