#all the ghosts are very impressed with his willingness to throw down and he has to be reminded by a very stern ellie that it's TRUCE DAY

[hailsatanacab]

@the-ghost-trader - ooooh, i love this! it has the potential to be so incredibly sad, too, like poor Damian just trying to carve out something normal for himself only for it blow up in his face

BUT, shockingly, i'm not about the angst today! not yet anyway 😇

---

“So, how was your day?”

Despite his answering groan, Damian likes this. This. This whole… thing he has with Danielle. With Ellie. 

And, yeah, he’s not exactly told any of the others yet, but can you blame him? For wanting to keep something, anything, to himself. Wanting to keep this small little slice of goodness he’s managed to carve out, untouched and unmarred by his family, by their other lives, by the rogues, the vigilantes, the assassins, everyone.

“That bad, huh?”

Being with Ellie is freeing. That’s the best way to describe it.

She knows. Damian surprised even himself when he told her—not about the others, mind, but he supposes it’s not hard to put two and two together and Dani has always been smarter than most—but it’s the best decision he’s ever made, and no matter what the niggling little voice in the back of his head says (the one that sounds suspiciously like Father), he can’t bring himself to regret it.

He won’t. Because having Ellie know gives him freedom.

She’s a safe place, a hand to hold, a warm, welcoming presence when things inevitably turn ugly. It’s the freedom to just be normal when everything else in his life spirals into stranger and more stressful missions.

“Richard is being insufferable again. I do not understand his incessant need to know everything about my life.”

“Oh? What’s he done now?” 

“I was subjected to an hour long interrogation about my love life, like it’s any of his business. It’s infuriating!”

“Ugh, tell me about it. I get the same thing from Jazz, constantly. It can be suffocating.” Ellie says as she curls herself tighter into his side. “But it’s just how they show they care.”

“Yes, well, sometimes I wish he wouldn’t—”

“Hey!” Ellie pushes herself up to glare at him, punctuating her shout with a soft whack to his arm for good measure. “What have I said about using that word?”

“Yes, yes,” he placates with a roll of his eyes, “‘Be careful what you wish for.’ I apologise, it won't happen again.”

“Damn straight it won't.”

She maintains eye contact with him for a second longer before tucking herself back into his side, squirming around with a long, contented hum that Damian can feel rumble through him. He smiles and doesn’t complain even when he has to shift to give her more room after a particularly strong elbow jabs him in the ribs. It means leaving the warm patch on the couch, but he’s rewarded with another long, happy moan as she settles and Damian can’t bring himself to mind.

Ellie constantly makes noises. Little mews and hums and laughs and songs known only to her. It reminds him of a cat, sometimes. He likes it. It calms him down; it means she’s happy, so he's happy.

They settle back into the cushions and Damian lets the subject drop, not wanting to spoil the moment. Outside, the wind changes direction and from where he’s laying he can watch as the snow starts to come down thick and heavy. Hopefully it’ll mean a quiet night's patrol.

“Is that why you haven’t introduced me yet?”

“What?” He can't help it, he stiffens at the thought of losing his secret, of the scrutiny he'll be inviting if he lets anyone know.

“Are you worried I’ll embarrass you?”

Damian’s eyes snap down quick to reassure her, only to see her light, teasing grin. He lets out a breath of relief. It figures she wouldn't worry about that.

“Of course not, don’t be absurd. You could never embarrass me.”

“I don’t know,” she muses, her voice taking on a dangerous lilt, “that sounds like a challenge.”

“Believe me, having been subjected to Father’s Brucie persona at every gala I’ve been to, it would take a lot to embarrass me.”

“Alright, bet. I’ll get you, just you wait.”

“You’ve already got me.”

She flicks him on the nose. “You’re such a sap.”

He hums his agreement, enjoying the tinkling sound of her laughter. And then, before he can think otherwise, he asks, “Is that why you haven’t introduced me?”

“That’s different,” she scowls. “You know how hard it is to get there, there’s no signal, and Danny only gets a break like—oh, Ancients!”

Damian gets another elbow to the ribs as she bolts upright, a manic grin on her face that has him laughing.

“What is it?”

“It’s the holidays! It’s nearly Truce Day! You know I said I had a family thing around Christmas?”

“Yes?” 

“Well, do you want to come to it? I can introduce you then! I mean, it’s going to be a bit formal and you’ll have to meet everyone, not just family. There’s going to be some banquets, you’ll have to sit through some long speeches and you have to be on your best behaviour at all times, okay? Absolutely no fighting, it’s called Truce Day for a reason!”

“What?”

“Yeah, it’ll be perfect! I think Jazz is going in a couple days earlier to help with the preparations, so I’ll get her to let Danny know—and fair warning, he will try to give you the shovel talk, but this is great! It’s Truce Day, so he can’t actually do anything about it!”

“I’m sorry, but you're going to have to explain a bit.”

“Yeah, I know, it’s a bit much—but that’s family, right? Danny can get pretty protective over me, which is why going on Truce Day is the best time to do it! He can’t even command the Fright Knight to stab you! It’s genius!”

“Ellie, what?”

“Like, yeah, sure, he’s the king, but even he has to obey the rules of Truce Day—and then once you’ve spent all day with him, he’ll see that you’re a fantastic, wonderful, kind, brilliant, smart, strong, capable person and he’ll get over himself and everything will be good!"

Damian collapses down onto the couch, the wind knocked out of him. This is… He had not expected anything like this at all. For all that Ellie talked about her family, she had never mentioned this.

“Did you… did you say your brother is a king?”

“Yeah! High King Phantom, have I…” The manic grin slips off her face as she turns round and notices Damian. “Have I not mentioned that before?”

“No. No, you have not.”

“Ah. Sorry. Probably should clarify that I’m also a princess.”

“Right. Yes, that follows.”

“And I’m not really his sister, I’m his clone.”

“What?”

Damian blinks and tries to say more, but he has no idea what he’s meant to do with… any of this information. 

Normal. He thought she was meant to be his normal. Nothing could have prepared him for this.

Not that it changed anything, of course, of that he was certain. It’s just… a lot to take in. Overwhelming. But it's okay! He takes a deep breath, and another, and a sense of calm washes over him. Ellie makes one of her little hums as she cocks her head to the side to consider him and he can't help but relax at the normalcy of the sound. It'll be okay, he's dealt with stranger and he can deal with this.

“I’ve, uh… I’ve told you that we’re half ghosts, though, right?”

“What?”

[ittookthelightforever]

Fire and the Thud - Chapter 1

Hi, 

I got this idea to write Alex as a Prince and here it is, by popular demand (Hi Sarah *waves like a grade school kid at a school play*) my new chaptered fic. Bare in mind that I am a person who binge reads Sarah J. Maas novels, sooooo… I hope y’all like it! 

Love, Lina.

Alex wakes up much too early for his liking and tries to roll over in an attempt to fall back to sleep, but he is met with a warm, solid body, “Hmmmm… Mi…” Miles moans and pulls Alex into his arms, “Go back to sleep, love, it’s too earleh.” Alex places a kiss to the soft skin of his chest, “Babeh, if me mum gets wind that you slept in me room again she’ll put yeh in the next ship to the continent, and I just can’t bare the thought.” To emphasize his point Alex lays a trail of kisses up Miles’ neck and scruffy jaw.

“Well, tha’s no way to get me out of ‘ere. Plus, I bet the Queen has more important things to worry about.” Alex scoffs, burying his face on the pillow beneath Miles’ head, “Oh love, ‘m sorreh, I-I forgot.” Miles runs his fingers through Alex’s soft hair, coaxing the boy to look at him, “She’s out there, practically rounding up every girl in the kingdom trying to find a solution to this goddamned curse, Mi.”

Miles wraps his arms around him, drawing soothing patterns on his naked back, “I’m sorreh you ‘ave to go through this, love. I’d take your place if I could.” Alex nods, sighing, even if he could he’d never let anyone take his place.

--//--//--//--//--//--//--

On the other side of the island Charlotte had been working non-stop for hours, churning out breakfast for all the guests at the inn and some stragglers from the nearby port. Charlotte is as ordinary as it gets, she has spent most of her life working at the kitchen at the uncle’s inn after her mother had put her in a ship to Balaclava and disappeared. The 20 year old woman had been saving to move back to the continent on her 21st birthday, in search of her mother or a greater purpose, dreaming of a life where she’d have control of her own fate.

The influx of people from the continent had gotten higher and higher as they neared Prince Alexander’s birthday and with only a few weeks to the big ball her uncle had been talking of extending kitchen hours to serve those who arrived between midnight, when they closed, and the next morning. The prospect brought chills down Charlotte’s spine as she was already worn thin as it was working from 6am to midnight.

“Charlotte?! Charlotte, come here!” The young girl wipes her hands on a rag and walks out of the kitchen, towards the dining hall from where her aunt’s booming voice was coming, “Yes aunty?” Standing next to her aunt was a member of the royal guard, high-ranking from the looks of his uniform, “What can I help you with, sir?” Charlotte notices her aunt is practically shaking with giddiness from having such an important person in their midst, “Miss, your royal highness, her majesty Queen Penelope has requested that you be taken to the castle to aid in the preparations of his royal highness, his majesty Prince Alexander’s 21st birthday.”

Charlotte wrings her dry hands nervously, while her aunt frowned slightly, “May I inquire why, sir?” The guard seems to be getting impatient, “His majesty Prince Alexander recalled a meal he has had brought to him from here once, some sort of sweet bun, and desires to have it served at his ball.” Charlotte can immediately recall what bun he is talking about, it’s an specialty of hers, but she has to hold back a scoff at the fact that the prince is so entitled that he’d send someone to get her just for that, “I see sir, but you’ll understand that lending my head cook to her majesty will bring me great misfortune.”

The guard grunts, pulling a bag from his pocket, “This should more than make up for your losses, m’am. Shall we, miss?” Charlotte looks back and forth between her aunt and the guard a couple of times, “Uh, c-can I get my things?” The guard gives a curt nod, clearly annoyed by how long this was taking. Charlotte quickly makes her way downstairs to her room in the basement.

Ever since she’d arrived to live with her aunt and uncle in the island Charlotte had occupied the dank basement room, where it got much too warm and stuffy during the summer, and freezing and drafty in the winter. As fast as she could Charlotte gathered her few possessions in a burlap sack, - a woolen dress, identical to the one she was wearing; her winter cape, nightgown and a few hygiene items; and the book her mother had given her before she boarded the ship that brought her to the island, the last gift she’d ever received.

Holding the sack close to her Charlotte bids her aunt and uncle goodbye and follows the guard outside, he leads them to two tied up horses, “Can yeh ride?” Charlotte regards the large brown horse in front of her, patting her dense fur, “Yes…” Her voice trails off and he doesn’t wait for further confirmation, mounting his own mare. Charlotte follows suit, reminiscing about a time when riding had been pleasurable nearly daily activity to her.

It was a two days trip to High Green, the capital, and the guard set out a quick and steady pace to their journey, “Will you tell me your name or shall I just refer to you as guard until we arrive to the capital?” He gives her a sideways glance, truly regarding her for the first time that morning, “I am Captain Matthew J. Helders, the third.” Charlotte holds back a laugh at his seriousness, “Nice to meet you, Capt. Helders. I am Charlotte Sirius.” He grunts in response and she readies herself for a very long and quiet two days. “Your uncle and aunt, they seemed quite…” She is surprised by his willingness to talk about this particular subject, but doesn’t back down.

“Greedy? Selfish? Very pleased by the amount of coin her majesty was willing to pay for my services, of which I won’t see a penny? Well, yeah, that pretty much sums them up.” Charlotte looks ahead at the horizon to keep any emotion away, “If they are so awful why didn’t you leave?” She can’t hold back a bark of laughter this time, “No disrespect, sir. I don’t know how it is in the capital, but in the hellhole we just left the sight of a penniless girl wondering about gathers more trouble than it’s worth.” Matthew isquiet for a few moments, “Maybeh this is yehr chance then.” He glances at her, the ghost of a smile on his lips and she lets a small smile through.

--//--

They ride until the sun sets, stopping at a side forrest as Matthew deems it better to stop to rest and resume their journey the next day. Matthew leads them to a shrouded area, unpacking a couple of small tents and a dry meal of hard cheese, cured meat and bread. The pair sits around a small fire, “Weh’ll reach a town tomorrow where weh should be able to ‘ave a ‘ot meal.” Charlotte is barely paying any attention to him as she regards the skies, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen the stars.

Because of her heavy hours and windowless room it had been years since Charlotte had had the opportunity to lay back and stargaze, as she used to do almost every night with her mother. “Miss Sirius?” She is brought back to reality by Matthew calling her name, “Oh, I’m sorry. Please, do call me Charlotte.” He nods offering his waterskien, “Would yeh like sum more water?” She gives him small smile and takes the skien from him, gingerly sipping the water, “You seem very young to be a captain.” Matthew ponders her question, throwing more wood into the fire.

“My father is one of the King’s counselors and he thought I needed some… Direction, so he had me join the royal guard at 15 and… I guess I was very good at it.” She raises her eyebrows mocking him, “Impressive.” He grins, showing off his dimples, “I fink we’ll get along vereh well, Charlotte.” She takes another sip of water and hands the skien back to him, “I have to agree, Matthew.” Charlotte stops mid-laughter, feeling something tug at her heart, “T-There’s something wrong.” Matthew gets up, reaching for his sword. “Did yeh ‘ear anyfing?” Charlotte instinctively reached out for her sack before also getting up, “I-I, I don’t know. I just felt something weird.”

Matthew brings her behind his large frame and Charlotte can’t help but grip the back of his uniform. They hear some leaves rustling and soon after something jumps out of the trees, grabbing Charlotte from behind. She screams, trying to get away from the person’s strong grip, “Who are yeh?!” The man just hisses at Matthew, trying to hold onto Charlotte. A second man appears with a sword, but he is no match for Matthew’s agile moves and is soon on the ground, “What do yeh want?”

Instead of answering the man pulls a dagger from his pocket and presses it to Charlotte’s throat, “Charlotte, duck right!” The young woman doesn’t hesitate, bowing right and away from the dagger, leaving room for Matthew to strike and kill the man holding him. Charlotte falls to the ground under the weight of the man and Matthew quickly pulls the two apart, holding a Charlotte as she trembled, “W-Who were them?” He analyses the man’s clothes for a moment, “They… They were men from the Continent’s armeh… But tha’ doesn’t make sense.”

Charlotte doesn’t want to sit in that place for a second longer, getting up and brushing the dirt from her dress, “We have to go, it isn’t safe here.” Matthew gets up, sheathing his sword, “I agree, but it’s too dark to ride.” She shakes her head, gathering their things, “No, it isn’t. The Moon shall be our guide.” Charlotte looks up, her eyes locked on the bright full moon, and Matthew is convinced by the certainty in her voice, helping her pack and in minutes they are back on their horses, headed for the capital.

[astroprojections101]

The Signs as Characters from ‘BRIDESMAIDS’

Annie Walker - Taurus

Bridesmaids is a hilarious and groundbreaking female-driven comedy about addiction and friendship, two things Tauruses know how to do very well. They are loyal and committed people whose reputation as the most boring sign of the zodiac is forgiven for also being the best friends you will ever find on this fucking planet, and they KNOW this dammit!! They wear their friendships like purple hearts, but it also means they can easily get stuck in a rut and indulge in self-destructive habits like fucking terrible people and matching red shoes with red nail polish when the waves get rough. Not to mention it could take years (or a very messy rock bottom) before these bulls get the wake up call they need to make a positive change in their lives, as evidenced by Annie failing to do any of this until Melissa McCarthy literally bites her in the ass while watching Castaway, a movie I am SURE she has seen at least five times. 

They can also be territorial and possessive. While Annie may seem like that down-to-earth, low-maintenance girl who side eyes women that wear $8,000 evening gowns to an afternoon engagement party, on the inside she is a red-faced toddler crossing her arms and stamping her feet because Mom won’t let her play with the iPad. Or, in this case, because her best friend since CHILDHOOD (seriously, who still has friends from childhood? TAURUSES, bitches! + people from the Midwest) is getting married and has, like many grown ass adults sometimes do, ~made another friend~. Suddenly, Annie is forced to, without prior knowledge or consent, confront the bull’s biggest fear: change. Which is a big fat scary no no for a masochistic Taurus who would rather pursue subpar fucks than make baked goods with an emotionally literate Scottish bae. Tauruses like Things As They Are even when they don’t, and Annie Walker is no exception. We stan a true Taurus queen. 

Sorry, Libras. Branding the antagonist of the movie as one may seem counterintuitive for a sign whose entire identity revolves being nice and fair to EVERYONE and liking EVERYONE and getting along with EVERYONE, but that’s exactly why Helen Harris III wins the coveted title of Passive Aggressive Shithead Who Reminds You of 30% Of Your High School: everyone loves her, everyone wants to be her, and who can blame them? As a wise Jeff Winger once said, nerds go to space to impress the people who wore leather jackets in high school. 

And Helen Harris is beautiful. She can pull off wearing an $8,000 evening gown to an afternoon engagement party (almost) without coming off like an asshole. Helen Harris can book spontaneous bridal salon fittings. Helen Harris could eat that fucking cookie (Annie could never). Even if it means gaslighting a woman out of a wedding party, getting bullied by bratty white kids or marrying David Wallace, Libras don’t know who they are without the bliss of knowing their personal brand of outward bullshit is loved and admired by all, even if that means suppressing their true feelings until their next tennis sesh at the Milwaukee country club. Helen proves this when she ugly cries to a woman she socially tormented for the better part of a year, and also proves this when she arranges for Annie’s emotionally literate Scottish bae to pick her up after the wedding. You can’t convince me otherwise. 

Lillian - Virgo 

It’s easy to put Virgos in that Friends Who Have Their Shit Together box, even if underneath that facade they are literally dying inside. But this is what I love about Lillian, who is yes, obviously a Virgo. Lillian is getting married to the man she loves. She curated a bridal party that genuinely knows and loves her. She gets someone like Helen to simp for her. So yes, she is that classic Virgo who doesn’t judge you for not having your shit together but also would never, ever forgive herself for sinking that low. 

But Lillian also manages to laugh when she comes out wearing that Abominable Snowman of a wedding dress. She shits on the street and lives to tell the tale. She is able to make hard choices and set boundaries with her best friend. Lillian doesn’t judge people out of insecurity, because she knows who she is and accepts it. 

I’d like to think there is a Virgo out there, punishing herself because she applied to three jobs instead of two that day, who sees a Lillian and realizes there is a future where she can be a #BossBitch without committing her entire life to proving it to herself and others. I’d like to think there’s a Virgo out there who sees Lillian and realizes she doesn’t have to let her friend copy her homework answers for the fourth consecutive math test because no, she isn’t responsible for her lazy friend’s inability to study ahead of time. Lillian is the representation Virgos desperately need - not just because she is a badass woman, but because she is happy. She is a role model for all of us, and you can’t get more Virgo than that. 

Megan - Aries

This was a hard one. On the one hand, Megan is weird. But let’s be real, an Aquarius could never be entrusted with the codes to every nuke buried underneath the United States. They would take those codes and use it to yeet Mark Zuckerberg out of his 100 million dollar Palo Alto estate within the first hour of signing their W-2 form. No, Megan may be unapologetically Megan as shit, but it’s not because she’s an Aquarius. She’s bold, and forward, and unapologetically Aries. 

Which is odd, considering that an Aries and a Taurus together is, well... an unlikely friendship combo. Both signs are strong-willed and stubborn as hell, but in a way that makes them want to declare war on each other’s egos, not inspire the other into becoming better people. But then again, maybe that’s why their friendship works. Where Annie throws an empty compliment at an overdressed woman she’s already decided she hates, Megan expresses a desire to climb a man five minutes upon meeting Annie. Where Annie sits on a couch watching Castaway instead of addressing her issues the way 35 year old women probably should have learned to do by now, Megan bites ass and reminds her of this this. Where Annie HOLDS IN VOMIT UNTIL SHE HAS DRIVEN MILES AWAY FROM A BRIDAL SALON, Megan shits right into that refurbished marble sink without a second thought. Get where I’m going with this? Megan does what Annie doesn’t, which sometimes is exactly what a Taurus needs to get out of their rut of self-pity. But of course, Megan doesn’t just exist to provide emotional labor to lazy Earth signs. She is an individual truly living her best life, and we love for her for it. Aries women slap like no other.

Rita - Scorpio

Brutally honest and a sexual goddess. What more can you expect from an unhappily married Scorpio? Rita is bold, sexy, and dramatic, who knows how to pack the punches so quick and dirty she can turn a Disney-obsessed woman child into a drunken bisexual as she sips her martini on a first class ticket she bought with her asshole of a husband’s tax fraud money. After all, who else besides a Scorpio would tell a woman she hasn’t seen since high school that her very own flesh and blood masturbated a blanket into oblivion? Scorpios are dark, brooding, and know when they are being taken for granted. Nowhere is this better exemplified than when Rita spills the piping hot tea on her shitty family that can’t see her for the goddess she truly is. Rita, you deserve better. 

Becca - Pisces

Erin Kemper has a long history of playing maladaptively naive characters, but I will bet my next unemployment check that Erin based her performance of Becca entirely off a Pisces description she found on Cafeastrology.com. Because there is literally nothing more Pisces than Becca. The hair, the clothes, the willingness to go through hospital levels of self-sanitization for her husband so that she can finally bone? Trying to convince herself she’s also too tired so that she doesn’t have to admit to herself that her husband is an emotionally and sexually unavailable failure of a man who can’t give her what she needs until she experiences a sexual awakening 2,000 miles up in the air with her Scorpio biffle??? Yup. Pisces to a P. 

Rhodes - Cancer

Aww, Rhodes. So sweet. So awkward. Why did they have to make you a cop?

Can we talk about why it is that almost every leading man who is emotionally mature and secure in his masculinity ALWAYS seems to elicit Cancerous vibes, even if they’re clearly not a Cancer? Actual Cancer men, take note. Rhodes  pursues respectfully. He calls, even after Annie doesn’t call back. Rhodes attempts exposure therapy on a woman he has had sex with once. Rhodes WOULD get ghosted by 80% of the women he meets on dating apps (including Annie, let’s be real), and we love him for it. Because cancers are just that loving and loyal! So yes, we can excuse him for getting a stick up his butt sometimes when someone drops a perfectly biodegradable vegetable on the ground. He more than makes up for it. 

Annie’s mom - Gemini 

Geminis are either terrible or the best people you’ll ever meet, and Annie’s mom is one of the rare few that falls into that in-between category of chaotic good, adorable Gemini doing her best not to drive everyone she’s ever loved away with what little self-awareness she has about her Gemininess. Annie’s mom is bubbly, chatty, and queen of the chisme. She uses logic to justify calling her ex husband’s wife a whore, and talks like she has a doctorate degree in the unsolicited advice she offers her daughter. Until at least, she’s introduced to a sweet man, and all that logic and wordiness melts away into a gooey puddle of all those emotions she likes to think she’s above. 

Bryn - Aquarius

There are a lot of stand out heroines in this movie, but none of them beat the comedic genius that is Bryn, an incestuous roommate Annie probably dug up from Craiglist’s seventh circle of hell. Aquari are trail blazing, unconventional, and friendly enough to distract you from the fact that their brain cells came from aliens. Bryn is no exception. Even an impulsive Aries would look at the opportunity to get an offensively tacky tattoo in the back of a van and think, “I’ll get Starbucks instead.” But an Aquarius thrives on making people uncomfortable with their Society Has To Catch Up To Me complex, and Bryn is no exception. After all, if they’re not scandalizing their depressed roommate with xenophobic tattoos and baths with their brother, then who even are they? A sheep, that’s who. 

13 year old - Sagittarius 

This specific breed of popular mean girl is either a Gemini or Sagittarius. I have nothing to back up this claim, but watching that horrible girl verbally spar her way into getting a 35 year old woman fired from a jewelry store is enough to turn me into a believer. That’s why it was so hard to pinpoint a sign for her. On one hand, this girl is probably responsible for the social anxiety of at least a dozen ex-BFFs. She also clearly knows how to use words to make someone wish they had never been born, so I can accept that this insecure adult’s worst nightmare has a few placements of mercurial badassery in her chart. 

But the truth hurts, and no one knows how to finesse the truth like a Sag, who either doesn’t know what they’re doing when they tell a customer service rep they have no boobs, or they know exactly. Anyway, don’t project your friendship drama onto an undeveloped Sagittarius child, Annie. Or tell them they’re going to be pregnant at their prom (yikes). You do not know what you’re getting yourself into. 

Annie’s Mystery Man - Capricorn

The sports jacket. The pipe. The vibes. This guy probably cured cancer back in the day and still hated himself for not figuring it out until he was 30. You could also totally tell he was sizing Annie up to see if she met his expectations of People Worth His Time (she didn’t). Capricorn man, you are right. None of us deserve you. RIP Hugh Dane.

[zarafoodrecipe]

How Alessandro Michele made Gucci relevant again

"A way to live." That phrase, that concept, keeps coming up with Michele, and it's a key to his transformation of Gucci from a label that had drifted far from the conversation to one at the centre of it. He isn't just selling robes, slippers, handbags, things, though he certainly wants customers to buy those, which they've done in numbers that have returned Gucci to peak cultural relevance and extraordinary financial success. He's selling a sensibility: eccentric, eclectic, inclusive. And he's doing it with every mode of communication at his disposal.

The Gucci bomber jacket inspired by Harlem designer Dapper Dan. Credit:Getty Images There are, for example, the collaborators he chooses and the celebrities he pulls into his orbit. His reaction to the graffiti artist Trevor Andrew, aka Gucci Ghost, who in late 2013 and 2014 scrawled the label's signatures all over Brooklyn and Manhattan, wasn't a copyright infringement suit or a cease-and-desist order. It was a formal invitation accepted to make clothes together (for Gucci's autumn 2016 collection). Michele's response to an outcry last year that he had copied from the legendary 1980s Harlem designer Dapper Dan a famous bomber jacket panelled in dark brown mink fur, with voluminous monogram-printed balloon sleeves was to say yes, he did, proudly and in tribute. Then, to prove his respect, Michele teamed with Dap for a joint line of apparel and set him up to work on it in an impeccably restored corner brownstone in Harlem whose lowest level, just beyond an ornate gate, is an atelier with a wall of blood-red drapes facing the street. "I didn't believe it, you know, until Cinderella saw the carriage the carriage with all the horses," Dap tells me when I drop by. "I thought, 'Wow, I guess I'm going to the ball.' When Michele introduced Gucci Bloom, the first new fragrance under his watch, he assembled unconventional ambassadors: Dakota Johnson, best known for being trussed and teased in the Fifty Shades of Grey movies; the young Canadian photographer and video director Petra Collins; and Hari Nef, a transgender actress and model. The Michele message, which never falters, is that the world of luxury is infinitely elastic, that Gucci is a palazzo with room for everybody and that the way to live is together, in harmony, in all of its overstuffed rooms. What to wear? Michele has on a pair of white leather sandals studded with dozens of crystals, sweat socks, frayed jeans and a bulky plaid shirt in baffling tension with the silk scarf above it. He's a fop. He's a lumberjack. He's a hipster. He's also a Christmas tree, ornamented to a fare-thee-well. He loves jewels, typically wears multiple bracelets and necklaces and has bulbous rings one shaped like a fox, another like a wolf on all his fingers except for his thumbs. He's his own Manhattan, his own mosaic. He's messy and mesmerising. Just like his ready-to-wear designs, which jumble elements, patterns, time periods and allusions that were seldom if ever jumbled before: pussy bows on men's shirts, babushkas atop power suits, sneakers under gowns, stripes with plaids, the old-fashioned meeting the space age. He's unrestrained with colour, promiscuous with layers and gaga for floral patterns, animal imagery and corporate logos. Where Tom Ford's Gucci spanning a decade, beginning in 1994 was minimalist, emphasising glamour, Michele's is hectic, emphasising irreverence. I sometimes wonder if he was put on this earth to liberate fashion writers from the adjective "sleek" and acquaint them with "magpie". "Beauty doesn't have limits," he tells me. "It doesn't have rules." When he took over at Gucci, he says, "fashion was talking about something that didn't exist anymore, this kind of posh world of beautiful legs and beautiful hair. I was just talking about humanity. I was trying to find a new energy in the street, not in the jet set." You still need a certain budget for Gucci. But you don't need a certain bearing or taste. "It was a revolutionary act to come in and do what he did with this company," Leto tells me, calling Michele "the Steve Jobs of fashion". Elton John, who was the muse for Michele's Spring 2018 women's and men's collection and his collaborator for a capsule collection in September last year, likens his exuberance to Gianni Versace's. After Versace's death, John thought he'd never gravitate to a famous designer's apparel again. "I didn't think there would be anyone out there worth it," he says. But when he began his farewell tour in September, he did so with a wardrobe by Michele, who creates "clothes with humour", John tells me, adding: "He's making clothes for basketball stars, for US National Football League stars, for people who feel they're not being judged for what size they are. That's important. Most designers make clothes for anorexic stickpins. He's making clothes that everybody can enjoy." John socialises with Michele, knows him well and says Michele's personality also distinguishes him from others in his industry. "Fashion is known for people being divas and being grand," John says, "and I can think of a lot of fashion designers I wouldn't want to spend five minutes with, probably 90 per cent of them. And he's just very down-to-earth."

Michele with Elton John and Johns partner David Furnish at a Gucci launch in London. Hes just very down-to-earth, John says of the designer.Credit:Getty Images Jared Leto, Elton John: this wasn't Michele's crowd before 2015, because for most of his career first at the Italian knitwear brand Les Copains, then at Fendi, then at Gucci, where he designed bags for Tom Ford before rising to become an associate designer to Ford's successor, Frida Giannini he was only modestly known outside the companies he worked for. That changed in a blink, in one of the most unexpected and consequential fashion stories of the last quarter-century. Ford's Gucci was a sensation, its air of hedonism and hypersexuality in perfect sync with the prosperity and libido that defined Bill Clinton's US presidency, but during the Giannini years, from 2005 through 2014, the label lost its mooring and its lustre. It didn't turn heads. It didn't prompt talk. Above all, it didn't communicate anything specific about its time. Michele's Gucci, in contrast, is engaged in a consistently spirited and occasionally profound conversation with the zeitgeist, drawing from it, adding to it and revolutionising fashion in the process. Young consumers plant their flags and sculpt their images on social media, so Gucci, under Michele, does too. They expand and even explode the old parameters around gender, sexual identity, race and nationality, and Michele takes that journey with them, even leads them on it, giving them a uniform for it, a visual vocabulary with which to express it. The emotional genius of what he has done is to affirm their searching. The commercial genius is to create totems for it and, in the process, democratise what we historically called "luxury goods", a phrase too haute and hoary for the party he's throwing. Franois-Henri Pinault, the chairman and CEO of Kering, the luxury conglomerate that owns Gucci, says before Michele took the reins, the problem at Gucci wasn't really sales, which remained respectable. "The perception of Gucci as a fashion authority, as one of the trendsetters, was declining," he says. He fired both Giannini and the company's CEO, who was also her romantic partner and the father of her child, and started over, bringing in the Italian businessman Marco Bizzarri as a new CEO and charging him with finding Giannini's replacement in all likelihood, a fashion nova from another label. When Bizzarri met Michele, then 42, for coffee one day in late December 2014, he was just trying to learn more about the company. Michele, he tells me, "certainly wasn't on the list of candidates". But they talked and talked about the more joyful culture that the company needed, about history and art and life, about how fashion is so much more than merchandise. The conversation spanned three hours, and when Bizzarri contacted him almost immediately afterwards to ask for more time to talk, Michele realised that he had joined the roster. Bizzarri then laid down a challenge that became fashion legend. Gucci was about to present its new autumn 2015 menswear collection, and Giannini had essentially finished it. What if they scratched it and swapped in a collection by Michele? He had a week: five days for the clothes (36 looks in all) and two days for the staging of the runway show, every last detail of which, from the models to the seating arrangement, Michele subsequently changed. "It was a way for me to see if Alessandro was willing to take risks," Bizzarri recalls, "because considering the kind of turnaround that I had in mind, I needed a person who was willing, like me, to take big risks and maybe make big mistakes. If he was going to tell me no, then I didn't want to be with someone who was risk-averse." Michele was emboldened partly by his knowledge of the size and skill of the design team at Gucci. But mostly, he just didn't think about the insanity of what he was trying to pull off. "Somebody gave me the chance to do something beautiful, and when you are working on something beautiful, you don't feel the pressure," he says. "I work to create something that is in my brain, and I don't feel like I have to impress people outside." The result, unveiled in mid-January 2015, was where the pussy bows came in, along with other necklines and fillips usually associated with womenswear. He used both female and male models, so interchangeable in their looks that they became a grand, genderless blur. They wore berets, spectacles, scarves. Androgyny cosied up to cheeky intellectualism, and in a slightly off-kilter palette: an announcement of his willingness to play with colour more daringly than his forebears at Gucci had. These weren't his boldest hues, which would come later, but they were surprising, under-appreciated ones: the gunmetal end of the blue spectrum, the rustier shades of brown, each sometimes throwing a pure, vivid red into more brilliant relief. At the show's end, instead of taking a solo bow, Michele brought his whole team on-stage with him, which was another declaration that a new day had dawned. Only then did the nerves kick in. "I'm not shy in my private life, but I'm really shy when I have to go out in front of a lot of people," he says. "I'm more than shy. I'm terrified." But the applause, he remembers, "was like the biggest hug I've ever felt in my lifetime." Some fashion insiders muttered privately that Gucci had gone mad. But both Pinault and Bizzarri were impressed by Michele's instinct to transplant his own quirks and obsessions into the brand. It gave his designs authenticity and palpable emotion. "He's one of those guys who, despite the size of the brand, despite the power of the brand, says, 'This is my personal creative universe, and I will work with that and the icons and symbols of the brand to create something new,' " Pinault explains. "And he was right." The success that Gucci has had with that approach was a factor in Pinault's decision earlier this year to appoint the unknown 32-year-old British designer Daniel Lee as the new creative director of Bottega Veneta, which Kering also owns. "I asked him about his own personal aesthetic," Pinault says, referring to Lee, "and then tried to find if there was any compatibility between the designer and the brand." The gender fluidity of Michele's work was what drew the lion's share of attention at first. "I was very surprised," he says, because it wasn't a considered provocation or political statement. "I thought that it was such a normal thing." It was happening in the world; it needed to happen in fashion: "This is not a time when fashion can stay inside a box." Popular culture certainly wasn't staying inside that box; just a year earlier, the pioneering television dramedy Transparent had debuted to enormous interest and huge acclaim, and less than six months later, Caitlyn Jenner would appear on the cover of Vanity Fair. The LGBT consonant cluster was being elongated, litigated and traded in for more flexible banners like queer and genderqueer, and "binary" was suddenly a dirty word. Fashion hadn't fully reckoned with that. Michele did intuitively, intelligently and expansively.

Alessandro Michele with his team on the runway after his first Gucci show. Credit:Getty Images That was hardly all that distinguished him. Both the clothes and the voluminous notes that he distributes at the shows betray an erudition and a roving, restless mind that have a lot do with his deep roots in Rome. He grew up in the heart of the city, to parents who revered the arts and had the resources to enjoy them and expose him and his sister to them. His mother was an assistant to an Italian movie executive, and thus steeped in the world of cinema, while his father, a technician for the airline Alitalia, was a sculptor in his spare time. "I walked through these antique ruins from the very first day of my life," he tells me when I visit him there in June. We sit on a green velvet sofa under a dazzling coffered ceiling in his office in a palazzo that was built in the early 16th century according to plans by Raphael. It's now Gucci's design headquarters. Rome is overflowing with the archetypes and iconography of various epochs, layering them, cluttering them, bringing them into collision. When you step out of Gucci's Renaissance digs and glance to the right, you can see a bridge over the Tiber lined with baroque sculptures designed by Bernini and, on the far side, the cylindrical hulk of Castel Sant'Angelo, built in the second century by the Roman emperor Hadrian as a mausoleum for his family. All of this visibly informs Michele's perspective and style. "I spent time with my dad not in the park, not playing sports, but just going to museums," he tells me. "So I spent time in front of these beautiful statues and all these faces and bodies." "Rome is in Alessandro's veins," says Elisabetta Proietti, who taught him when he was a student at the Accademia Costume & Moda, a three-year school with a single program in both fashion and costume design just a few short cobbled blocks from the Gucci headquarters. Proietti is continually struck by the impact that the school's dual focus had on his work. To produce costumes, she says, you must be fluent in the gradations of the past, and Michele's collections for Gucci are indeed like glorious excavations the fashion equivalent of archaeological digs (here the Elizabethan, there the Victorian, a nod to tsarist Russia, a wink at Ziggy Stardust) narrated in a century-hopping, decade-scrambling vocabulary of flowing caftans and boxy jumpsuits, floral and animal prints and brocades. His fascination with yesteryear is even more intense than his and other designers' more common flirtations with the present pop culture. And it's coupled with his insatiable appetite for reading, roving, learning. "He's interested in everything," Proietti says. "He's extremely, extremely curious." Hari Nef recalls that when she first met Michele, at his request, over dinner in West Hollywood at the Chateau Marmont, she had recently graduated from Columbia University, "this program where I had been required to read Virginia Woolf and the Greek tragedies and Homer and Aeschylus. These were all fresh in my head, bouncing around." Michele was game. They bounced around in his head, too. "Frankly," Nef tells me, "these were nerdy topics I was rarely able to engage with people in the fashion industry about." The "fashion industry" isn't something Michele cares to dwell on or in. Among the reasons he favours Rome, he says, is he's unlikely to bump into the designers, journalists, publicists and celebrities who define that demi-monde. His thoughts aren't contaminated by what is deemed trendy. "I want the separation," he says. "I need the separation. I'm not really inspired from fashion. I started from other points of view." His longtime romantic partner, Giovanni Attili, is a professor of urban planning whose scholarship has focused on such subjects as the Haida Nation, an Indigenous tribe in British Columbia. Michele and Attili don't steal away to Tuscany or the Amalfi Coast for breathers. Instead, their holiday home teeters literally atop a gorgeous, ludicrous butte of sorts called Civita di Bagnoregio in central Italy. The village has a year-round population of about a dozen, largely because the earth under it is crumbling and the structures require constant maintenance. "I love the house because it's like it's falling down every year," Michele says. "You don't know how long it will be there. And you don't care. It's a reflection of our life, you know?" On the inside of his left bicep, he has a tattoo of Attili's nickname, Vanni, while his own, Lallo, is tattooed in the same writing and place on his right arm. They're a matching set. The couple met 13 years ago, over the internet, in a funny way. Michele had just gotten a new laptop, and a friend was showing him how the Facebook precursor Myspace functioned, insisting that he sign up.

Models carried replicas of their heads at Guccis autumn 2018 fashion show in Milan.Credit:Getty Images "I was aghast at these kinds of things," he says, but he played along, connecting with one of his friend's 700 acquaintances Attili because of his profile picture. "It was just the view of a beautiful landscape in Canada," Michele recalls. As the two exchanged messages, Michele remarked that he had no idea what Attili looked like. Attili, amused, pointed out that his face was right there, in that landscape. "I didn't realise," Michele says, "that if you clicked on the picture and made it larger, there was a little guy inside. I didn't know I had the possibility to get inside that picture. I was really bad." Which is strange, because one of the hallmarks of Gucci under Michele is how clever it is about social media and what a commanding presence it has there. Michele has more than 400,000 followers on Instagram, where he posts a hypnotic array of pictures that underscore how readily his designs, with their embroidered symbols and explicit pop culture references, translate into viral images. That's integral to the traction that Gucci has found with young consumers. "If you're constantly documenting yourself, you want to be wearing things that are a little over-the-top or statement-oriented," says Phillip Picardi, who was until recently the head of Teen Vogue. Michele makes that possible. "He's managed to do maximalism in a very chic way, and that's perfect for your Instagram grid or your Instagram story." The adolescent protagonist of the critically acclaimed independent movie Eighth Grade, released in July in the United States, ends each of her YouTube videos by saying, "Gucci." It's her equivalent of "cool". In Rome, I watch Michele work with about a dozen colleagues on his spring 2019 menswear collection. Boxes upon boxes of jewellery crowd the tables where they sit. A kaleidoscope of fabric swatches dangles from the walls, and there's an easel of potential T-shirt designs that reveal a current fixation on Dolly Parton, her 1973 song Jolene and the movie The Bride of Frankenstein. I have no idea how they all hang together but then I don't think that I'm supposed to. Four male models charting varying degrees of androgyny wander in and out, quickly changing clothes. Some of their shorts have billows and pleats that evoke skirts. A shiny long-sleeved shirt and an even shinier jacket look as if they're made from hot-pink and turquoise plastic. The wispiest of the models, his long hair gathered in a bun, appears in a pale mauve shirt with traditionally feminine construction, burgundy slacks with wide hips and, over them, a white jockstrap. As Michele fusses with sleeve lengths and frets over colour combinations, Bjrk's Utopia album plays in the background. (Naturally, he designed her outfit for the video of the album's first single, The Gate.) The word I hear him use most often suggests the playful attitude that he brings to bear on everything he designs. It's not bello, or "beautiful". It's carino "cute". At one point, I ask him which of his collections he was most pleased with which one expressed exactly what he wanted it to. He cites the collection with the dragon, his autumn 2018 womens- and menswear show. It was titled Cyborg, and the dragon wasn't the half of it. Several models carried replicas of their own heads. Others had masks obscuring their faces. The clothes kept pace with that eccentricity: royal blue turbans, a multitiered black pagoda hat and colourful patterned head scarves. Rhinestones galore. The plainest suit and the palest jacket had Major League Baseball insignia, just because; a ruby sweater with sleeves that looked like enormous, fuzzy dust mops had "Paramount Pictures", with the iconic mountaintop image, across its chest. He says that he was contemplating the nature of identity today: how everything from the poses you strike on social media to the accessibility of cosmetic surgery allows you to hide, expose or wholly transform yourself. "It's like a laboratory, you know?" he says. "Your life can be like a laboratory. In the past, the idea of being human was what the earth and nature gave to you." That's not so anymore. He calls this era "post-human", explaining that "you can really manipulate everything. It's pretty scary, but it's also pretty interesting. You can lead different lives. You can decide to be different things." And fashion must reflect that, too. By Michele's reckoning, it can no longer be a leash, tethering you to someone else's ideal. It has to be a licence, setting you free and giving you the tools to figure out your own. "Fashion now is like an old lady that is dying on a bed," he said in Harper's Bazaar last year. "I think we can let this old lady die." I ask him if that makes what he is doing post-fashion. He ponders that for a few seconds, letting it sink in. "Probably it's true," he says, "because in a way, it's like, I don't care about fashion. I'm trying to say that fashion is a platform. The way you look is the way you live." No stranger can decree that. It comes together incrementally and sometimes haphazardly, in a fitful and imperfect process of discovery, the way every story and every city does. Why pretend otherwise? Why not just celebrate it? Most Viewed in Lifestyle Loading https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/fashion/how-alessandro-michele-made-gucci-relevant-again-20181126-p50id1.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed