Gucci's Holiday Film Puts Mariah Carey in a Butterfly Collection, Directed by Harmony Korine

Gucci's holiday campaign has the Christmas song that charts every December and the woman who sings it. Gucci Gift, which the house posted on Monday morning, November 2, is a film directed by Harmony Korine in which Mariah Carey, in Gucci's words, marks the start of the festive season, set to All I Want for Christmas Is You. Gucci credits the song to Carey as performer and to Carey and Walter N Afanasieff as its writers.

The clothes are a collection of their own. The Butterfly Special Collection, as gucci.com calls it, takes the butterfly, which the house describes as Carey's signature motif, across embroidery, prints and crystal, and it is selling online first: Gucci's site lists it as an online pre-launch, with no date given for stores. The site shows around 50 pieces, from a $250 printed silk ribbon and scrunchie to a $19,500 embroidered viscose jersey asymmetrical dress, with an embroidered GG canvas trench coat at $11,500, an embroidered GG canvas zip jacket at $7,200, a printed viscose jersey dress at $6,600, a textured wool double-breasted coat at $5,200 and crystal versions of the Starlet, Gossip and Aperitivo bags at $2,300 to $3,550. Crystal GG Marmont earrings start at $970 and a pendant at $730.

The film

Dork, which published its report later on Monday, says the film is set in a lavish hotel where the staff prepare for Carey's arrival as the decorations get more extravagant, and that Carey wears the Butterfly pieces in it. The collection's name is also the name of her 1997 album, which is where the motif comes from. Korine has worked with the house before, on a 2019 project, Dork notes, and the director of Spring Breakers and Gummo is an odd fit for a hotel Christmas film, which is presumably the point.

The timing follows Carey's own calendar. On November 1 she released this year's It's Time video, her yearly handover from Halloween to Christmas, and Dork lists a Christmastime tour starting at Birmingham's Utilita Arena on November 27, then London's O2 on November 30, Manchester's Co-op Live on December 2 and Malta on December 8. A Gucci film built on her song gives the house a campaign that gets replayed every time the song does, and the song, as Dork puts it citing Variety, keeps returning to the charts each festive season, more than three decades after its 1994 release.

What Gucci has not published is the film's length, where it will run beyond its own channels, or when the Butterfly pieces reach stores. Gucci's Gifts page introduces the collection first, ahead of its gifts for her and him.