Snapshots of a bygone era. And by bygone era we mean the period when Marco Bizzarri was CEO of Gucci and Alessandro Michele was Creative Director. In the Chapeau Project podcast, Bizzarri revisits a crucial phase for the Florentine brand, from its meteoric rise to its subsequent slowdown. In between came the instinctive decision to place his trust in a complete unknown, Alessandro Michele, and the need to build a global identity. Then came the end of the spell, the moment when that very formula, which later became dominant, stopped generating desire. In short, it is the story of the end of his Gucci era.
The end of his Gucci era
When Bizzarri took the helm of the maison in 2014, his priority was to overturn a brand that no longer spoke to the present. “Everyone was doing the same things in black and white — it was unbearably dull”, the former CEO underlines. So he pulled a rabbit out of the hat and chose Alessandro Michele for a completely different Gucci. “I interviewed him at his home; he was not remotely on the list of candidates. I was struck by his humility and by the clarity of his ideas. It would have been easier for me to choose a famous name. If things had gone badly, I could have said: it failed with him. Instead, I decided to place my trust in an unknown creative director”, Bizzarri continues.
He also recalls how Michele’s first collection was not especially appreciated by the press. To contain the initial scepticism, Bizzarri therefore chose to buy the collection for only 50 boutiques, changed the aesthetic of the stores, implemented an internal reorganisation centred around the new image and discounted warehouse stock by 30–40 per cent, thereby increasing sales volumes. In a short time, the machine gathered momentum and Michele’s work exploded onto the scene, dominating the conversation.
The feeling of omnipotence
The real turning point, according to Bizzarri, remained the New York Cruise collection. Colours, symbols, cross-cultural influences and an aesthetic that was more open, less conservative, more romantic and less overtly sensual became a universal language. All of this unfolded during Instagram’s period of greatest expansion. Michele’s looks became memes, moods and identities. Gucci grew at unprecedented rates, came close to EUR 10 billion in revenue and won over a generation that used the brand as an emotional code. At that point, Bizzarri explains, a side effect also emerged: “Alessandro maintained his aesthetic, which is something he is still doing at Valentino. He nevertheless began to feel omnipotent”.
The issue of scarcity
According to Bizzarri, the problem at that stage was not so much product quality as market saturation. Gucci continued to grow, but it was growing more slowly than its competitors. While the maison was advancing by 4–5 per cent, “Louis Vuitton was flying at +20 per cent”. The market was penalising the absence of scarcity. Too many iconic products, too much visibility, too much accessibility. Desire, which thrives on anticipation and absence, was beginning to weaken.
So Bizzarri confronted Michele: “I told Alessandro that something needed to change, even though he was already changing”. The aim was to introduce a new sense of rarity and a renewed level of exclusivity. But the slowdown had already begun. According to the former CEO, the first cracks had already become visible by 2019. A machine that had become enormous in a luxury world moving even faster.
Photo: Shutterstock
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