Rhizomatic thought has neither a centre, nor any orientation. It has to generate a movement that is able to proliferate in different directions. It develops disorderly. It feeds on connections, creating multiplicity through a constant change of expansion zones.
The point of reference here is the typical rhizome, the radical system of some plants, which horizontally spreads through the soil – a formation on which knots graft, also generating more ramifications. Rhizome, in fact, proceeds by variation, dilatation, conquest and capture. It feeds on nomadic interaction between different elements.
This precisely was the thought that shaped the Gucci Women’s Fall Winter fashion show at Via Valtellina in Milan on 24 February, 2016. Each dress portrayed very different sign systems and knotted them, following multiform and nonhierarchical directions. The collection dealt with a principle of connection and heterogeneity – a score of suggestions that mingle, modify and refer to each other flowing through unpredictable correlations of sense.
The collection opened and proceeded into an accumulation of signs which were decontextualized, connected and reactivated beyond shared conventions. What prevailed was a taste for hybridisation, for unseen and unexpected composition, for the vertigo originating from overcoming the principle of non-contradiction.
This rhizomatic reassemblage did fire the heart of embers bursting beneath the ashes. The panorama enabled one to scratch the flat surface of the already known, and embrace the depth of the unthought.