And so it begins: the most anticipated season of designer debuts in recent memory, with four new creative directors unveiled in Milan alone, opened not with a runway but with a film. Demna’s first gesture at Gucci for Spring/Summer 26 was deliberately cinematic, eschewing the traditional catwalk for a premiere inside La Borsa, Milan’s historic stock exchange.
Outside, models approached like movie stars, paparazzi bulbs flaring, while an intense cordon of security kept the crowd at bay. Within the neoclassical halls, Demna appeared serene, conversing easily, his usual severity softened into a disarming ease. It felt less like a debut under pressure than an auteur taking his seat in the cinema.
Two days earlier, the designer had teased his ideas with Gucci: La Famiglia, a 38-look capsule shot by Catherine Opie, whom he calls “the Rembrandt of our time.” These portraits acted as the overture to The Tiger, a half-hour film directed by Spike Jonze and Halina Reijn and starring Demi Moore as Barbara Gucci, a gloriously mercurial matriarch presiding over her family’s decadent implosion.
Ed Harris delivered a perfectly cantankerous turn as a visiting Vanity Fair journalist; Edward Norton drifted through a surreal hallucination; Keke Palmer commanded the screen; Kendall Jenner and Alex Consani appeared in sly cameos, the latter gifting the audience the already-iconic line, “rich bitch.” The film played as both spectacle and manifesto, an irreverent collision of family drama, fashion fantasy, and cultural commentary.
The collection is a meticulously considered reworking of the house’s codes, a dialogue between heritage and modernity. Monogrammed travel trunks recall Gucci’s origins, bamboo handles and the green-red stripe are sharpened into architectural gestures, and the ghosts of Tom Ford, Alessandro Michele, and Frida Giannini flicker through the silhouettes. Yet the result is unmistakably Demna: slyly humorous, sculptural, and self-aware. The clothes are lighter, more urbane, and unabashedly flirtatious.
On the red carpet, Serena Williams swept in wearing a sheer, long-sleeved gown with a monogrammed underlay and mermaid hem — a reworked Look 27.
Gwyneth Paltrow made her Milan Fashion Week debut in Look 4, a monogrammed skirt set styled with a satin blouse and sculptural boots. Demi Moore commanded attention in Look 37, a burnt-orange gown embroidered with crystals and shadowy florals that shimmered under the lights. Lila Moss reprised Look 18, pairing a croc-embossed mini with a black turtleneck and boots, a look that nodded playfully to her mother’s 1990s minimalism.
Tomorrow, the capsule lands in ten flagship boutiques worldwide, a swift retail manoeuvre designed to capture the momentum of the night. Demna, for his part, called this moment “baby steps,” though it felt closer to a cinematic coup d’état, Gucci stripped of hesitation and embracing new audacity. If this is merely the prologue, February’s runway promises to be the opening scene of a new Gucci era.
