Every Weird and Wonderful Thing About Gucci's Fall Show

Welcome to Runway Matters, where we're delivering notes straight from the runway so you can quickly digest the most important trends and noteworthy moments from the F/W 18 shows.

Gucci's show always manages to wind us into an elaborate whirlwind of fantasy and imagination. This season, though, Alessandro Michele truly outdid himself, creating not simply a fashion show but something closer to the set of a sci-fi movie—Harry Potter, some would say.

Live reptiles, fake replicated heads, and oddly specific cultural references are all to be found in this show that we can only deem bizarre. Titled "Cyborg," the fall collection claims to deal with issues of identity and illusion, themes we see emerge in ways both literal (replicated heads and third eyes) and figurative (sheer garment bags).

In a bizarre twist of events, it wasn't a glamorous "need it now" handbag or even a puppy that models toted down the runway. An iguana, a snake, and, yes, a baby dragon all made debuts, perched oh so casually in the hands of expressionless models.

If you can get past the gruesome reference to a campy horror film, you'll appreciate the sheer imagination of near-identical heads so realistic they could make a person's skin crawl. It's hard to ignore the identity metaphor embedded in second head or a painted-on third eye.

We're pretty sure if you looked up the term "maximalist," you'd find Alessandro Michele himself in the dictionary description. Shimmering, diamond-encrusted constructions decorated the heads and bodies of Gucci's models, demanding attention at once. And it wouldn't truly be the Gucci we know and love if there weren't any absurdly kitschy elements, i.e., sheer garment bags.

Just when we thought Gucci couldn't push the button on its imaginative designs, the team brings us this otherworldy fall collection.