Review of Gucci ‘Hacker Project’ for Gucci Gift 2021 Ad Campaign by Creative Directors Demna Gvasalia and Alessandro Michele with Director Harley Weir
The Gucci “Hacker” project – wherein the house appropriates and reinterprets the world of fellow iconic house Balenciaga – continues its uniquely collaborative exploration of branding, identity, and appropriation with a new campaign by Harley Weir.
A series of pop-up and pop-in stores will officially launch The Hacker Project series, which debuted as part of the Gucci Aria collection in April. In dozens of physical spaces worldwide, unique displays and structures will introduce Gucci pieces that reinterpret Balenciaga codes and in so doing question notions of branding, appropriating, and counterfeiting. Standalone pop-up stores and transformed Gucci store spaces take creative approaches to presenting the project’s ideas and products—cross-branded ready-to-wear, accessories, bags, and cases. Each physical launch includes special activations and exclusives that transform surrounding areas and recontextualize the brand, further investigating The Hacker Project’s themes.
Arriving in tandem with these unique physical activations, Weir’s digital campaign makes hyper-graphical use of branding elements to highlight the project’s subversion of logo-mania. Eclectic characters clad in crossover pieces pose before curtains decked out in graphics composed of Gucci and Balenciaga prints and logos that both harmonize and compete.
Filling these scenes with music and motion, the short film combines Balenciaga’s penchant for still, aloof portraiture with Gucci’s signature sexually liberated, flower-loving whimsicality.
Over-saturated in just the right way, the campaign is an excellent look at the collaborative project’s celebratory and subversive approach to consumerist excess.
Gucci Creative Director | Alessandro Michele
Balenciaga Creative Director | Demna Gvasalia
Director | Harley Weir
Music | ‘GUCCI’ Bree Runway, Maliibu Miitch