Gucci bids goodbye to co-ed catwalks with first menswear show in January

Gucci is to return to showing separate collections during the men’s and women’s fashion week calendars, moving away from its co-ed presentation format.

The Florentine luxury house will show its men's AW23 collection during the Milano Moda Uomo calendar in January. The announcement was made by Gucci CEO Marco Bizzarri at the Milan Fashion Global Summit.

“We will return to the catwalk respecting the regular fashion calendar,” showing menswear in January and womenswear in February in Milan, in addition to cruise, Mr Bizzarri said. “We are very happy to return to this formula, for a series of reasons we had limited ourselves to two shows a year in the schedule, first because of the pandemic and then because we had decided with Alessandro (Michele, Gucci Creative Director) to maintain this cadence for another year. Now we have chosen to put a greater focus on people, something that had never happened in the past. Having reached its current size and following Alessandro's aesthetic evolution, we felt it was essential to give menswear a specific relevance.”

The pandemic led to a shift in how brands present their collections, particularly with multiple catwalk shows where many designers and campaigners questioned the unnecessary high costs and carbon emissions of holding separate presentations.

Fashion weeks by nature are not sustainable. Think of the big, glossy sets that are built to host a 20-minute show that are subsequently torn down. Think of the thousands of travellers flying around the globe to attend fashion weeks, trade shows and events each season. One 2020 study called Zero to Market by Ordre, estimates the travel undertaken by buyers and brands resulted in about 241,000 tons of CO2 emissions. Travel to New York fashion week accounts for the most carbon emissions (37 percent of all emissions) followed by Paris (28 percent), London (18 percent) and Milan (17 percent).

Let's hope the sustainability resolutions many brands made to be more mindful and less wasteful during the pandemic don't end here.