The Story Behind Gucci's Severed Heads

WE'RE used to fashion houses boasting that a couture dress took 260 hours to make, or that a handbag required 32 hours of handiwork. But six months to create a life-sized replica of a human head, identical to the model who carried it on the runway? Gucci's blowing the competition out of the water. Whether you're a Lord Of The Rings fan or perhaps entranced with the Biblical story of Salome, the autumn/winter 2018 Gucci show had numerous phantasmagorical highlights: from models carrying "dragon puppies" and iguanas in place of handbags, to the faun horns that poked out from under their curly hair, to the lucky few who got to carry a life-sized simulacrum of their own heads, Alessandro Michele's imagination was allowed to run riot. And the Italian special effects studio who made his conceit of the "Gucci cyborg" a reality? Makinarium, a Rome-based production centre which specialises in physical and visual special effects. Michele's inventions required models to have moulds of their heads made using silicone and polyurethane resins, with their skulls 3D-scanned using green screen technology in order to create life-sized, identical effigies that the models then carried on the runway - the fashion version of a Cephalophore, if you will. The dragon was inspired by "The Legend of the Baby Dragon in a Jar", a reference to a hoax staged by the Oxford-based author Allistair Mitchell who, in 2004, concocted a story about a dragon preserved in a jar that he had found in his garage. A spokesperson from Makinarium told Vogue: "The concept and drawing of the dragon were ideas of Alessandro Michele. Alessandro was fascinated by the legend of the little dragon in the glass jar that he read about and gave us visual references. Starting from those, we worked on the creation of an albino dragon cub (or a white one, as certain puppies may be before they acquire the pigmentation as adults), with a semi-transparent skin and small horns in development. And from there we began the work on the concept design that led to the creature presented on the catwalk." Michele made contact with Makinarium after having seen The Tale of Tales, a 2015 dark fantasy film directed by Matteo Garrone, starring Salma Hayek and John C. Reilly, which critics described as a "sumptuous, grotesque adaptation of the 17th-century yarns of Neopolitan poet Giambattista Basile". Makinarium confirmed to Vogue that it was surprised to have been contacted, as the studio had not worked with a fashion brand before, however, it was full of praise for Michele. "We think that Alessandro Michele is actually much more an artist with a noteworthy sensitivity, even for his shows, that are real live performances." As for Michele? "We are all Doctor Frankenstein of our lives," he told Vogue's Anders Christian Madsen, in a preview. "Nature has not given us an untouchable body."