Reinventing the Renaissance
We tune into fashion powerhouse Gucci’s Spring-Summer campaign of 2018 that gave a quirky nod to the Renaissance period with Ignasi Monreal’s art
Vani Sriranganayaki
It has been over 400 years since Renaissance last trended. But so vital is this period in history that it seems it has never really left our collective consciousness. It comes with a strange sense of comfort that at a time of infinite consumption and fleeting imagery, a bygone era is still able to hold our interests and inspire new art.
Including the fashion powerhouse Gucci.
Just in year 2018, the Gucci Cruise show, presented at the gilded Palazzo Pitti in Florence – home to the Medici family (Renaissance art’s biggest patrons) – featured a collection imbued with spirit and strength of Renaissance art. The Fall 2018 runaway show in Milan, Gucci’s most talked about show that year, featured a collection that realised Alessandro Michele, the brand’s creative director’s obsession with the renaissance time period. That same year, Gucci also launched a new Instagram account, @guccibeauty, devoted to exploring the evolving concept of beauty through works of art throughout history. But the crowning jewel that year was Gucci’s sans-photography, surrealistic Spring-Summer 2018 campaign that stretched the limits of art, history and fantasy.
Bringing both the essence and the literal meaning of the word Renaissance to the fore, Gucci’s SS18 campaign that imagined paintings created by artist Ignasi Monreal, featured, among many things – Hallucination. It featured imagery from classic artworks with characters dressed in the collection’s colourful and printed designs.
Introducing the Hallucination campaign in a rather quirky-but-high-brow video, Monreal played a curator, walking viewers through his illustrations and describing the colours used in the works – all the while taking them on a journey where familiarity, newness, parody and fantasy all come together in an appeal that is just hard to resist.
Info:
Gucci Hallucination
Spring Summer 2018 Campaign #guccihallucination
Creative director: Alessandro Michele
Art: Ignasi Monreal
Art direction: Christopher Simmonds
The Gallery video:
Animation video:
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