image: Andrea Delbo

Welcome, new readers. Welcome back, kind devotees. I’ve got a few confessions to make today….

First thing’s first: Sarah Nicole Prickett wrote an article talking about how all you Toronto boys were spawned from a bearded cookie cutter in flannel and distressed Premiata boots. Read it. Loved it.

Second thing’s second: I love Gucci. I once did a presentation on the entire history of the brand and the Gucci dynasty, in Italian. Yes, this is the sort of thing one is encouraged to do in Advanced Italian classes at UofT. I showed a clip from Roberto Rossellini’s 1954 film, Viaggio in Italia, depicting Ingrid Bergman on the Vesuvius donning a Gucci Bamboo Bag. Yes, this is the sort of thing one does in a Humanities course in University. In some high rise accounting office on Bay St., a suit would dare say that this sort of didactic exercise is, in simple terms, simply a waste of time. Numbers, algorithms, MBAs and 7-hour standardized exams – these are the sort of things that prepare the Bud Foxes in your Calc 101 class for the bright lights of the ticker and the one-point-something dollar home in Rosedale complete with lululemon plastic-face wino wife and 4 kids popped out from a USB key.

But for a Eurotrash girl like me who aced Calc but found numbers oh-so-boring in comparison to shoulder pads and the Epi Leather Alma, having the freedom to tell my fellow 22 peers (23 when a certain Thai princess did enough blow to get the courage to come to class with D&G sunglasses on a la Situation – which was a rarity) that film and fashion are worthy of the same appreciation as a Rembrandt prepared me for a lot in life. I mean, would I be able to write a post expressing the importance of a Gucci Museum 10 years later if I had stuck to solving for x ? I doubt it. Hm. I’d probably be able to afford a few more Jackie bags come to think of it, but really, who’s counting?

Not me. What I am doing, though, is discussing art in the kind of terms that make something like a Gucci Museum okay. Let’s settle the score on all this art business, first off. Now as much as it pains me to do this, especially on a fashion blog of all places, it’s worth considering a sad viewpoint on all of this. Adorno & Horkheimer; and no, they are not a German fashion designer duo. They say high art is not for the masses – that’s why Walmart and Britney Spears are so popular. And it’s not the case that people, like me and you, created the need for Hit Me Baby One More Time to fill a void in our lives; it’s the richest of the rich (those on the receiving end of your iTunes transaction) that tell us we need more Britney by simultaneously giving us more, give us, give us more. It’s this thing called a Culture Industry that standardizes the production of crap through technological advancements so that we, the consumer, get excited about the latest Harry Potter movie and such. Which brings me to my question: how many of us are excited about a Gucci Museum?

image: Gucci

Luxury brands are kind of modelled after Adorno and Horkheimer’s picture of a consumerist society. “All fashion systems demonstrate the cultural politics of their milieu.”(1).  The Gucci system is comprised of the haute couture line; the one-off crocodile handbag; the ready-to-wear runway fare and what actually goes on the store shelves; and lastly, the monogram or sport collection or both; and after that, thanks to production standardization, we have the fakes. Now call it whatever you like but somewhere in between all those semi-colons YOU BELONG. The choice (paycheque and Visa credit limit in hand) is ostensibly yours to make. I guess that’s what bothers me most about non-believers (you know, those people who call us fashion lovers materialistic?); they call the kettle black. I’m sorry but wearing Costa Blanca and spending your entire paycheque on a Vince Vaughan film is just as bad as eating leftover pizza, Gucci’d down to the socks – if we’re going down that road.

Moving on. A Gucci Museum exalts fashion to the realm of high art in the same way the Louvre does for Rembrandt. Let’s call a spade and a spade, shall we? Whether or not we even give Adorno & Horkheimer any currency in our current society we can’t deny the fact that discrete levels of taste exist (illusory or not) and each of these tiers reflects income and status quo. That Britney Spears can be liked by a billionaire heiress and the girl behind the counter at Tim Hortons is the kind of scary those Germans were talking about. But that’s not the kind of scary I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is the act of buying a monogram Gucci pouch as somehow translating into the participation in high art. Incidentally, the Gucci Museum has a gift shop where you can purchase your own “Gucci Icon Collection”  bag and calendars, probably, made exclusively for the museum. Participation at every level. We can walk through the evening room with our brows raised, nodding at the tiger-head bracelets and horse-bit every things, in quiet reverence. We admire the black and white photos hanging on the Palazzo della Mercanzia’s walls depicting artisanal leather masters as they bring the brand’s pricey creations to life, by hand, as if to say this mode of production differs greatly from that of a Pontiac Sunfire. The hand-stiched, leather Gucci bag is art. And whether we prance into the Gucci store a week later to purchase our first monogram handbag or chuckle as we seemingly “beat the system” when we hand over 20 dollars cash to some sidewalk vendor selling knock-offs, we are always still participating.

image: Gucci

And I know that writing this post may discount all my hearts and gushes over Giannini and Ford’s pieces but perhaps awareness is the sole element catapulting me from unexamined reverence to the likes of Anna Wintour and Salma Hayek who wear Gucci because they can – not because they assign some sort of unattainable godliness to it. And maybe they once did. Maybe that’s what made Anna hunger for Editor-in-Chief and Salma marry Francois-Henri Pinault (he basically owns Gucci). But what’s important is that they don’t anymore. And neither do I. Gushing over my Jackie bag is still participation in a hierarchy of materialistic consumerism (epitomized by the Gucci Museum) but at least I can say so that it is, which is a hell of a lot better than Costa Blanca and Vince Vaughan.

SNP’s article in the Toronto Standard can be found here: http://www.torontostandard.com/culture-design/men-of-downtown-toronto-you-all-look-the-same

(1) Jennifer Craik in The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion (1993).

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