It’s official: Alessandro Michele is exiting his role as creative director of Gucci. Although he’s been at the brand for two decades, Michele has been Gucci’s creative director for the last seven.
“There are times when paths part ways because of the different perspectives each one of us may have. Today an extraordinary journey ends for me, lasting more than twenty years, within a company to which I have tirelessly dedicated all my love and creative passion,” Michele said in a statement shared by Kering and posted to Instagram. “During this long period Gucci has been my home, my adopted family. To this extended family, to all the individuals who have looked after and supported it, I send my most sincere thanks, my biggest and most heartfelt embrace. Together with them I have wished, dreamed, imagined. Without them, none of what I have built would have been possible.”
The loss is palpable to the maison as a whole, considering how Michele had brought a wholly new vision to the house: of maximalist codes infused with larger-than-life romanticism. The designer, who has yet to say what, or where he will land next, continued his heartfelt au revoir by saying, “To them goes my most sincerest wish: may you continue to cultivate your dreams, the subtle and intangible matter that makes life worth living. May you continue to nourish yourselves with poetic and inclusive imagery, remaining faithful to your values. May you always live by your passions, propelled by the wind of freedom.”
As of now, there has been no official announcement as to who his successor will be, but Gucci’s design team will continue to hold the fort till a new creative director is appointed.
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Photo Credit: Ovidiu Hrubaru / Shutterstock.com