Demna’s Gucci runway debut was not what we expected
Primavera, but make it delinquent. If Primavera by Botticelli, which allegedly inspired Demna for his Gucci runway debut, imagined spring as divine rebirth, Gucci’s Primavera proposes something closer to rebirth after a very expensive, very sleepless night.
The hefty 84-look procession flirted shamelessly with the ghost of Tom Ford’s Gucci — sexed-up, self-aware, sensually minimal. Python-skin sequins slithered past comically buff men poured into plunging necklines, shiny trousers and compression tops gripping the body in an emotionally-restraint monochrome. And yet, for a supposedly minimalist show, the references piled high. Within fifteen minutes: fakemink in an elevated coke-dealer fantasy (this time the logo fanny pack is reassuringly authentic), followed by Kate Moss closing with a winking Gucci diamond thong reportedly clocking in at ten carats.
Gladly, Demna’s mischief still shines through the at-times flat, sterile silhouettes — subtle disinterest, even disobedience, in the way the models move: tired, distracted, seemingly over it (well beyond the viral moment of fakemink casually pulling out his phone). It’s a mood of sexy detachment, of being so nonchalant in your own grandiosity that a black mid-waist could-be-legging-could-be-trouser paired with a white tee still inexplicably reads as iconic. “Gucci needs to become an adjective,” writes Demna Gvasalia — and while we’re still drafting its thesaurus entry, FW26 suggests the word already knows what it means.
Image courtesy of the artist
Words By Evita Shrestha
