Who Do You Want To Be At Demna's Gucci?

As Gucci legend goes, in the 1897, a young Guccio Gucci worked as a porter in London’s The Savoy Hotel. There, he observed closely the comings and goings of the jetsetting bourgeoisie—businessmen in dapper suits and their posh wives, who inspired the creation of his first Gucci luggage collection—but also stage performers and eccentric artists, people from all walks of life. Demna’s Spring/Summer 2027 collection for Gucci takes a page from this part of its history. 

First, the setting. Dubbed “The Store Show,” the runway unfolded inside a cavernous, multi-room space transformed into the most democratic part of a luxury house: its retail store. Angry TikTokers (ahem, Bethenny Frankel) might have plenty to say about how they’re treated inside luxury boutiques, but anyone can technically walk through the doors and browse. Buying is another story, obviously. A runway show is the opposite: one of fashion’s most exclusive spaces, notoriously difficult to get into even for a fashion editor. Staging one inside a faux store, then, felt like a deliberate move. Come into the Gucci world, Demna seemed to say. Everyone is welcome to look, lust and covet. To leave with something? You’ll still need your credit card.

The clothes told a similar story. Those of us lucky enough to be seated in room A got to witness the promenade outside of the “store,” where a cast of different characters strode up and down before deciding to enter the Gucci world. The menswear started off polished, with cropped trousers, sockless loafers and sharply fitted suits with exaggerated shoulders. Then things started getting edgier, a little more rebellious. There were rounded, almost inflated jackets paired with slouchy jeans, XXL horsebit belts slung low.

Womenswear started off equally prim, with Milanese sciure dressed in skirt suits and pantsuits, plus riding boots embellished with Horsebit hardware, a nod to the equestrian world of the house's original well-heeled clientele. I spotted Donatella nodding approvingly and clapping when one particularly chic older model strode down the runway, looking like she was ready to throw down her credit card and buy the whole store. That soon gave way to rugby shirts with pleated tartan skirts and oversized fur coats thrown over men’s shirting, all piled with dripping Gucci jewelry. 

As the show went on, things got sexier. Supermodel Candice Swanepoel slinked down the runway in a glittering, skin-tight mini dress with a side cutout; Alex Consani, in hot-pink eyeshadow, soon followed in a floor-length black dress with a thigh-high slit. One paper-thin gown traded a traditional strap for a teardrop-shaped weight that swung like a metronome over the model’s shoulder. For accessories, familiar Gucci signatures like the Horsebit, Bamboo, Marmont and Ophidia were everywhere, but Demna added plenty of newness of his own: razor-sharp metal stilettos, a triple Horsebit belt cinched over a swishy fringe skirt, a python shoulder bag shaped like a literal stalk of bamboo. True Gucci devotees know that house introduced its now-iconic curved bamboo handles due to postwar shortages, which forced Gucci’s artisans to experiment with unconventional materials. Here, Demna seemed to take that familiar code and distort it a bit, adding a bit of tongue-in-cheek playfulness.

It all comes back to the tension Demna outlined in his letter before the show: Gucci might have began with polished bourgeois respectability, but its most memorable eras are the ones that introduced eccentricity and sex appeal into that world. Personally, I left the show on a high, with the strong urge to put on a body-con mini-dress, throw on an oversized fur (nevermind the fact it's 80 degrees here), smear my eye makeup, muss up my hair, and stomp through the cobbled streets of Milan in a pair of four-inch Horsebit stilettos, like some sort of hot-bitch, after-dark alter ego version of myself.

And maybe that’s the point of Demna’s Gucci: Everyone’s invited into the store. What you choose to become once you’re inside is up to you.