Viewing Gucci Cosmos at 180 The Strand

Fashionistas listen up. The art of fashion is here. Travelling exhibition, Gucci Cosmos, has touched down at London’s 180 The Strand and wow it’s making a buzz – as you can see before you even reach the show, thanks to the buses zipping around the capital adorned with Cosmos colours.

Curated by fashion critic Maria Luisa Frisa and first shown in Shanghai, it takes viewers on an immersive tour of the Italian fashion house’s past, present and future. Stage design master Es Devlin, hailed for her technological and artistic innovations, conceived the sets for its first outing and has rebooted the installation for London. With her help, Gucci Cosmos aims to entrance and discombobulate in equal measure.

The journey charting a 102 colourful history of fashion begins with a recreation of the red-lacquered elevator of The Savoy, where the house’s eponymous founder Guccio Gucci worked as a humble bellboy as a young man at the end of the 19th century, before leading visitors through a maze-like series of revolving doors opening onto different rooms and worlds. Highlights include a space filled with floating flowers and bees to evoke Gucci’s signature ‘Flora’ motif, and ‘Zoetrope’, recalling Eadweard Muybridge’s 1878 moving-image invention, in which ghostly horse animations appear on equestrian-inspired pieces from Gucci’s archives. You’ll definitely want to be FROW for this exhibition.