We Over-Analysed All The References In Harry Styles’ New Gucci Campaign

Harry Styles and Gucci: it's a fashion partnership made in heaven, and - thankfully - one that's back for the new season. Earlier this year, the joyfully incongruous images from Styles' first Gucci tailoring campaign saw the singer lurking around a fish and chip shop, playing with dogs and (inexplicably) holding a chicken. Now, he's travelled to the Villa Lante outside Rome for another, equally brilliant set of photos, shot by Glen Luchford, styled by Gucci's creative director Alessandro Michele and starring a brand new cast of tiny animals: a lamb, a goat and a piglet. It's all too much for us to bear.

See the full Gucci menswear tailoring campaign starring Harry Styles in the gallery below...

This being a Gucci campaign, it's a typically eclectic mix of influences and reference points that range from high to low, old to new - and this being a Harry Styles campaign, we've taken the time to over-analyse them all. Here are the ones that you might have missed (we'll forgive you, because it's all rather overwhelming)...

That glorious One Direction Wonderland cover

Googling the words 'One Direction Wonderland photoshoot' is like falling through a sci-fi vortex into a simpler time. A time when the boyband One Direction was a cohesive whole, and not just (we speculate) a Zayn-less Whatsapp group in which only Liam Payne still posts (with maybe the odd golfing update from Niall Horan). A time when some genius creative director decided that it would be a great idea to take photos of these rising stars cuddling Andrex puppies while wearing fuzzy knitwear. Surely any photo set involving Harry Styles and cute animals has to acknowledge this shoot as a major influence?

Medieval religious art...

That gold headband is surely surely straight out of an old religious fresco. Plus, posing with a flock of lambs is a textbook New Testament move. Now we're just wondering why Harry Styles wasn't a guest of honour at the Met Gala for Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination - and, on a deeper level, why noted fashion icon Harry Styles has never yet attended the Met Gala. Perhaps it's Taylor Swift's fault.

Twitter user Rei has even pointed out some similarities between one pose and this Botticelli painting...

... and this Roman statue

... and between this lamb-over-the-shoulder pose and a specific Roman statue, found in Rome's Museo Barracco. There's a distinct possibility that Michele, who has cited religious art and iconography as inspiration for past Gucci collections, was aware of this work, too.

The 'Kiwi' video

Less a reference, perhaps, than a point of comparison: wouldn't all these outfits look truly excellent on the cast of Gucci-wearing primary schoolers that populated the video for Harry's song Kiwi last year? Plus, the whole farmyard animal set-up is very reminiscent of a school trip to visit the animals, so...

This Rolling Stone cover

We knew we'd seen that squint to the camera before, but this time, there's a baby pig involved.