MILAN — Gucci is still the great success story of Milanese fashion: A heritage name gone stale and then revolutionized by a new designer and turned into an influence and cash machine that keeps going and going. It’s the gold ring every competitor is chasing. Including, this season, Ferragamo, Bally, Missoni and Etro.
That may be why, for his debut at Bally, Rhuigi Villaseñor, the self (and mom)-taught founder of the haute L.A. streetwear line Rhude, opted to transform the formerly stiff Swiss label into what looked like nothing so much as a sort of Gucci-in-its-Tom-Ford-late-’90s-heyday tribute brand. There was python! There were metallic leathers and big, shiny buckles! Shirts unbuttoned to the navel, jersey gowns with big chunks bitten out of the sides and back and gold-plated attitude — for both men and women.
Derivative though the ethos may have been, that energy has been missing from the catwalks for awhile now (Gucci sure isn’t doing it any more) and, with some faded denim thrown in, it was still a heck of a lot of fun.
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