Do you think about God while you’re having sex? Alessandro Michele sure does!
If you are unfamiliar with Alessandro Michele, he is Gucci’s Creative Director, who’s turned the aging brand into a veritable goldmine of creativity since taking over its overall direction in 2015. He’s also a person who thinks strapping models up in straightjackets is an interesting addition to “mental health discourse.”
In a interview on Liz Goldwyn’s The Sex Ed podcast, Michele expands on the ideas that drive his sometimes nonsensical runway decisions, as well as his thoughts about sex, God, sex about God, gods of sex, and flowers. His answers, while somewhat bonkers, are to be expected of someone who regularly dresses the stars of today like sexy grandmas from an alternate timeline where de-feathering peacocks is a normal, everyday experience.
Michele spent a portion of the interview telling on his mom’s sexual desires. Here’s his recollection of her deep affection for Rock Hudson:
“My mother loved Rock Hudson… she was a real groupie. […] She was to the point to cry for him, because she didn’t care. It was beautiful, she said, ‘Who care if he’s gay?’”
Michele also talks quite a bit about his rejection of gender stereotypes in fashion, design, and his personal life. Regardless, he also thinks Rome, as a city and an idea, is both a hot bitch and an old grandma:
“People in Rome don’t care about things that are fashionable. Because, if you think about Rome, she’s fashionable for a really long time. I talk about her like a lady, for me she’s an old lady. She’s a bitch. She can do what you want, she can be a mistress, a mom, a nun, a priest. She’s not a man, she doesn’t care. She’s attractive, she’s dirty. She looks like a poem, but she can be tough. She tastes like something sweet. Like a witch plant. You can die.”
Speaking of grandmothers, Michele seems to have a particular fascination with them. Here’s his approach to designing menswear:
“When I dress a guy like a granny, he becomes sexy.”
I also think our lives would all improve were we to take his stance on learning:
“I’m not really learning, I don’t want to learn. I want to feel.”
The classroom analogy is also threaded into his ideas about sex, and learning from your partners:
“Sex is a playground that is different from a classroom.”
But like any good artist, Michele’s own sexual life is haunted by the idea of God:
“The idea of sex is the idea of God. The idea of sex is the idea of energy, it’s the idea of being in touch with the things that make me feel alive.”
Michele seems like a fun, chill guy! Elsewhere in the podcast, he and Goldwyn discuss balancing your chakras with flower beds and how sexy they think A$AP Rocky is. How do you think I can be more like him? Maybe, the next time I’m having sex with my husband, I should interrupt him to say, “Sex is a playground that is different from a classroom.” When he asks what’s wrong with me, I’ll tell him I’ve been haunted by the visage of god dressed like my grandmother in my dreams. The following morning, hopefully, I’ll smell faintly of Gucci Bloom, and find my closet stuffed full with brocade dresses and mismatched socks and cowboy hats spray dunked in glitter.