Gucci Spring / Summer 2016

MILAN — Fashion faithful miraculously emerged from Fashion Week in London for the most part unmolested from what can be an unforgiving patch of earth when it comes to inclement weather. That luck ended Wednesday morning in Milan as sheets upon sheets of rain swept city streets. Whatever the five-day weather forecast holds is neither here nor there as the only reference to the atmospheric stuff that truly matters are the seasons spring and summer. This much and more were true at Gucci Wednesday afternoon at Scalo Farini when Alessandro Michele presented his second ready-to-wear collection (excluding resort) following his appointment as creative director earlier this year. As if to drive home the point about weather, the house laid out its lengthy carpeted runway underneath the open-air canopy of an erstwhile railway platform. The message was plain as day, the season was spring no matter what the unrelenting winds and showers insisted. Such is the power of Gucci, which above all else marshaled no fewer than nine models at Next for its runway show including Vera Van Erp, Tessa Bruinsma, Grace Simmons, Martina Lew, Piene Burgers, Klementyna, Maja Salamon, Wangy, and Emily Butcher. Travel and the instruments of charting said travel predominated the collection, often manifesting literally in the form silken prints derived from historical maps. Travel also happened in the very real sense of the word as nearly 70 models traversed the distance of a runway that once accommodated locomo