Gucci sees potential in 37-year-old Belgian song
In 1983, current video artist Walter Verdin founded the Leuven experimental electro group Pas de Deux. He created a new arrangement of Mani Meme, written by the group he had been part of. Now, Gucci has picked up his Mani Meme.
The world-famous Italian fashion house was looking for a campaign film that would do full justice to the nostalgic Epilogue collection from designer and creative director Alessandro Michele for Gucci. It ended up with Mani Meme, a phonetic pronunciation of Maar niet met mij (‘But not with me’), from 1983. According to Michele, the energetic singing, brass sections and retro-electro sound perfectly match the Epilogue creations, which are reminiscent of the 60s and 70s. Gucci immediately bought the rights to the song internationally for five years, for use in its social media, online channels, all kinds of events and exhibitions.
The fashion giant's interest was a bolt from the blue, not least for Walter Verdin himself. Especially when you consider that the controversial Rendez-vous, the 1983 Belgian entry for the Eurovision Song Contest that he had co-written, was mercilessly and furiously slated by the public during the pre-selections. They found the barely two sentences of text meaningless, the melody annoyingly repetitive. The international jury was by no means impressed in Munich either. The song was just too far ahead of its time...
In 2020, Mani Meme is putting a lot of this right.