For its latest campaign, the brand eschewed Italy for the grit and glamour of Venice Beach and Sunset Boulevard
Words by MARIE LOOK
When Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele tapped Yorgos Lanthimos, the filmmaker behind such critically acclaimed dark comedies as 2018’s The Favourite and 2015’s The Lobster, to express a mood befitting the label’s Spring/Summer 2020 campaign, the Greek-born director once again focused his attention on a nonhuman muse.
Just as he did for The Lobster’s absurdist dystopian society — in which single men and women unable to find life partners are transformed for all eternity into a creature of their choosing — Lanthimos infused the project with his trademark wryness, playing with the idea of humans as animals and animals as humans. Here, that notion took the form of equine subjects who trot all over a ’70s-tinged Los Angeles.
Shot by Lanthimos, the images feature horses as characters in each mise-en-scene, joining models clad in the collection’s brightly colored suits, scoop-neck leotards, high-slit midi skirts and boldly patterned tops and frocks for everything from beach frolics to ambles along North Hollywood avenues to evening drives up to the Chateau Marmont.
Sort of sexy (lest you forget, in Greek mythology, Zeus would assume animal forms whenever he was feeling seductive) and sort of rebellious (horses have long been symbols of free spirits), the campaign obliquely references Michele’s theme of self-determination of personal style.
All images: GUCCI Spring/Summer 2020 campaign by YORGOS LANTHIMOS.
A version of this story appeared in the March 2020 issue of C Magazine.
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