Alessandro Michele

Alessandro Michele grew up in Rome. His father was an Alitalia technician, and his mother an assistant to a movie executive.[4][5]

In the early 1990s, Alessandro Michele completed his studies of fashion design at the Accademia di Costume e di Moda in Rome, where he learned to design both theatrical costumes and fashion wear.[6]

Two ensembles by Michele for Gucci on display during The Met's exhibit Camp: Notes on Fashion

In 1994, Alessandro Michele left Rome to work in Les Copains, an Italian knitwear firm based in Bologna. Three years later, he joined Silvia Venturini Fendi and Karl Lagerfeld at luxury house Fendi.[7][8] He worked with Frida Giannini and was appointed senior accessories designer, in charge of the brand’s leather goods.[1][9]

In 2002, Tom Ford, Gucci's creative director from 1994 to 2004, invited Alessandro Michele to work at the firm's London-based design office. He was originally in charge of the company’s handbag designs.[10] In 2006, Alessandro Michele was named senior designer of Gucci leather goods, and in 2011, he was promoted associate creative director to Frida Giannini,[11] creative director of Gucci since 2005.[10] In 2014, the Italian designer also became creative director of Richard Ginori, the Florentine porcelain brand acquired by Gucci in June 2013.[12]

UK Musician Harry Styles wearing a custom Gucci suit at One Direction's final X-Factor performance in 2015.

In January 2015, Marco Bizzarri asked Alessandro Michele to act as interim creative designer for the January menswear show, giving him a week to reshape Frida Giannini's original designs.[13] Michele accepted the challenge and introduced a “new Gucci: nonconformist, romantic, intellectual”.[14] Two days later, Kering appointed Alessandro Michele creative director of Gucci, with the goal to reinvent Gucci’s props amid deflating sales.[15] A month later, Michele introduced a "sophisticated, intellectual and androgynous feel" for Gucci during his first women's collection show.[2]

A custom blue Gucci dress created by Alessandro Michele for Harry Styles was on display in the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2022 for an exhibit called "Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear."

While creating iconic products, such as the Dionysus handbag,[16] Alessandro Michele also reintroduced Gucci classics including the double-G logo.[17] He moved away from Tom Ford's "Sexy Gucci" props[18] and feminized Gucci’s menswear ("you can be more masculine showing your femininity").[19] He reused the "My Body My Choice" slogan, the embroidered uterus design, and the "22.05.1978" date (the date on which abortion became protected by Italian courts),[20] transforming the brand into a postgender proposition.[21] He added a dramatic Renaissance component to Gucci’s spirit,[22] replaced the modernist furniture of the Palazzo Alberini-Cicciaporci (Gucci’s design headquarters in Rome) with antiques,[23] and chose buildings of historic significance for his theatrical shows.[24]

In 2016, for the Gucci Museum in Florence, Alessandro Michele curated two additional rooms dedicated to Tom Ford's collections.[25] Since the 2018 opening of the Gucci Wooster Bookstore in New York, Michele seasonally contributes to the curation of the shop’s items.[26] In October 2018, he co-curated with Maurizio Cattelan the 2-month Gucci art exhibition "The Artist is Present" in Shanghai.[27]

In 2019, Alessandro Michele revived Gucci's Beauty collection,[28] and Gucci launched its first fine jewelry collection, which he designed.[29]