GUCCI ARIA: "PORNO-CHIC" - Gucci brings back seduction
ARIA is arguably Gucci's biggest campaign so far this year and also one that almost celebrates an anniversary: 100 years of brand heritage.
The fashion house did not participate in Fashion Week but released ARIA with Kristen McMenamy and the Eurovision band Måneskin. The setting is the elegant Savoy Hotel in London. And not by chance, because the hotel, built in 1886, was the inspiration for company founder Guccio Gucci, who carried suitcases as a bellboy of the upper class. Back in Florence, he decided to turn Gucci into an accessories company that was originally (like Hermès) a saddlery.
Gucci skilfully installs sexual details such as Sigmund Freud's Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex trilogy, Baudrillard's Simulacra et Simulation, Walter Benjamin Walter's The Work of Art in the Age, and the version of "I Want You" from pop queen Madonna which brings people back to the Gucci of an era under Tom Ford and a little ironically in the midst of an era of contemporary art and digital life.
Gucci Aria also conveys a message about the fetish of materialism: lust. There is a conspiracy theory when it comes to the Gucci of today, that safety is not enough to attract.
