Gucci turns 100 years old this year. Legend has it that the Italian fashion house's founder Guccio Gucci was an ardent admirer of the leather travel bags he came in contact with when he was working as a bellhop at the Savoy hotel in London. When he returned to Florence, Guccio opened his own leather goods shop, specialising in bags as well as leather equestrian equipment.
On Thursday, Gucci's creative director Alessandro Michele paid homage to both the Savoy and the house's equine heritage, as well as celebrating Gucci's milestone birthday with a collection titled Aria.
Michele, who has come to be known for his eccentric aesthetic and unusual props also sent a rabbit down the runway.
“Gucci was born under some kind of constellation, because the power it holds is nearly inexplicable,’’ Michele said in a video press conference.
The show took place in a film-set version of at the Savoy, while its title Aria refers to Italy's famed lyric opera.
Models walked down long-corridor runways outfitted with hundreds of flashing cameras nailed to the wall in the place of absent paparazzi. A medley of Gucci-themed pop songs – proof, if needed, of the brand's enduring relevance – provided the soundtrack.
Michele also borrowed references from the Tom Ford era and from French sister-brand Balenciaga, which is part of the same parent company, Kering.
“Tom understood right from the beginning that Gucci had some kind of magnetism, this cult power,” Michele said.
Tom Ford’s 1996 red velvet suit was reworked to include a leather harness and worn over a powder blue shirt, while a glittery silver suit came out emblazoned with both Gucci and Balenciaga.
Michele also put a spin on Gucci’s trademark equestrian references, including riding caps, fringed leather riding crops and spit-polished boots mixed with glamorous sequined evening wear. Elsewhere, models sported jewellery dangling, in true Michele form, from their noses.
This was the first collection of 2021 for Gucci, which announced it will no longer follow the traditional fashion calendar and only present two collections a year, in the case of Aria in the form of a video presentation in a year when the pandemic has all but shut down in-person shows.
Reflecting on the century marker, Michele said Gucci's magic is its ability to redefine itself over time, unbeholden to any strictly defined image. “I am trying to renew for the millionth time this brand, this name, this myth, this saga, because Gucci is a complex container that holds many, many things."
With additional reporting from Associated Press
Ad Astra
Director: James Gray
Stars: Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones
Five out of five stars
Breast cancer in men: the facts
1) Breast cancer is men is rare but can develop rapidly. It usually occurs in those over the ages of 60, but can occasionally affect younger men.
2) Symptoms can include a lump, discharge, swollen glands or a rash.
3) People with a history of cancer in the family can be more susceptible.
4) Treatments include surgery and chemotherapy but early diagnosis is the key.
5) Anyone concerned is urged to contact their doctor
PROFILE OF HALAN
Started: November 2017
Founders: Mounir Nakhla, Ahmed Mohsen and Mohamed Aboulnaga
Based: Cairo, Egypt
Sector: transport and logistics
Size: 150 employees
Investment: approximately $8 million
Investors include: Singapore’s Battery Road Digital Holdings, Egypt’s Algebra Ventures, Uber co-founder and former CTO Oscar Salazar
BRAZIL%20SQUAD
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Cinco in numbers
Dh3.7 million
The estimated cost of Victoria Swarovski’s gem-encrusted Michael Cinco wedding gown
46
The number, in kilograms, that Swarovski’s wedding gown weighed.
1,000
The hours it took to create Cinco’s vermillion petal gown, as seen in his atelier [note, is the one he’s playing with in the corner of a room]
50
How many looks Cinco has created in a new collection to celebrate Ballet Philippines’ 50th birthday
3,000
The hours needed to create the butterfly gown worn by Aishwarya Rai to the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
1.1 million
The number of followers that Michael Cinco’s Instagram account has garnered.
NATIONAL%20SELECTIONS
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Martin Sabbagh profile
Job: CEO JCDecaux Middle East
In the role: Since January 2015
Lives: In the UAE
Background: M&A, investment banking
Studied: Corporate finance
Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
