After an extensive bout of renovation, the Sydney Gucci flagship store is set to reopen on Wednesday October 28 with an increased retail footprint spanning over 11,702 square feet. What could be likened as a 'Gucci World' sees two floors of men’s and women’s ready-to-wear, including Gucci Beauty and fragrance.
Alongside the unveiling of the new space, the store is home to a Sydney exclusive titled 'The Sydney Tote', serving as a joyful, beachy representation of the city we call home. The celebration of the opening will additionally see creative collective O.Z.O collaborate with the brand, where local artist of China Heights Gallery, Edward Woodley has created a sculptural work to sit in-store in anticipation for the opening.
“Australia has always been a strategic market for Gucci. The country offers our brand a very exciting proposition supported by its melting pot of cultures. We are also very proud to be collaborating with local Australian creatives to showcase their art - inspired by Gucci codes - in our newly renovated Sydney Flagship,” says Gucci's, Regional President, South Asia Pacific, Emmanuel Delrieu of the collaboration.
Woodley's sculptural work will be available to view for a limited time in the Gucci flagship store, alongside a limited-edition Zine on the works of Woodley and his dialogue with Gucci. The sculpture itself is said to combine the artists' signature style of contrasting underlays and collages with elements borrowed from Gucci and themes present in the brands most recent 'Epilogue' collection.
The 'Epilogue' collection which dropped during Milan Fashion Week will be available to preview in Australia for the first time in-store. The collection is said to be the closing act of a narration, the seal to a trilogy of love, an investigation into the relation between reality and fiction. The collection is, as always, presented like a fairytale. Swaths of floral and geometric prints create flowing silhouettes while turquoise gemstone accessories hang from the ears and necks of models. The collection in its entirety feels like an elevated homage to dress up boxes and the 70s in Alessandro Michele's signature style - a marrying of worlds, old and new, real and fiction. A true closing of a monumental moment in modern fashion history.
"The clothes will be worn by those who created them. The designers with whom, every day, I share the daze of creation, will become the performers of a new story. They will seize the poetry they contributed to mould. They will stage what we passionately imagined. It’s a process of role reversal, once more," Michele explains of the collection, and his decision to use his makers and designers to model the collection.
“I brought together different things, which represent the messy beauty that I have always sought: the chaos of beauty. What happens to the relation between reality and fiction when prying eyes sneak into the mechanisms of the production of an image? What happens to fashion, when the true goes back to being just a moment of the false? Breaking the spell that forces my collaborators to passionately work on clothes they later have to abandon, I asked the team to wear them. And so we did a self-sufficient job, all inside our house, mixing things we had already done with things we were about to – overcoming the schemes of the time coherently with my idea of The Epilogue, the final resolution of a future that is largely present”. Michele Explains.
The Epilogue Collection, alongside the Edward Woodley X Gucci works will be available to view in the Sydney flagship store as of Wednesday October 28.
