On Saturday night, Gucci shut down Times Square, closing a stretch of Broadway between 46th and 48th Streets, to stage Demna’s debut cruise show for the house. Every screen that normally cycles through tourist ads and Broadway promotions was turned over to Gucci. The 600 guests seated on the street watched models walk below while the entire show played out in real time on the towering screens above them. It was simultaneously the most commercial and the most cinematic thing fashion has staged in years, which, given who was behind it, felt entirely deliberate.
The love story between Gucci and New York began more than seventy years ago, when the house opened its first boutique outside Italy on Fifth Avenue. Choosing Times Square, the loudest, most unapologetically commercial corner of that city, as the venue for Demna’s first cruise collection was not a random decision. It was a thesis statement.
The Collection
Demna described the collection as being designed around the idea of different styles colliding, the way New York streets do, a plurality of individuals, each with their own way of wearing clothes, intersecting like the avenues of the city. The result was his most commercial collection to date, flush with highly wearable city-life garments built around GucciCore, his new offering of wardrobe staples.
The wardrobe ranged across every archetype the city produces. Commuting businessmen wore tailored pinstripe banker suits topped with giant backpacks and logoed tote bags. Women were wrapped in lofty shearling. Outerwear was cut both long and cropped. Suits came in the ’90s, skinny or loosely tailored. Skirts ran short and tight or trapezoid and pleated. The Web stripe appeared as a bandeau top on men. Ultra-baggy jeans sat alongside oversized faux-fur coats. The pencil skirt and the classic peacoat were both present, rewritten in Demna’s language but still legible as Gucci.
The Cast
Tom Brady walked in a very ’80s-cut double leather ensemble. Paris Hilton wore a bright yellow printed dress. Cindy Crawford closed the show in a black feathered gown. Emily Ratajkowski wore knee-high boots and a black wax jacket with an oversized fur collar. Alex Consani walked in a vampy sheer caftan layered with statement necklaces. The casting was deliberate, not models playing New Yorkers, but actual cultural figures who carry their own weight in a room, wearing Gucci the way real people do.
In the front row: Lindsay Lohan in head-to-toe black leather, Mariah Carey in a cream coat, Iman, Kim Kardashian, and Laura Harrier.
What It Means
Demna said the show was the culmination of his prior studies of the house, a moment to clarify what Gucci is through his lens before building further on it. The Times Square setting, with its imaginary Gucci billboards selling “Gucci Time” and “Gucci Life” flickering above the real show, captured that tension precisely. This is a house that has always understood the relationship between luxury and desire, between aspiration and accessibility. Demna is not dismantling that. He is leaning into it, with both eyes open and a very good tailor.
