Unification is an interesting idea – at this juncture, Gucci decided to stop, take stock, and look back to assess what it stands for today. Which meant, first of all, reverent reference to the label’s distant (ish) past – that logo is celebrating 50 years, and Gucci’s almost-equally signature Horsebit first appeared on a bag 70 years ago too. But also nods to something more recent, in particular Gucci’s first rebirth in the late 1990s and early 2000s – shoe styles, for instance, specifically referenced Tom Ford’s creative directorship (a wickedly pointed closed-toe court shoe that looks as modern today as it did back in 2001), and the golden horsebit abstracted as glistening body jewellery, laid against the skin. It even looped the body as a belt under a slithery column that threw straight back to a Gucci greatest hit of 1996 – although updated, in head-to-toe sequins.

Across the years, Gucci has been through all kinds of ‘eras’ – maximal, minimal, retro, modernist. Like those intersecting Gs, this collection played off different sides, interlocking them in an exploration of the Gucciness of Gucci. It’s interesting that the entire cinematic show space was drenched in a verdant Gucci green – it wasn’t an abandoning of the brand’s recent signature ‘Ancora’ red, but it was an alternative – the other colour that features in Gucci’s two-tone scarlet/green webbing. Another side.

This show was kind of about all sides of Gucci, all at once. Because in reality, the fabulous thing about this brand is that it can be a projection of ideas and ideology, a blank canvas for creativity – founded as a luggage and leather goods company, Gucci’s fashion is open to endless interpretation, while paradoxically offering a host of emblems for reinvention. It is about craft, it is about culture – four years ago, former creative director Alessandro Michele totted up that 22,705 songs mention Gucci, but the number is now even higher – and you can twist it to any taste. It’s a godsend for a designer.

So, menswear was predominantly slick and sharp, women’s generally more embellished, illustrating an interplay between alternate realities, of eternal luxury and the immediacy of fashion, and the fact that Gucci can embrace both at once, and can be both things to all people. That said, for many Gucci is about bags, and this show had plenty, from webbing-crossed suede hold-alls clutched by the very tip, as if excavated from archives, to a grabbable horsebit-handled slouchy hobo and another cross-body with a brass bit-buckle cleaved in half, blown up macro, and strapped to one side. Showing Gucci may have reverence for its icons, but it isn’t afraid to subvert and challenge them.