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Demna by Gucci Something we’ve seen before?

  • Mar 19
  • 5 min read

While it may be tired to pour over runways and over interpret them, Demna's first full ready to wear showing at Gucci has generated such significant controversy that it seems unkind not to interpret it through the lens that I believe he was aiming for: a critique of the hyper online fashion zeitgeist. 


Demna Gvasalia, particularly renowned for his decade at Balenciaga and founding of Vetements, can certainly be called the father of the baggy silhouette that defined popular fashion in the early 2020s. Distressed textiles and blurred graphics, frayed hems and oversized boots leaving chunky heelbite in luxury denim was his credo; with Balenciaga stores globally being designed as brutalist concrete behemoths. Balenciaga was financially struggling despite its renowned couture before his arrival, just as Hedi reshaped Yves Saint Laurent, Demna reshaped the house in his own image. Balenciaga has seen enormous financial success, but is now left with an identity crisis under Pierpaolo Piccioli, after all the brand cannot simply transform overnight and alienate its existing customers, and yet cannot continue to exist in the shadow of a prior creative director... After this first showing at Gucci, critics who are tired of the Demna brand of high fashion satire are worried Gucci may face the same fate.


In Demna’s wake, Balenciaga has capitalised on existing hype, rereleasing three models of city bag at a competitive price point, dropping prices on footwear and maintaining a cohesion in their graphics - with groans from online critics, it is likely this commercial approach demonstrated a shareholder pressure for Piccioli to deliver revenue before he can impart a more unique approach. 



The Mini City and a distressed cap, both oozing streetwear focused Demna style codes. 


Demna does not face the same pressure at Gucci, a brand not imminently struggling, but indeed certainly stagnant in recent years. In an era where consumers are being captured by Saint Laurent, The Row, Our Legacy and other minimalist brands - or outright leaning hard into avant garde aesthetics a la Rick Owens, Junya Watanabe or CDG -  it is hard for the Gucci monogram to find a non tacky position in the market that feels identifiably Gucci rather than an attempt to copy what is trending. I think Demna has recognised this and thrown everything at the consumer - with mixed consequences.


Most notable is a use of celebrity, but distinctly micro-celebrity. Fakemink and Nettspend, rappers who have positioned themselves as fashion forward, popular amongst young hypebeasts, walked the runway with mink even scrolling on his phone - a tad on the nose. Noah Dillon of ‘The Hellp’ photographed the event, markedly remaining in his typical Dior uniform, Esdeekid performed a song directly referencing Louis Vuitton. For those not interested in ‘underground’ rap we saw Kate Moss, Emily Ratajkowski, Alex Consani, Gabriette and a model outfitted in what I believe to be an unexpected parody of ‘Clavicular’, a recently trending looksmaxxing influencer who has bombarded the explore page for all the wrong reasons. 

 

The connection may be flimsy,

but in an effort to recreate the Tom Ford era, Demna has certainly played into a popular emphasis on strong masculine bone structure within this internet community.


The runway is dark, a black room with a long white hallway created by ceiling lighting that casts a hard contrast on models often equipped with thick eyeshadow. The clothes are sharp, more form fitting, and nearly every look includes white or black, with all of them paired at the very least with black accessories. It has been believed that a return to Tom Ford era tailoring was coming, with stripped back sexy suiting on conventionally beautiful models not being typical Demna design language, but here it is executed well, if plainly. The models frequently stumbled, and the energy of post night out crawl home pervades the collection. Those I have spoken to in my circle could not point out a favourite look, or a favourite moment that was created, the backdrop certainly is a conceited effort to ‘give us nothing’. But if we look back on Tom Ford Gucci…


(Looks from AW/95 and 96 respectively, notable is the inclusion of Kate.)


The 90s was an era of more simple runways, literally, and Tom Ford's shows were certainly influenced in their execution by Helmut Lang and Calvin Klein, with the runway itself usually not attaining the showstopping heights to be expected of Rei Kawakubo or Margiela, or indeed Demna at Balenciaga, after all, these were ready to wear shows in an era of popular minimalism. 


I think Demna delivering on the Tom Ford revival in this literal sense with a plain runway is a case of ‘be careful what you wish for’ for fashion commentators everywhere

, with the black and white highlighting the body but also parodying the phone screen that all but the luckiest will view the show through. A man who has delivered a mud drenched battlefield that models trudged through (Balenciaga SS/23) did not simply forget to do something interesting this season, the omission must be intentional. The run up to the show also included AI generated promotional material, an element of ‘rage bait’ but also an ironic medium for a collection so stripped back, unlike at other houses the use of AI is not denied or apologised for, but instead blatantly stated across the Primavera campaign. The ridiculousness of a collection highlighting the human body being promoted by pure virtual simulacra is blatant, and overall a cheap shortcut to discourse. As is the revival of the fanny pack, worn notably by the two runway rappers and an inevitable call for the production of knock offs, a time honoured Gucci strategy for free promotion, but also a call out for the usual Gucci customer of recent years. 


Overall, I would argue that the consensus is that the show underwhelmed.


But given that Demna served up a summary of absolutely everything on the explore page, spamming AI within the campaign, reviving the tailoring critics wanted, parading the it celebrities down the runway, hosting performances from creatives that the algorithm have rendered tired in record time and mixing house codes with established archetypes from his prior teaser collection…is it any wonder that the result is stale? After a decade of irony poisoned collections at Balenciaga, the king of subversion has thrown everything at our faces in a tour de force of recycled cultural capital, I do not hate the clothes by any means, but I do hope that this collection is a palate cleanser and an introduction of more interesting approaches to follow. Below are a few looks emblematic of the collection that I do think would be considered very stylish off the runway, credit to wwd.com. 


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