Gucci and Harry Styles Team Up For Ha Ha Ha Menswear Collection
It’s a match made for today’s menswear revolution.
As part of Milan Men’s Fashion Week, Gucci today unveiled its Ha Ha Ha collection, a line of menswear pieces designed in collaboration with Harry Styles and the brand’s star creative director Alessandro Michele.
Born from the duo’s well-known friendship and now years-long collaborative relationship on some of Styles’s best known looks (including his “Fine Line” album cover and many of his previous and current tour wardrobe), “Ha Ha Ha” was named for both the initials of the creatives’ first names (Harry and Alessandro) as well as a reference to the onomatopoeic sound of the laughing emojis that the two friends say have punctuated their text messages over the years.
Using Styles’s established aesthetic with the brand, Ha Ha Ha is a collection of traditional tailored men’s pieces all with a whimsical twist, aimed to showcase menswear that is “crafted with liberating codes that eliminate the ritual complexities of fashion collections and produce the sustainable spontaneity of ease,” as the collection’s show notes read. Traditional English tailoring comes complete with Prince of Wales checks and vintage flourishes, from flared trouser cuts to Gucci’s now-signature oversized lapel. That framework of suiting and smart separates is then accented with quaint prints (cherries mix with blue sheep and yellow gingham; blue squirrels and hearts dot a very-70s red gingham print) and delicate touches such as mother-of-pearl buttons and floral-scarf-accented fedoras. A pair of white leather dress boots with a modest heel and a singular red heart on the side are emblematic of the Gucci-filled wardrobe of Styles’s current tour looks, including and especially the red-and-white, heart-printed jumpsuit that the musician wore to his Wembley Stadium show this weekend.
“Harry has an incredible sense of fashion,” Michele noted in the collection’s release. “Observing his ability to combine items of clothing in a way that is out of the ordinary compared to the required standards of taste and common sense and the homogenization of appearance, I came to understand that the styling of a look is a generator of differences and of powers, as are his reactions to the designs I have created for him, which he has always made his own; these reactions restore me with a rush of freedom every time. The idea of working together came to me one day while we were talking on the phone: I proposed creating a “dream wardrobe” with him, starting from those small oddities that come together in childlike visions. We ended up with a mix of aesthetics from 1970s pop and bohemian to the revision of the image of the gentleman in an overturned memory of men’s tailoring.”
As one of its biggest brand ambassadors, Styles’s fashion choices have over the past few years reflected not only the music artist’s own shifting views of masculinity and gender identity; they have also given a canvas for Gucci and Michele to experiment with some of its own ideas on gender fluidity and, in turn, come to represent the general turn towards gender fluidity and experimentation that has come to define menswear today.