Harry Styles and Gucci's new collection unveiled at Milan Fashion Week

Called Ha Ha Ha, the playful clothes celebrate fun and friendship

A cartoon-like squirrel decorates this look found in Gucci and Harry Styles's collaboration, Ha Ha Ha. All photos: Gucci

Bohemian meets retro.

The Ha Ha Ha collection is a playful take on men's dress codes, such as checks and suiting.

Harry Styles and Alessandro Michele, the creative director of Gucci, have been friends for years.

A yellow suit patterned in lambs, part of the Ha Ha Ha collection.

For its spring/summer 2023 collection, Gucci has gone one better than just a runway show; it revealed a collection in collaboration with British singer-songwriter Harry Styles.

A long-time fan of Gucci, Styles is already known as something of a fashion dandy, who loves to play with codes and colour, while embracing the quirky and the unusual. While this tie-up may be surprising, it's not altogether unexpected.

Styles and Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele have apparently been friends for years, from back when the singer went solo and Michele took over at the Italian luxury house. In what the company describes as a “synthesis of a friendship”, the pair have now joined forces to create a limited-edition menswear offering, revealed in Milan on Monday.

Called Ha Ha Ha, it is the sound of laughter, and the initials of both men's first names, making it a project that was “born from a creative relationship that self-generates from amusement and ends with the tangibility of a product”.

Speaking of why he chose to work with Styles, Michele says: “Harry has an incredible sense of fashion. Observing his ability to combine items of clothing in a way that is out of the ordinary, compared to the required standards of taste and common sense and the homogenisation of appearance, I came to understand that the styling of a look is a generator of differences and of powers, as are his reactions to the designs I have created for him, which he has always made his own; these reactions restore me with a rush of freedom every time.

“The idea of working together came to me one day while we were talking on the phone: I proposed creating a 'dream wardrobe' with him, starting from those small oddities that come together in childlike visions.”

The resulting collection shifts through fashion eras with ease, mixing a shared love of vintage with the joyful ideas of childhood. For example, there's a three-piece suit in yellow checks that is patterned with drawings of cherries and lambs, a cheeky nod to when Styles starred in the Gucci autumn/winter 2018 campaign with a lamb draped over his shoulders.

“We ended up with a mix of aesthetics from 1970s pop and Bohemian,” says Michele. This includes herringbone overcoats and cardigans knitted with interlocking Gs, to retro patchworked leather bomber jackets.

Bespoke details such as covered and mother-of-pearl buttons elevate shirts, while velvet suits and lined, hooded coats bring a sense of decadence.

More laid-back elements such as bowling shirts appear alongside pyjamas, and even denim is treated for a new, carefree aesthetic. Not surprisingly, there are plenty of Gucci codes, such as checks and stripes that turn up as suits and even a kilt, while its famous fur-lined loafers also make a welcome appearance.

Scroll through the gallery below to see the style evolution of Harry Styles.