Alessandro Michele Talks Adidas x Gucci and Other Dream Collaborations—“From Time to Time I Feel the Need to Play With Someone Else”

I’d like you to expand on how the idea of collaborating with adidas came about—even if you tend to consider the collaboration concept a bit narrow, and you don’t particularly favor using the word collab.

The word collaboration is really just a semantic convention, and of course I use it functionally, but for me it has a completely different meaning. Since the beginning of my tenure at Gucci, I’ve worked on a series of so-to-speak crossovers in a more esoteric way, in that in my shows I’ve always put together and layered disparate ‘talking elements’ which worked as some sort of triggers or magnifiers, as well as defining perimeters or enhancers, or which engaged in a mysterious, hidden dialogue with the audience.

Introducing multiple, often discordant references has always been inherent to my narration. Metaphorically speaking, it is as if I had drawn a mustache on Mona Lisa’s face. My language is eclectic, and it needs many words, many images coming from other people and from other worlds.

But what I was doing was probably rather expressive, and others have discovered how fascinating the clash of unlikely crossovers can be. Which is an m.o. that represents the contemporary world so well; to be open to different languages is a sign of our times, and we can talk to each other freely. Fashion, whose perimeter has always been rather puristic and fenced, has opened up, welcoming forays coming from other places and other spaces. Just think about how fascinating Virgil’s experiment at Vuitton has been. What we define as collaboration is actually an encounter, everybody does it his own way, as it happens also IRL. Today there’s a new language that has been created, it doesn’t have to be trivialized, or become an obsession. As far as I’m concerned, from time to time I feel the need to play with someone else.