His most prolific collaborator was his partner Giovanni Attili, who drafted what have to be fashion’s most scholarly, if sometimes impenetrable, show notes. Fall 2018’s source material, Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto,” helped produce one of Michele’s most memorable shows for the house, complete with models carrying lifelike replicas of their own heads. The collection was a metaphor for how people construct their identities with the help of machines and other non-natural additions—“we are the Dr. Frankenstein of our own lives,” Michele said at the time—but he was the most human of designers: deeply ruminative and romantic.

Michele’s arrival at Gucci coincided with fashion’s newfound penchant for taking pre-season shows on the road, and he stage-directed some goodies. From the Roman necropolis that is the Alyscamps in Arles, France, to the Roman Forum itself, and from Westminster Abbey in London to LA’s Hollywood Boulevard, where as many celebrities walked the runway as sat in the front row, he was a master at creating an atmosphere. In Milan, Michele’s first shows took place at the Diana Majestic, home to Tom Ford and Frida Gianni’s collections for the brand, but soon moved to new headquarters on the edge of the city whose impressive block-spanning size signaled the brand’s newfound prosperity.

It was on Michele’s watch that Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci was released, and if it was Tom Ford whose likeness appeared on the big screen, in other ways it was Michele’s movie. His pal Jared Leto camped it up as Paolo Gucci, and Lady Gaga, the movie’s scene-chewing star, wore gowns of his design on the red carpet circuit. Indeed, the Sara Gay Forden book that the movie was based on was published in 2000, but it was only after Gucci’s return to relevance under Michele that the movie finally went into production.

But in fashion even the brightest stars don’t shine forever. Perhaps because of Michele’s agenda-setting success, Gucci’s sales eventually started to dip, and in the wake of the pandemic parent company Kering’s shares fell amidst the brand’s slow-down. A recent WWD report quoted an anonymous source claiming Michele “was asked to initiate a strong design shift.” If that is so, it appears Michele resisted it. With a highly emotional show for spring 2023 featuring 68 sets of twins he only doubled down on his vision. The show notes from his first women’s collection for fall 2015 are telling, in this regard. In them is a line from the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben: “Those who are truly contemporary are those who neither perfectly coincide with their time nor adapt to its demands…”

Michele offered his own statement today: “There are times when paths part ways because of the different perspectives each one of us may have. Today an extraordinary journey ends for me, lasting more than twenty years, within a company to which I have tirelessly dedicated all my love and creative passion. During this long period Gucci has been my home, my adopted family. To this extended family, to all the individuals who have looked after and supported it, I send my most sincere thanks, my biggest and most heartfelt embrace. Together with them I have wished, dreamed, imagined. Without them, none of what I have built would have been possible. To them goes my most sincerest wish: may you continue to cultivate your dreams, the subtle and intangible matter that makes life worth living. May you continue to nourish yourselves with poetic and inclusive imagery, remaining faithful to your values. May you always live by your passions, propelled by the wind of freedom.” A moving sentiment and a remarkable tenure.