Severed heads, dragons: everyone's abuzz about Gucci's bonkers show

Milan Fashion Week might have ended yesterday, but there's one show that everybody's still talking about — and for good reason.

Gucci's star creative director Alessandro Michele dialed up the drama by turning the runway into a theatre — an operating theatre, to be exact — and armed his models with surreal props created by Makinarium, a Rome-based special effects company.

Male and female models walked onto a runway amid operating tables under bright neon lights in the Gucci Hub, the brand's Milan headquarters, over the steady beeping of a heart monitoring machine.

"The concept of the operating room reflects the work of a designer — the act of cutting, splicing and reconstructing materials and fabrics to create a new personality and identity with them," a tweet from Gucci explained.

WATCH | Gucci Autumn/Winter 2018/19 show

Michele introduced the "Cyborg Gucci" in the Autumn/Winter 2018/19 collection, a concept inspired by Donna Haraway's 1984 essay A Cyborg Manifesto, which blurs the lines between machines, humans and animals.

The collection included a wild mix of cultures and symbols, from a pagoda hat to a balaclava, a classic burgundy velvet dress to a gold lurex jacket, fine lace to the logo of the New York Yankees.

The models added to the transgressive vibe - not only did some carry replicas of their own severed head, a snake or a baby dragon, but others were adorned with horns or a third eye.

Gucci explained on social media that the third eye symbolised a "heightening and emphasising of the senses".

The Twitter fashion police, on the other hand, jumped at the chance to poke some fun at Michele's interesting choice of accessories:

• Additional reporting by staff reporter.