ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories: Explosion of Fluttery Plumes by GUCCI F/W 2013/14

Come fall, there will be plenty of choices to be made about what to wear, but to simplify things a little, start thinking about your answer to this question ahead of time: Are you a Hitchcock? Or are you a De Palma? Perhaps it might be better to explain. Two quite distinct portrayals of femininity and, of course, along with that, sexuality are emerging in the collections. There are the sixties-tinged heroines of the Marnie variety, a restrained, elegant, though no less powerful, idea of dressing that takes its cues from structured lean coats, narrow skirts, and low heels. And then there are the femmes fatales who are Dressed to Kill, and Gucci is very much firmly in that camp.

This is a harder, darker, more eroticized approach to fashion that, under the creative direction of a glowingly gorgeous Frida Giannini who’s about to give birth at any moment, involves the likes of high-necked python tees under curvaceous jackets; super-covered-up dresses that could have gone demure but decided bad was better; and a ton, and I mean a ton of leather: sometimes given a craquelure surface treatment, other times as gleaming ponyskin and richly colored astrakhan, all used for soft-shouldered, nip-waisted suits and coats whose shape was controlled by an intricacy of seams that ran around and over the body. To go with all this, accessories were kept strictly understated—long snakeskin boots that hugged the legs, structured bags that carried no other adornment than their jet-black bamboo handles and archival luggage–lock fastenings.

As it turns out, Giannini was thinking about another sexual provocateur for her collection Allen Jones, the 1960s British artist who took hard-core fetishism from behind closed doors to the gallery floor. If Jones’s work had a disturbing distance, encouraging a voyeuristic gaze, then Gucci was rather warmer, in no small part, it has to be said, because of the flashes of exuberance that Giannini brought to bear on the proceedings. The artisanal handwork that was explored from opening look to finale from the three-dimensional tapestry fronds down the sleeves of a jacket to the explosion of fluttery plumes across fishnet tops and satin dresses cut on the bias means that at Gucci, at least, Venus might be in furs, but she’s also as likely to be in ferns or feathers.