An indie designer staged a runway show on the street outside the Bottega Veneta show Her name is Gabrielle Venguer and we need more people like her

The guerrilla marketing stunt staged on Saturday evening in Via Vigevano in Milan by Gabrielle Venguer was an amusing one: the emerging, off-schedule designer took her models out onto the street, outside the Bottega Veneta show, and improvised a runway presentation for passers-by right there on the spot. It was an ironic and self-aware gesture, a direct response to the situation faced by so many emerging designers who lack both budget and an official voice within the Milanese system, and who increasingly rely on virality and the creative occupation of public space to get noticed.

Gabrielle Venguer is a Mexican designer who founded her eponymous label in 2020. Trained at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art in London, she has spent years developing a dreamlike, experimental and provocative aesthetic centred on the creation and manipulation of her own fabrics. Her garments combine fluid silhouettes, unconventional materials, artisanal processes and a strong performative sensibility: one-of-a-kind pieces that engage in dialogue with the body and with space, often presented in contexts that fall outside institutional frameworks.

The improvised "show" in Via Vigevano is in fact part of an approach the designer has been exploring for some time — so much so that From the Runway to the Streets is almost the name of a concept that drives her work. Venguer has already experimented with show-as-performance formats (in Mexico City and Paris), turning the street into a catwalk and fashion into a collective moment. Here, just a few metres from one of the major shows on the official calendar, she asserted with lightness and precision that attention can be won without a budget, provided you have clear ideas and a coherent vision.

«This project really began as an exchange between two ways of seeing», Venguer told us a few days after the show-crashing outside Bottega Veneta. «I started working with my friend Luigi Pensa, and very quickly our different perspectives on Mexico and Italy became part of the work». The brand's third guerrilla show, Tasty Tourists, presented the collection in the heart of Milan, in front of some of the city's best-known tourist landmarks. «We ended up eating far too many gelatos, visiting the Duomo, wandering around the city together and even riding a boat».

Recounting the decision to show up outside the Bottega Veneta venue, Venguer recalls having found out where the show would take place only the day before. «We discovered that the surrounding businesses had been paid to close during the show, except for the gelato shop directly across the street. Suddenly, that became our way in».

«Luigi wanted the intervention to be more discreet, while I wanted to take a bolder approach, so we had to find a point somewhere between the two. In the end, that point became very literal: eating ice cream in front of the paparazzi while having a musician with us», the designer added. «It was visible enough to interrupt the scene, but at the same time we were simply standing there, eating gelato. It became this funny middle ground between blending in and deliberately making ourselves impossible to ignore.»