He started Giorgio Armani in April 2020. "This crisis is also a wonderful opportunity to restore value to authenticity: enough with fashion as a communication game, enough with fashion shows around the world, just for theo to present bland ideas.”
Gucci has completely reinvented its communication strategy and approach to the market with the first episode – At Home | Silvia Calderoni and Paul B. Preciado | Overture Of Something That Never Ended – to “inform” the moment of change and the turning point.
Other leading companies were already ready (Apple, Tesla). The empirical evidence leads me to point out that the leading and legendary brands are marking the territory, they are experimenting, they are regenerating their value proposition. The best are making a lot of new commercial creativity and a strong regeneration of their identity.
Against, il "IT world; ofart” (figurative arts, fine arts, cinema, writing, music, etcc.) appears more inertmore passive to the research and to production of new contentuyou, new meanings and new trends to tell and represent possible new destinations future: the feeling is that it has stoppeda and is in a wait-and-see position.
As I wrote, the history of consumerist and capitalist society needs to have leaders and legends who are at the forefront, who show the way, who identify trends to follow (imitate). Art has always had this fundamental role. For example, the 900th century is full of artistic movements that have sown and ignited new cultural, social and consumption phenomena: Liberty at the beginning of the previous century, music in the 60s and 70s, pop art in the 80s.
Why are these companies more avant-garde? • they already had more organizations and people sensitive and more contemporary who knew the pre-covid historical moment well and more deeply; • they had already cultivated and been able to germinate new opinion leaders and new trend setters capable of articulating new meanings: it would seem that these companies have been able to create more inclusive, more open, more adaptive, more creative working contexts, perhaps also thanks to meritocracy and the acceptance of diversity;• in the time of covid they are state more open and more resilient, but decidedly more reactive, they were able to affirm that it was necessary to change and they have also changed because, perhaps, they were already ready, they were ahead of the times; • they decided to face up to direct change by dominating new technologies and innovations merging them with their market strategy and, certainly, they knew how to take the risk of these rash choices.
For obvious reasons of independence and autonomy it would be much better if art took back this roleo command, of contamination and avant-garde, but should find methods of research, experimentation and production capable of generating new and great artistic and cultural phenomena, unrepeatable and fascinating.
“There is no art without self-awareness, and self-awareness and the critical spirit are one and the same.”Oscar Wilde.
All the best!
