Alessandro Michele’s madcap reign at Gucci has officially come to an end. Having spent greater than 20 years plugged-in at the posh behemoth – seven of which were as its creative director – the designer broadcasted his exit on Instagram this evening.

“There are occasions when paths part ways due to different perspectives each one in all us can have,” he said. “Today a rare journey ends for me, lasting greater than twenty years, inside an organization to which I even have tirelessly dedicated all my love and artistic passion.”

He didn’t announce any future plans and the brand has yet to unveil a successor, but Michele will take his final bow in January at Milan Fashion Week.

For many fashion fans, this may not come as a shock: industry mag WWD teased the designer’s leaving with quotes from an anonymous source on Tuesday evening and news feeds have been clogged with speculative memes ever since. “During this long period Gucci has been my home,

my adopted family. To this clan, to all of the individuals, who’ve sorted and supported it, I send my most sincere thanks, my biggest and most heartfelt embrace,” he added. “Along with them I even have wished, dreamed, imagined.

Without them, none of what I even have built would have been possible.” Thoughts and prayers exit to Harry Styles, Måneskin, and each SFX specialist working in northern Italy reading that post at once.

Along with the butt plug necklaces, alien prosthetics, and Roblox activations, Michele shall be remembered for his poetic show notes – those who read more like a philosophy essay than a press release. But that was all a part of the fun. Plucked from the Gucci atelier himself, throughout his tenure,

the designer pushed clothing to its metaphysical extremes; he severed heads from models, birthed baby dragons, staged controversial fashion shows in cinematic asylums, and forged Jared Leto as his de facto body double – with the duo emerging in complete symbiosis on the Met Gala earlier this 12 months. The runes of that conjoining might be read within the designer’s SS23 offering, which saw equivalent twins walk hand-in-hand down a darkened runway on the outskirts of Milan.

He was also the primary Gucci designer to interrupt away from the slam of the seasonal calendar, selecting to debut his collections as and when he pleased, in LA, Apulia, or Seoul. He was the primary Gucci designer to forged “curve” models on the runway and the primary to forged a model with Down’s Syndrome in a beauty campaign.

And he was the primary Gucci designer to listen to the word “metaverse” and the primary to collaborate with ASDA… sort of. He did, nevertheless, join forces with Palace, adidas, and Balenciaga, which paved the best way for a bevy of high-voltage, incestuous hook-ups inside the luxury sector – amongst them Fendace and Marc Jacobs for Fendi. He was also the primary Gucci designer to set-up an incubator scheme for young designers, generally known as Gucci Vault.

However it was never nearly clothes, more the spectacle of clothing itself. He displayed models in revolving, glass-walled chambers, Thirteenth-century castles, and operating theatres, all of whom were wearing maximalist prints, flared tailoring, and gender-bending gowns. Yes, he was a designer, but he was more like a bonkers scientist –

one who extracted the “oohs” and “aahs” from the red carpets of old Hollywood and the sweat-slicked basements of Berlin’s sex dungeons and laced them into his linings. It stands to reason that these sorts of looks found a natural home on the backs of celebrities like Lana Del Rey, Billie Eilish, and Dakota Johnson, not to say Elton John, who refuses to be seen with out a sequined blazer.

Though many Michele-philes shall be mourning the lack of their eccentric leader, his departure compounds a slew of movements inside fashion, which lays fresh ground for the industry. This 12 months, Matthieu Blazy was appointed to Bottega Veneta, Maximilian Davis to Ferragamo, and Daniel Lee to Burberry, while Raf Simons quit his own label to further deal with Prada and Riccardo Tisci reignited his namesake brand.

Fashion, it will seem, is in a period of astronomical transit, the sort that encourages stargazers to make grand prophecies in regards to the way forward for things. It’s perhaps fitting, then, that Michele must have given show-goers a star of their very own earlier this same 12 months.

“To them goes my most sincerest wish: may you proceed to cultivate your dreams, the subtle and intangible matter that makes life price living,” the designer’s goodbye post concluded. “May you proceed to nourish yourselves with poetic and inclusive imagery, remaining faithful to your values. May you usually live by your passions, propelled by the wind of freedom.”