Gucci 'Cosmogonie' Resort 2023 Ad Campaign

Review of Gucci ‘Cosmogonie’ Resort 2023 Ad Campaign by Art Director Christopher Simmonds with Photographers and Directors Mert & Marcus

Gucci explores a cosmos of art history with the new campaign for its “Cosmogonie” Resort 2023 collection. The campaign was shot by iconic photography duo Mert & Marcus with art direction from Christopher Simmonds.

The collection’s runway show was set dramatically against the Castel del Monte, a 13th-century citadel and castle situated atop a hill in the Apulia region of southeast Italy, built during the 1240s by King Frederick II. With the geometric beauty of its octagonal courtyard that opens to the sky, the location was a fitting habitat for the collection’s exploration of the intersection of astronomy, history, and mysticism. The new campaign takes a similar approach in taking the history of Italian art and architecture as its visual basis, but does it with a sense of indulgent fantasy.

Mert & Marcus capture their models in compositions that recall famed Baroque-era portraits. Gucci bags and accessories share space with familiar objects that attest to historical moments and motifs, like astrolabes, flowers, censers, instruments, and forbidden fruits. Meanwhile, large swathes of the backdrops are dominated by fantastical images of the galaxy: swirling nebulae, distant moons, and stars.

Among these scenes, Alessandro Michele’s historically minded designs both fit right in in their romantic reinterpretation of bygone codes of power and luxury and stand out in their attesting to a distinctly contemporary eye. Similarly, Gucci’s eclectic and inclusive casting rebukes the white supremacy and imperialism that characterized the cultures that made this history.

Under Alessandro Michele’s creative directorship, Gucci has always done a good job at walking this path between historical decadence and contemporary liberation, but this campaign might feel like the most thoroughly synthesized – and lushly realized in terms of visuals – yet. Via a love for history and people of Earth, Gucci unlocks the cosmos.