Fashion is for freaks—this much we know to be true. Scary monsters and nice sprites of all stripes have found their place in the industry, literally and figuratively speaking. So, last week when Gucci’s Alessandro Michele sent dozens of twins down the runway, some of them festooned with Gizmo the Mogwai dolls wearing little leather harnesses? That’s just another day in Milan, baby.
Gucci’s “Twinsburg” spring show saw gremlins of the 1984 Spielbergian variety sitting snugly inside bags and dangling from belt-loop keychains, their visages even blown up and screen-printed onto evening gowns. (To deploy the words of the movie’s grumbling local conspiracy theorist, Murray Futterman: “Gremlins… They put ’em in cars, they put ’em in yer TV, they put ’em in stereos and those little radios you stick in your ears. They even put ’em in watches, they have teeny gremlins for our watches!”) Thematically, their appearance in the Gucci show made some sense: gremlins, if you recall, tend to multiply and have many personalities, a “first they’re sour, then they’re sweet” kind of deal. Michele envisioned the show as a rumination on identity and multiplicity; as the brand wrote on Instagram, “echoing the theme of duality, [Gizmo] is yet another motif introduced by Alessandro Michele to playfully complement the House’s codes. We all play host to our various selves, be they cute, clever, mischievous, intelligent, or dangerous.
But then the gremlins reappeared—multiplied?—a week later, in a preview of the latest fall drop from Supreme, with Gizmo and the evil gremlin Stripe showing up on hoodies and mesh hockey jerseys. Not so out of the realm for the New York skate brand (remember ’Preme x Shrek?) but still, a freaky coincidence. They even made the femme gremlin Greta into a skate deck babe. Freaks, I tell ya!
There’s got to be some larger reason fashion’s got these critters on the brain. Could it be our general collective nostalgia for late-20th century popular culture. Or are we simply more invested in the consequences of aquatic mutation? That said, you-know-what season is around the corner, which means the other you-know-what season is around the next corner, and Gremlins is streaming on HBO Max. Two gremlins, one stone? Is that how the saying goes?
