The nice Gucci reset is right here. On Wednesday, the Italian trend home named Demna, the mononymic designer who remodeled Balenciaga from a distinct segment luxurious home into probably the most provocative, boundary-breaking manufacturers of the final decade, as its new creative director. He can be in control of girls’s put on, males’s put on and equipment.
Gucci and Balenciaga are owned by Kering, the French conglomerate that additionally owns Saint Laurent, McQueen, Brioni and Bottega Veneta. A brand new designer for Balenciaga has not been introduced.
“Gucci stands for trend authority,” Stefano Cantino, the chief government of Gucci, stated. “That is what we wish to carry again.”
Demna would be the first “star” designer with a confirmed observe file in Gucci’s 104-year historical past, a seeming acknowledgment of the disaster it has skilled during the last two years after an obvious try to recast itself as a timeless luxurious model. Income plunged 23 p.c in 2024, and the Kering inventory worth has greater than halved since 2023. (Gucci is by far the biggest model within the Kering secure.)
The appointment will add but extra turmoil to an already unsettled trend world during which a file variety of trend firms have modified design heads within the final 12 months. Half of Kering’s manufacturers alone can have new designers in 2025.
“We have been on the lookout for a robust and opinionated designer,” Mr. Cantino stated. “Demna is without doubt one of the few.” He brings with him not simply design abilities, Mr. Cantino stated, however “an understanding of up to date tradition, of what’s luxurious right this moment and a deep understanding of the brand new era.”
He additionally brings a sure information of Gucci. In 2021, Demna and Alessandro Michele, the Gucci designer on the time, “hacked” into one another’s manufacturers to reinterpret their most recognizable designs, with Demna changing Gucci’s well-known double Gs with Bs on its traditional brand canvas equipment. And he has the boldness of the Kering chief government François-Henri Pinault, who as soon as informed The New York Occasions he believed Demna might create a “megabrand.”
When Mr. Pinault named the Georgian-born Demna Gvasalia (he dropped his surname in 2021) to Balenciaga in 2015, nonetheless, the style world was shocked.
Although Demna, now 43, had obtained his grasp’s diploma from the Royal Academy of Superb Arts in Antwerp, Belgium, and skilled within the studios of Martin Margiela and Louis Vuitton, he made his identify at Vetements, a cultlike label created in 2014 that grew to become a trend sensation virtually in a single day due to its nose-thumbingly antitrend aesthetic. (Demna left Vetements in 2019.)
Nonetheless, throughout Demna’s 10 years at Balenciaga, revenues grew near $2 billion from an estimated $390 million, difficult the which means of luxurious, worth and authenticity within the course of.
He took the quotidian — Crocs, IKEA totes, even rubbish luggage — and put them on a pedestal. He virtually single-handedly began the monster sneaker pattern. He put all ages and genders and sorts of magnificence on his runway and created reveals that have been immersive, apocalyptic experiences that acted as types of social criticism as a lot as trend: reveals concerning the local weather disaster, the struggle in Ukraine, superstar and the rule of capitalism. He scandalized and thrilled in equal measure.
He collaborated with “The Simpsons,” made Balenciaga video video games and attended the Met with Kim Kardashian. He additionally restarted the couture line and by no means overlooked the purity of silhouette that characterised the work of Balenciaga’s namesake designer, Cristóbal Balenciaga.
Balenciaga’s momentum got here to an abrupt halt in 2023, when a misjudged vacation advert marketing campaign precipitated on-line allegations of pedophilia, and Demna’s deep friendship with Ye solid a shadow on the model within the wake of Ye’s antisemitic rants. Cancellation loomed, however Balenciaga finally distanced itself from the controversy, and it has since recovered a few of its energy. In January, Demna was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in recognition of his contribution to French trend. He wore a T-shirt.
Demna’s final Balenciaga present, held on March 9 in Paris, was a profession retrospective of types and a reminder of simply what he had dropped at the home. After the present, he joked to reporters that the explanation he was sporting a go well with for the primary time was that he was Demna 2.0.
The Gucci information suggests it was much less a joke than it appeared on the time.
“Demna’s contribution to the business, to Balenciaga and to the group’s success has been large,” stated François-Henri Pinault in a information launch. “His artistic energy is strictly what Gucci wants.”
Francesca Bellettini, the deputy chief government of Kering, referred to as him “the right catalyst.”
Demna replaces Sabato De Sarno, a designer who had labored behind the scenes at Valentino earlier than being charged with Gucci’s reset after the seven years of Alessandro Michele’s magpie maximalism. (Mr. Michele had likewise been a quantity two earlier than ascending to his place, working for the previous Gucci designer Frida Giannini.) Although the Michele period had buoyed Gucci to annual revenues of about 10 billion euros, tastes started to swing away from his trademark eccentricity, and Gucci administration thought a return to discretion was the reply.
That turned out to be flawed. As a substitute of positioning the model as a considerably extra hip equal of Hermès, Mr. De Sarno’s luxurious minimalism merely made it appear diminished. (It seems one Hermès is sufficient.) Demna’s job can be to alter all that, although he must overcome not simply the issues of Gucci, but additionally the problem of a slowdown within the broader luxurious business.
In that lies a sure enchantment, Mr. Cantino stated.
For Demna, Mr. Cantino stated, the thought of “with the ability to make successful at Gucci, show he’s able to doing one thing completely different than Balenciaga and present a special viewpoint, was very thrilling.”
Gucci didn’t verify when Demna would present his first assortment, however he’ll start in early July after his ultimate Balenciaga couture present. (Gucci will not be a couture home.) He’ll break up his time between his dwelling in Switzerland and the Gucci headquarters in Milan.
