The purpose of Gucci’s DIY – Do It Yourself – service stems from the idea of creating an engaging way to allow customers to express their personalities in identical pieces for men and women, men’s tailoring, sneakers, and iconic bag styles of the House, including the Dionysus, Sylvie and Ophidia. The offer is now extended to interchangeable men and women knits as well as women’s outerwear.
The knitwear comes in four base colours, namely green, blue, red and white, and the large letters that are intarsia-knitted into the garments. There are three styles interchangeable for men or women: a crew neck, a shawl collar bomber and a button-through cardigan. All of them feature stripes around the bottom, on the cuffs and on the sleeves, that reference the House Web stripe. On the crew neck the large letter is displayed on the front, while on the cardigan and the bomber, it appears on the back.
Playfully decorated with “ABCDEFGUCCI”, the alphabet is shown in gold text on a green background, with the interlocking GG motif, and also in gold, and the blue-red-blue House Web stripe. In addition, all these elements characterise the packaging for the collection, comprising decorative cream boxes with black edging.
To celebrate the new Gucci DIY knits, six artists have come together to recreate the works published on Gucci’s social media accounts and on gucci.com. The original works include Angela Deane’s friendly ghosts wearing the sweaters painted on top of winter scenes, Isabella Cotier’s portrait style illustrations, and artist and illustrator Marc Burckhardt’s richly detailed creations featuring a gorilla and a tiger with the knits. The collaboration follows an initiative earlier this year involving 12 artists and talents who interpreted the customisable Ophidia tote and Ace sneakers in works that connected their artistic style and individuality.
The DYI programme also includes exclusive women’s made to order pieces designed to be customised with initial patches. Leather jackets – a biker and bomber style – are also available as made-to-measure items and customers can lengthen or shorten the sleeves and jacket length. These leather statement pieces feature metal studs, rhinestones and multi-coloured hand-painted flowers, and can have a letter applied as a patch in gold thread on the chest of the bomber, or in red or gold thread on the left arm of the biker, for example.
Chunky cardigans can have letters adorned with flowers. Lined, belted robes with all-over multi-coloured floral embroidery and contrast white piping also feature a letter with floral decoration as a hand-embroidered addition. A letter with floral decoration can be hand-embroidered onto the breast pocket of a wool-mohair tailored jacket with matching flared trousers. A black and white tweed jacket with blue and red grosgrain trim and gold tiger head buttons, and matching skirt, is designed to feature a patch on its breast pocket made up of two small letters and a small bow – all embroidered with pearls and applied by hand.
A light tweed cardigan and matching skirt in hibiscus red or gardenia, with a blue-red-blue grosgrain House Web detail, can have a large letter in dark blue thread hand appliquéd to its upper left side. And finally, an ivory-base silver-sequinned tweed jacket with tiger-head buttons and black velvet edges and details, with a matching skirt, is adorned with a single letter patch in black micro sequins that can be hand-applied to the upper left side, above the pocket.
The ready-to-wear menswear DIY selection is also expanding to include new designs of decorated sweatshirts, hoodies, tailored jackets, bomber jackets (in silk duchesse or leather), and black stone-washed denim jackets. All can be customised with patches featuring initials, and a choice of linings of either plain or patterned.
The new Gucci DIY Collection is available on gucci.com and selected Gucci stores.
