Earlier this month saw the final days of the V&A exhibition Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear. It had run from March and had attracted a wide audience keen to see the museum’s first major show exploring how men dress.

Gucci was integral to the display, not just in the form of exhibits, but also as sponsor, committed to bringing the conversation about masculine attire and, indeed, masculinity itself, into the mainstream. As the co-curators of Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear, Claire Wilcox and Rosalind McKever, said: ‘Masculine fashion is enjoying a period of unprecedented creativity. It has long been a powerful mechanism for encouraging conformity or expressing individuality.’

It is precisely at this crossroads – of tradition, which has lent towards the male wardrobe as one dominated by a type of tailoring-based uniform, comprised of established, classic styles, and individuality, where these codes are played with and subverted – that Gucci sits. A century-old Italian house, founded in Florence by Guccio Gucci in 1921, it has journeyed through the decades from its origins as a luggage and leather-goods maker to the innovative fashion powerhouse it is today. Along the way, it has developed a famous set of design motifs – the green-red-green web stripe, the horsebit snaffle, the many patterns based around the logo, a menagerie of animals and a garden of blooms – and extended its reach into clothing, fragrance, accessories and interiors.

And when it comes to menswear, it has dressed the international jet-set of the 1960s and 1970s, the stylish powerbrokers of the 1980s, the chic leading men of the globe in the 1990s and 2000s; always in Italian style, always presenting them with quality, tailoring-based pieces that spoke of character and individuality.

Today, Gucci is in the hands of Alessandro Michele who, having worked for the company for some 12 years before ascending to the top job seven years ago, is steeped in the lore – and the archive – of this label. His impact on Gucci, and fashion in general, since he took the creative reins at the house in 2015 is well documented, and can be summed up simply: Michele understood that high-end fashion – and menswear in particular, perhaps – was becoming generally homogenised in the second decade of the 21st century, dominated by a kind of polished slickness that dialled down the individual, and dialled up the idea of generic luxury.

His response was like a hand grenade lobbed into a pool of so-called good taste. Patterns, eclectic references, historical influences, playful detailing… it seemed all was up for grabs. From late ’70s punk subculture to Disney, from computer gamers to octogenarian movie stars, from collaborations with the outerwear brand The North Face, inspired by his love for being outdoors to, now, a luggage collection named after The Savoy in London, where founder Guccio Gucci worked as a porter in the early years of the last century.

And when it came to menswear, Michele applied his alchemist’s approach to taking the quality of the Italian tailoring tradition and marrying it with the Romantic’s love of the personal and emotional.

Enter Harry Styles.

There are many examples of women acting as muses for fashion designers. But I’m not sure there is a single example of a man fulfilling this function. However, Styles comes pretty close for Michele. They met when both were starting out on their “solo” careers and made an instant connection. The musician has since appeared in many Gucci menswear campaigns, and at numerous high-profile events sporting his friend’s designs. And in the process, he has embodied Michele’s passionately held conviction that fashion should be about enabling people to express themselves.

‘Harry has an incredible sense of fashion,’ says Michele. ‘Observing his ability to combine items of clothing in a way that is out of the ordinary compared to the required standards of taste and common sense and the homogenisation of appearance, I came to understand that the styling of a look is a generator of differences and of powers, as are his reactions to the designs
I have created for him, which he has always made his own; these reactions restore me with a rush of freedom every time.’

Given this, it is perhaps no surprise that the two have now extended their friendship into a collaborative project: a new Gucci collection called HA HA HA. The name is not only intended to signify the joy and pleasure that these clothes are designed to give, and that was experienced by their creators in the process of bringing them to life, but also references “Harry” and “Alessandro” and, apparently, is also the way in which the two have signed off their communications over the past few years.

‘The idea of working together came to me one day while we were talking on the phone,’ explains Michele. ‘I proposed creating a “dream wardrobe” with him, starting from those small oddities that come together in childlike visions. We ended up with a mix of aesthetics from 1970s pop and bohemian to the revision of the image of the gentleman in an overturned memory of men’s tailoring.’

The result is a collection of jackets, trousers, shirts, coats and accessories that represent an idiosyncratic reimagining of masculine elegance. English tailoring tropes are transformed: an eccentric use of Prince of Wales check appears on double-breasted coats, for example. Jackets are constructed in an artisanal fashion; printed pyjamas and bowling shirts sit alongside unusual-coloured velvet suits; treated denim jackets are accompanied by sartorial suits and lined coats with hoods; details include frog fasteners and covered buttons; and there are pleated kilts, complete with leather adjustable straps.

‘I’m so happy to see this project finally come to life,’ says Styles. ‘I’ve known Alessandro for years now, and he’s always been one of my favourite people. I’m always inspired watching him work, so doing this collaboration with my friend was very special to me.’

The pieces largely derive from historical forms, but the way these have been playfully interpreted removes any restrictive dress codes. It looks like the kind of thing that might result from a dialogue of “what ifs” between a couple of creative artist friends. Which is, in fact, exactly what it is.

gucci.com