Gucci puts 68 twins in matching looks
Gucci just took seeing double to the next level.
The fashion house dressed 68 pairs of identical twins in identical outfits during its show on Friday at Milan fashion week.
The looks included two Lurex gowns with shark-bite cutouts, two tailored silk outfits embroidered with cherry blossoms and two pinstripe suits with handbags, which were placed on each twin’s opposite shoulder to give off a mirror-like effect.
Each set of models held hands down the catwalk, surely making audience members do a double take for the duration of the show.
Gucci sent a secret scouting group to the Twins Day in Twinsburg, Ohio, where thousands of multiples of all ages gather at the annual convention, to find the models, according to the Guardian.
During Friday’s show, the audience was split into two rooms, not knowing that each twin was walking solo on the other side of a large screen. Toward the end of the show, the screen lifted and each set of twins joined hands and walked the runway again — this time, together.
Alessandro Michele, the label’s creative director, said after the show that twinning is “so familiar — but so powerful,” the Guardian reported. He added that twins remind us of “the connective tissue” in families and in society.
“I use the runway as a theatrical stage, and fashion speaks strongly to ideas of otherness. I know that I have another side of me — I meet him when I go to my therapist,” Michele said. “We all have another side of us, and sometimes we meet that person, and hold hands.
“Before the show, guests were sent a Rorschach test to complete, rather than invitations,” because “this show is about what you find when you dig inside yourself, so I wanted to prepare you all for that,” he added.
The designer dedicated the show to his “twin mums”: his birth mother, Eralda, and her twin, his aunt Giuliana.
Michele said the two were so close that they seemed “magically multiplied.”
Gucci may have been hinting at this collection months ago too. For the 2022 Met Gala in May, Michele and Jared Leto dressed in matching looks, complete with identical hairstyles, for the red carpet extravaganza.
It could be part of a larger trend too. Twinning is currently all the rage in the world of fashion, according to Elle magazine, which noted that, in the midst of an era to be unlike anyone else, there’s still a joy in coordinating with others.