IT'S ALL GUCCI

PART HIP-HOP, PART HAUGHTY, ALL DECADENT

This article previously appeared in the New York Times, March 2008

THE brand is strong, the numbers are great ... yet Gucci seems to be going through a minor midlife crisis. A fling, maybe. Nothing serious.

On a subtle level, Gucci seems not to have bounced back since the divorce. Tom Ford was the great love of Gucci’s life, after all. They had an enviable run  the wealthy old blue-blood finally had its overdue sexual awakening when young playboy Tom swung in, with his snare-drum-tight slacks and groin-deep necklines. They couldn’t last, of course; the markets and egos involved were too volatile. Still, Tom, for all his flaws, really understood Gucci.

Gucci’s recent print ads are upbeat and bosomy: a jailbait nymph with pouty lips clambering on rocks with an oily-haired boyfriend. They are very (ahem) Guess by George Marciano ... a flirty cowgirl style a wee bit tackier than one expects of the Gucci legacy.

The new Fifth Avenue flagship seems architecturally inspired by Hyatt Regency atriums of the late 1970s: chocolate walls and carpets, smoky topaz glass, gray slabs of twinkling granite.

On the first floor, the Heritage Collection of handbags and luggage seems aimed toward those who aspire to inherited wealth. The centerpiece is a caramelized alligator sarcophagus of a steamer trunk with shiny brass locks such as the viscount might take on a steamship to the colonies, surrounded by smaller components, like a matching jewelry box ($33,250).

The handbags are perfect for jungle doctors bringing quinine and gin to desperate indigenous housewives: muted crocodile and pocked ostrich with lacquered bamboo handles ($3,650). Matching ankle-strap pumps have a bamboo dowel embedded into the perilous needle-spiked heel ($1,980). These items are decidedly not pre-distressed; these are new family heirlooms, purchased with your freshly minted lucre.

You ascend to the second floor up a floating marble staircase that resembles a tour through Liberace’s Lucite Wurlitzer. Young brothers in purple lambskin bomber jackets and jeans belted over the knees were gliding around in tinted eyeglasses, greeting each other with knuckle-bumps over large shopping bags.

Gucci seems to realize that it owes much of its recent popularity to hip-hop’s enduring affection for the Gucciness of Gucci, which, arguably, isn’t affection for classic Gucci as signified, but affection for hip-hop’s kidnap and brainwash of Gucci, which has been successfully turned out, Patty Hearst-style, to represent that cultural revolution of dazzling urbanites. (Yes, Madame, as a matter of fact, we did shoejack these loafers straight off Gore Vidal; they have now been properly swerved.)

The new suits are cartoonishly dapper: oversize plaid prints with cigarette legs one ordinarily associates with vaudeville soft-shoes and the haplessly wonky. But they will look sensational on André 3000.

On the third floor: ample indication that Rosemary’s Baby-doll maternity smocks are finally being replaced by slim shift dresses belonging to that Hitchcockian twilight zone betwixt Grace Kelly and Tippi Hedren.

I accosted a sales assistant, a bespectacled young Antonio Banderas type, to ask about a lightweight trench coat ($2,455).

“Is that jacquard?”

He confessed he didn’t know and slapped his own hand. I agreed and slapped his hand, too. He became very attentive.

There were regrets from other decades: Bea Arthur’s Maude was represented in a loud, sleeveless vermilion tent ($2,395); a T-shirt seemed to have been Beadazzled in 1991 ($495).

Then I found them: waistlines. I nearly wept. Clingy, body-conscious dresses in 1940s jitterbug cuts.

“I’ll take those to the special dressing room,” purred Adolfo, my sales assistant.

“Try this one, too.” He handed me what looked like a Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress, covered with impressionistic barbells ($2,195).

“But I hate the print.”

“Trust me,” Adolfo said. “Do you like high heels?”

Vampish deadpan. “I like very high heels.” We smiled.

“Show me which ones. I’ll bring them in your size.”

Moments when straight men make such offers are far too rare in this life.

I found candy-apple red leather pumps, with skinny black four-inch heels, and followed Adolfo to the dressing room.

“Show everything to me,” he said. I thought he was being polite.

When I opened the door to swish around in the mirrors seven minutes later, he was seated outside, waiting.

“I am not supposed to say this, but you look really hot,” Adolfo said. Too good to be true. I wondered if Gucci was trafficking in “companionship.”

Adolfo delivered armfuls of dresses, and the pumps. The dress he suggested, the ersatz Von Furstenberg, was, other than massage oil, the sexiest thing I’ve seen on my body  L.A., TV-sexy in a way I never thought I could pull off. Adolfo insisted on belting it, resulting in a blushing, Cary Grant physical-comedy moment I thoroughly enjoyed.

I tried a black and white gingham with a peekaboo cleavage window ($1,595). “You should shorten it,” Adolfo said.

“Oh please.” I rolled my eyes.

Adolfo got on his knees and began tucking my hem. I pretended the brush of his knuckles against my knees wasn’t the kind of electrocharged intimacy I recall as a preamble to letters in Penthouse Forum.

“See?” He held my dress and indicated the mirror. A miracle: that little tuck had transformed me, Cinderella-style, into Elle Macpherson.

Adolfo, realizing I would do anything for him, urged me to try a silk spinnaker covered with black dots.

My romance with Adolfo abruptly ended. Suffice to say, 101 Dalmatians don’t make it right.

But I bought the red pumps ($525). You must invest in the magic that moves you. They’re a vote of confidence for my romantic future. Angels wanna wear my red shoes. I’ll click my ruby slippers three times and say: Ciao Adolfo. There’s no place like Rome.

Gucci

725 Fifth Avenue (56th Street); (212) 826-2600.

GOOCHIE Gucci’s present designer, the popular Frida Giannini, reaffirms the brand with a brassy youth

injection, adding bigger hair and breasts to the old luxury standby.

DUCHY Gucci-topia unfolds on Fifth Avenue, as young rap moguls and tweedy old WASPs shop for lizard-skin finery together in perfect harmony.

SMOOCHIE Gucci’s sales assistants are so sublimely attentive you might get a heat rash along with your complimentary collegiate Gucci logo ’n’ heart key chain. Bellissimo.

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Artwork: “CUFFY”, oil on linen, Cintra Wilson 2022