Demna’s Gucci

Not so long ago, Gucci announced that Demna Gvasalia would be its new Artistic Director. The news resonated across the fashion world: with ten years at Balenciaga behind him, what would Demna bring to the storied house of Gucci? Would he resurrect the signature maximalism and provocation he pioneered at Balenciaga? Or would he start anew, leaving behind overt homages to post-Soviet childhood and subversive gestures?

From the moment of the announcement, speculation centered on the tension between continuity and reinvention. Many, myself included, wondered: will Demna simply transplant pieces of his Balenciaga-era aesthetic onto Gucci’s heritage? Will he evoke the post-Trauma visual language of his childhood in the Soviet Union? Or will he evolve a new Gucci sensibility, one that respects the house’s legacy while asserting his own voice?

His debut Gucci offering was unveiled not via a typical runway show but through a cinematic presentation. At Milan Fashion Week 2025, Gucci revealed “La Famiglia” in a short film directed by Spike Jonze and Halina Reijn, featuring Demi Moore in a central role. The collection was also introduced through an Instagram lookbook shot by Catherine Opie. Gucci described this as a soft launch: the pieces will be available in 10 flagship stores between September 25 and October 12.

The aesthetic of La Famiglia weaves together Gucci’s historical motifs and Demna’s personal lexicon. The collection resurrects signature elements, the Bamboo 1947 bag, the Horsebit loafer, the Flora motif, and head-to-toe GG monogram, but infuses them with drama, layered narrativity, and character archetypes. In the lookbook, characters such as “La Contessa” or “L’Influencer” are framed in decorative borders, evoking the portrait tradition and subtly pointing to notions of family, lineage, and performance.

Fashion critics have observed that rather than erase his Balenciaga signature, Demna appears to be dialing it through Gucci’s prism. The silhouettes lean bold: flared trousers, exaggerated collars, ornamental detailing, and theatrical touches. Yet the mood is at times gentler, more rooted in storytelling than shock. In the Spring 2026 collection, released ahead of the film premiere, critics noted how Demna played with contrast: classic Gucci restraint meets flamboyant maximalism.

One of the most striking aspects is the way Demna reframes Gucci’s identity through narrative. Gucci’s press materials describe La Famiglia as a return to storytelling, looking backward into the heritage, forward into the future, and anchoring his Gucci vision around characters and mythologies. The campaign’s framing devices, literal frames around the images, suggest lineage and status, a visual cue that each look is embedded in a persona, not merely a garment.

What emerges in this early moment is an approach that feels exploratory. Demna is not wholesale transplanting his Balenciaga playbook into Gucci, nor is he suppressing it entirely. Rather, he’s negotiating a third space, a Gucci reimagined through his lens. The brand has entrusted him not only with aesthetics, but with narrative authority, to define a new cultural language for Gucci in a moment when luxury is again seeking stories that matter.

In sum, the Demna era at Gucci inaugurates with ambition and risk. It asks us to see Gucci anew, as a canvas for character, myth, and theatricality, not merely monograms. Whether the long game leads to reinvention or fracture depends on how he sustains this balance across seasons. In the meantime, we watch closely: the table is set, and Demna is beginning to serve.