Ahead of the Gucci Fall-Winter 2018 Fashion show, the guests received the show invite with a timer counting down in red digital numbers, as the surgical lights illuminated the runway at the Gucci hub in Milan.
The set design conceived by creative director Alessandro Michele reflected the work of a designer’s concept—the act of cutting, splicing and reconstructing materials and fabrics to create a new personality and identity with them. The material sused are typical of an operating room and the environment around it. The five areas within the show venue were set up with real operating tables and surgical bed sheets.
As the show notes read, the collection goes further beyond, taking the shape of a genuine Cyborg Manifesto (D. J. Haraway), in which the hybrid is metaphorically praised as a figure that can overcome the dualism and the dichotomy of identity. The Cyborg, in fact, is a paradoxical creature keeping together nature andculture, masculine and feminine, normal and alien, psyche and
matter.
Conflicting with any category grid, the Cyborg is theexpression that blends different evolving identities. Hybridand shifting identities, built on multiple belongings, that
transgress the normative discipline.
Gucci Cyborg is post-human: it has eyes on its hands, faun horns, dragon’s puppies and doubling heads. It’s a biologically indefinite and culturally aware creature.
The last and extreme sign of a mongrel identity under constant transformation. The symbol of an emancipatory possibilitythrough which we can decide to become what we are.
