Gucci bares backstage, No. 21 celebrates a decade

MILAN (AP) — Milan Fashion Week opened Wednesday with outreach to China, largely cut off from the rest of the world by a new virus, and to Africa, often overlooked by luxury except as references.

New York-based Chinese designer Han Wen presented a runway show on the eve of the main calendar, standing in for three Chinese designers who had been scheduled to show in Milan but were blocked by the spread of the new coronavirus.

As will be key events this week, Han’s show was shared on Chinese social media platforms as part of the Milan Fashion Chamber initiative “China We Are With You,” reaching out to the estimated 1,000 journalists, buyers and industry insiders in China who won’t be able to make it to Milan as planned this season.

The Milan Fashion Hub also featured collections by five African designers, showing for the first time in Milan and who will be given visibility in some of the 11 luxury shopping outlet villages operated by the Value Retail Group.

Highlights from the first day of women's wear 2020-21 fall-winter previews:

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BACKSTAGE AT GUCCI

Back-stages secrets were out in the open at Gucci. Models were made up in the foyer as the fashion crowd arrived for the show. And they dressed on a rotating runway at the center of a circular show room, overseen by creative director Alessandro Michele, just out of view in the center.

Michele said he wanted to demystify back-stage rituals, which he likened in a series of mixed metaphors to a religious rite, to cinema, to a circus.

‘’We are all on that stage. Fashion is a complex mechanism, a sacred thing. We all work for this rite that is almost religious,’’ Michele told reporters after the show.

The collection reflected his mix of costuming and eccentricity, offering to the growing Gucci tribe...