Demna Finally Shows Gucci What He Actually Thinks It Is
A year after arriving from Balenciaga, Demna used his third Gucci show to drop the archive references and present what he called his "complete personal vision" for the house: 1980s Milan, punk, and a lot more skin.
Gucci's first two collections under Demna played it safe, mining the house archive the way a new hire mines the company wiki before saying anything original out loud. His Spring/Summer 2027 show, staged during Milan Fashion Week, was the moment he stopped citing sources.
The designer, who arrived at Gucci in 2025 from Balenciaga, called the collection his "complete personal vision for the brand" after a year of study, drawing on 1980s Milanese style filtered through punk and rock and roll. The men's looks ran to hooded silhouettes, tartan-lined jackets, pronounced-shoulder suits, cropped trousers, and triple-buckle belts; the women's looks leaned into black suits with midriff cutouts, oversized furs, leather coats, and chain neck pieces. Demna described the house's real character as "luxury that wants to be seen," with "eccentricity, danger or sex appeal" underneath the bourgeois surface.
That framing is a direct rebuttal to the version of Gucci that built the brand's last boom: polished, maximalist, but rarely dangerous. Whether Demna's read is correct is a matter of taste, but it is at least a legible point of view, which is more than the house's sales figures have offered lately. Revenue at the Kering-owned label kept declining through the second quarter, though the rate of decline slowed from the first, a signal that is either the start of a turnaround or simply a quarter where things got less bad.
A creative director gets a limited number of shows before "personal vision" has to start showing up in a balance sheet. Demna has now spent his grace period explaining what he believes Gucci is. The next few collections will have to prove customers believe it too.
Source: FashionUnited
Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →
