exclusive: a first look at gucci’s lookbook for men’s cruise 2020

For Gucci’s cruise 2020 spectacular, Alessandro Michele turned his eclectic eye to the wonders of ancient Rome, staging the show in the bowels of the city’s historic Capitoline Museums, with models walking by torchlight among some of the world’s greatest pieces of classical sculpture.

But if we know anything about Alessandro, it’s that he has a magpie-like ability to gather design elements from across the centuries, then mix them up to create something distinctly contemporary. In the case of his latest cruise collection, this came by way of the pro-choice slogans printed across jackets, or the anatomical drawings of the female reproductive system recreated in embroidery, both in response to a backlash against abortion rights by right-wing parties around the world.

With the lookbook Gucci is releasing today to showcase the menswear within the collection, he’s combining past and present in a more unexpected fashion. Enlisting the help of the Oscar-nominated Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos — the mastermind behind critically acclaimed films like The Lobster and The Favourite — Alessandro’s army of off-beat beauties are skipping and leaping through the halls of a Renaissance palazzo stuffed with classical treasures, like a gang of misbehaved Italian youth sneaking into the museum after dark for an all-night party.

The pictures also come with the news that Gucci will be publishing an art book with Yorgos later this year, to be released in November and distributed by the London-based IDEA Books. Photographed in the hallowed halls of Galleria Della Leda in Villa Albani Torlonia, it will once again reflect the brand’s time-warped vision. And what’s more, as part of the project Gucci will be funding the restoration of the villa’s historic Leda Gallery, the home of many of the building’s most prized antiquities. It seems Alessandro’s not just bringing the past back to life, but preserving it for future generations also.