GUCCI DIONYSUS HEARTS & STARS SHOULDER BAG

Alessandro Michele Era | Fall/Winter 2018

Created as part of a Valentine’s-themed release, this playful Dionysus combines hearts, stars and the interlocking GG motif an almost perfect snapshot of Alessandro Michele’s early years at Gucci.  

The Dionysus itself is important to modern Gucci history: introduced for Fall 2015, it was Michele’s first major handbag for the house and quickly became the accessory symbol of his reinvention of Gucci. His vision helped push fashion away from the restrained minimalism of the early 2010s and into an era of maximalism, nostalgia, mythology and unapologetic decoration.  

This Hearts & Stars edition captures that moment especially well. Rather than treating a luxury bag as something serious and conservative, Michele made room for romance, humor and personality an approach that helped make novelty prints, embellished bags and expressive accessories central to late-2010s fashion. Today, these more unusual early Michele-era pieces have a distinctive time-capsule quality that standard Dionysus versions don’t quite have.