For the Gucci ‘The Ritual’ Fall 2020 ad campaign, Creative Director Alessandro Michele enlists models Amanda Ljunggren, Mae Lapres,  Josefine Gronvald, and Delphi McNicol take self-portraits featuring runway designs. From gardening to knitting, the cast pair everyday activities with high fashion.

“I let the models build their own images. To act as photographers and storytellers, producers and scenographers. I asked them to represent the idea they have of themselves. To go public with it, shaping the poetry that accompanies them. I encouraged them to play, improvising with their life,” said Michele.

The results are a series of honest and authentic shots, that capture the essence of the brand and experiment with the imagination.

“The extravagant hyper-naturalism that I have always tried to depict, now emerges even more authentically and more amazingly,” he says. “The overturning, in fact, creates a paradoxical effect: loosening control produced a narration that seems to overcome, in intensity, my own ability to build fiction. I am thankful for this imaginative experimentation because it restored the power of a dream: mine.”