Fashionistas saw doubles on Friday, September 23, at Gucci’s Milan Fashion Week show. The Italian luxury label shocked the audience by sending identically dressed pairs of twins down the runway.

The brilliant designer behind Gucci, Alessandro Michele, had been planning this show ever since the Met Gala of 2022; he finally decided to bring it out into the world at Milan fashion week. He dressed the models in classy and dazzling outfits with ladylike handbags. Alessandro wanted to dedicate the show to his mom and her twin, where the original idea of casting identical twins for the fashion show sprouted. Each outfit had its unique style as they showcased ravishing vintage styles like the lurex 1940s Hollywood goddess gowns, gremlins, and sequined blazers with floral embellishments. The idea to show twins wearing the same outfit was an attempt to showcase how clothes can duplicate and display two different sides of a person, which is what Alessandro wanted to prepare for the audience to show them how each person has different sides to them.

This year at Milan’s fashion show Gucci cast 68 pairs of identical twins to walk the runway hand in hand in matching outfits. As mentioned previously, Michele dedicated this show to his mother, Eralda, and her twin sister, Giuliana. Alessandro expressed, “to my twin mums, that were able to comprehend life only through the presence of the other.” As a young boy, Alessandro was intrigued with their twin ship and how they constantly mirrored each other. Their relationship is what started the idea behind the fashion show.

His concept was that if you put on the same clothes as the other person, you don’t become them because you are your own person, which is the assumption Alessandro wanted to challenge society with. While speaking with the Guardian, Alessandro stated, “I use the runway as a theatrical stage, and fashion speaks strongly to ideas of otherness. I know that I have another side of me — I meet him when I go to my therapist.” “We all have another side of us, and sometimes we meet that person and hold hands. Furthermore, the idea of the fashion show displayed how each person has two sides, and sometimes we see that other side of us and we hold hands.”

The fashion house of Gucci pulled off this illusion by splitting the audience into two rooms, not knowing that a twin was walking solo on the other side until the end of the show. The screen was lifted, revealing the sets of twins joining hands and walking down the runway, but this time together. The looks featured in the fashion show consisted of two lurex gowns with shark-bite cutouts, two tailored silk outfits embroidered with cherry blossoms, and two pinstripe suits with handbags placed on each twin’s opposite shoulder to give off a mirror-like effect.

Following the show, the audience was astonished at how Gucci accomplished this illusion with the twins, as they looked utterly identical despite all the twins being of different ages, races, and heights. Moreover, towards the end of the show, Alessandro Michele, the label’s creative director, said that twinning is “so familiar — but so powerful.” He added that twins remind us of “the connective tissue” in families and society.

Overall, the Milan fashion show brought a whole new aspect to fashion and how it’s viewed, and it conveyed that we are, indeed, stronger together.