What on Earth is Demna Doing at Gucci?
I wanted to love it. I genuinely did. Gucci has been in freefall quarter after quarter after quarter, and nobody roots harder for a good comeback story than me. When Demna was tapped by Kering to revamp Gucci, I understood the logic. He resurrected Balenciaga out of its most damaging moments, and he can create cultural relevance out of thin air. I will even go as far as to say that he may be the most talked-about designer of the last decade. I was open to it, genuinely, and I watched the Fall/Winter 2026 show debut with every intention of being convinced.
I was not convinced.
Demna is genuinely so talented and formulaic in the way he views his collections. Every detail from the darkened venue with the single dramatic spotlight, the celebrity-stacked front row engineered for maximum press saturation, the provocateur casting of industry legends with new faces and the AI generated campaign teasers are so undoubtedly Demna. I will not deny that he will never abandon the brand that he has created. It was a spectacle in the very sense of the word, but so were every one of his collections and shows at Balenciaga. In fact, it's almost uncanny how similar the pieces are. The models were in the Cagole pumps, but this time with the Gucci horse hardware slapped onto the front. So as undoubtedly Demna as the collection was, I really wanted to see something new.
There were also things in the collection, like the fluid tailored suits and Kate Moss’s backless dress, that were beautifully constructed. But a collection is not a greatest hits compilation, and when I try to imagine the full Gucci Fall 2026 range together in store, I get so lost. Tracksuits were next to pleated floral dresses, which followed mock fur blousons and draped evening gowns. Demna described this collection as different characters all working together to form a cohesive framework for the modern Gucci. There was just far too much explanation needed for this specific collection to form a coherent narrative for the future of Gucci.
Gucci Lookbook Collection
Gucci was also historically, undeniably sexy under Tom Form. It has not, sadly, been sexy since. The commercial instinct to return to that, with the ultra low trousers, hip-skimming leather suits, and GG logo things, is not without logic. The brand truthfully needs to move product. To do so, they must feel desirable again, and Demna made a calculated decision that the fastest road back to desirability runs through Ford’s greatest hits – which I do think was a mistake.
What the show delivered was not Tom Ford’s Gucci. It was a Black Mirror episode about Tom Ford’s Gucci. I felt like I was watching a parallel reality where all the references I had once known were visually familiar but slightly off. Ford’s era was transgressive because no one saw it coming, and it rewrote what luxury sexuality could look like at a specific cultural moment that cannot really be recreated. Demna’s version is not transgressive in 2026. It's almost nostalgic, and nothing is less sexy than nostalgia.
What does this all tell us? Outside the Palazzo de Scintille, fans gathered against barricades to see this show. Honestly, such a fair reaction. Because the spectacle surrounding the collection was doing an enormous amount of work, it placed so much pressure on the clothes themselves to carry their weight. I think Demna was aware of this. The noise was intentional precisely because the collection was not loud enough on its own terms. Luckily, Demna knows how to fake a show. He knew we wanted the sexy Gucci back, so he said, “Ok, I can show you sexy.”
That approach is a defensible strategy for a brand rebuilding from a low point, but Gucci is not rebuilding from nothing. It is a house with a century of real and specific identity accumulation, and there is something genuinely uncomfortable about watching it resort to an engineered virality to prove it still matters. The work is not to manufacture it but to understand its role in the history of fashion and move it forward. The goal for Gucci should not have been to return to its most photographed moment and hope for the audience's anamnesis.
The collection will sell. Demna will definitely get his headlines, Kering will report optimism, and the industry will call the debut a success because the cameras showed up and we responded. But a successful debut and saved house are two separate things. Sexy is not a front row or a legacy callback in a thong. Sexy is so self assured and has nothing to prove. The show needed all of the noise it could get, and that, more than any individual look, is the detail worth sitting with.
Xoxo,
Annie
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