Gucci Launches Gucci Sneaker Garage
Gucci is pleased to present Gucci Sneaker Garage, the highly anticipated section of its App conceived as a platform entirely dedicated to the House’s eclectic sneakers and their digital counterparts.
The section channels the spirit of garages as the hotbed for talent and ideas, the seeding grounds of alternative ways to imagine and accelerate possible futures. It brings together a mix of storytelling, gaming and user-generated content, and is home to the first virtual sneakers ever imagined and designed by Creative Director Alessandro Michele: the Gucci Virtual 25. These hyper-real sneakers, whose design combines technical and more imaginative details, 80s’ inspired and ultra-contemporary aesthetics, can only be purchased virtually, for users to try them on and dialogue with their digital personas in the augmented reality and in virtual environments. Fostering the unexpected bond Gucci developed with gamers’ communities, the Gucci Virtual 25 will in fact also be available on Aglet, where they will launch together with the full spectrum of the House’s sneakers, and are wearable on the popular immersive platforms Roblox and VRChat through game patches included in the purchase, along with additional customized contents.
The platform also gives gamers an access to the ultimate tool to experiment within the distinctive world of the Gucci sneakers by creating their own model, tweaking, hybridizing and combining elements from the existing designs or from visionary new takes on them. The project embraces the brand’s creative vision opening an array of fresh possibilities to explore, through hybrids overcoming constrictions and finding their definitions in a field of liberty. Through this interactive and trailblazer entertainment, Gucci involves its enthusiasts in a new dimension with the products and codes of the House, allowing users to bring their self-expression to post-physical and unexplored territories.
Leading the way of the practice is a group of artists, including Helen Kirkum, Michael Cutini, Mattias Gollin, Rudy Lim, Bodega Rose, Haram With Sugar, Ghica Popa, Jemma Mason, Christopher Chan, Pix Sellers, Delphine Dénéréaz, and long-time Friend of the House Trevor Andrew. They were invited by Gucci to use the eclectic sneakers of the House as a blank canvas, an inspiring starting point to express their creativity, resulting in artworks displayed in a virtual gallery. Using multiple mediums, each of the artists addressed the materiality of the shoes, overcoming their functionality to reflect on their cultural and symbolic significance.
Overall, the project keeps pushing one-step further the relationship between the world of fashion and that of gaming and digital environments, pioneered through Gucci Arcade: the ever-growing section of the Gucci App launched in July 2019 dedicated to games, inspired by the retro video games made famous in amusement arcades of the 1970s and 1980s - furtherly closing the gap between the GG logo and the “Good Gaming” sign in gamers’ vocabulary. The brand also pursued this direction with its two-chapter Instagram project #24HourAce, where a collective of multimedia artists reflected on the rise of stimulating ASMR and on the way in which the digital landscape has evolved over the years, as well as partnering with Snap Inc. on Try-On Snapchat Lenses, with the global e-sports entertainment organization Fnatic, and with the world's favourite mobile tennis game: Tennis Clash.
Once again, the brand seeks to combine the past with the present, using contemporary and avant-garde codes to tell stories that speak of the future.
In the Philippines, Gucci is exclusively distributed by Stores Specialists, Inc., and is located at Greenbelt 4 and Shangri-La Plaza East Wing. Follow @ssilifeph on Facebook and Instagram for more information.
About SSI Group, Inc.:
The SSI Group is the Philippines’ largest specialty retailer, with an established brand portfolio that includes some of the world’s most recognized international brands. We lead the country’s specialty retail market through the size and breadth of our brand portfolio and store network, with almost 100 brands, almost 600 stores and 11 e-commerce sites. With our growing e-commerce presence, we are also the Philippine specialty retailer with the most diverse and extensive e-commerce offering.
Our unique brand portfolio covers a wide range of specialty and lifestyle concepts, spanning the luxury, casual and fast fashion, beauty, footwear, home and restaurant categories.
Established in the 1980s, SSI has been at the forefront of the Philippine retail industry for more than 30 years. Throughout this time, we have sought to inspire and enhance the lifestyle values of our customers, and to cater to the evolving tastes and aspirations of Filipino consumers.
The Group has also launched “The Specialist”, an At Home concierge service dedicated to providing customers with personalized service to address their unique shopping needs. Customers may get in touch with SSI’s Customer Service team through any of the following channels to inquire about a particular brand or product:
SSI GROUP CUSTOMER SERVICE TEAM
Email: customerservice@ssigroup.com.ph
Telephone Number: 8-830-5000
Mobile Number: (0917) 552 9359
Facebook: facebook.com/SSILifePH
Instagram: @ssilifeph
Viber Community: bit.ly/SSILifePH
The SSI Group’s unique portfolio of brands provides the Group with distinctive merchandise, most of which is not yet available to Filipinos through digital platforms. Leveraging on this value proposition, we will continue to make more of our brands available online, across multiple channels – through brand.com sites, third-party marketplaces, and our own multi-brand platforms, such as the newly launched Trunc.ph and others more coming soon. The acceleration of the SSI Group’s e-commerce expansion is one of our responses to the challenges and unique operating conditions brought about by COVID 19. As we continue to be at the forefront of delivering retail innovations to the Philippine market, and as we look to strengthen our e-commerce presence, we remain committed to bringing the best of fashion, beauty, home, food and lifestyle to Filipino consumers, through multiple, world-class retail channels.