June 28, 2006

The very personal inspirations that Frida Giannini draws on have already yielded some striking and successful clothes for her own gender, but given her lack of experience in the male arena, there was an inevitable question mark hanging over her Gucci men's debut. In the event, she made a very smart decision to reconcile the house's womenswear and menswear. Now, the Gucci woman and the Gucci man look as if they might actually have something in common. Frida thinks about girls like herself when she designs for women, and here she was obviously imagining the kind of boys that girls like herself would want to hang with. Boys from her hometown, Rome, perhaps? "Definitely!" she cried backstage.

Indeed, it was easy to imagine a flash young Arrigo striding along the Via Veneto in Giannini's exuberant clash of patterns and colors: the jacket with its tie-print motif, the loud shirt, the louder tie. Add the tight pinstripe hipsters, the Beatle boots, and the floppy hairdos, and the image is clear - ragazzi con brio! The fitted little suede and leather jacket, studded with grommets, made the point even more strongly. You could easily picture something similar being worn by an It boy on Capri in the sixties, during one of Gucci's earlier moments of triumph.

If the show—with its loud prints, two-tone shoes, eensy suede shorts, and bathing suits accessorized with fringed boots—was hardly subtle, it had an exuberance that managed to be simultaneously sexy and innocent. Rather like Giannini herself, in fact. And if she can stay true to that, chances are she'll take Gucci to places it hasn't been before.

— Tim Blanks