Demna opens up store for ‘quintessentially Gucci’ sophomore present

Demna’s debut runway present for Gucci, held in February, occurred amid a monolithic, marble-clad ‘museum’ impressed by the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and constructed from scratch in Milan’s Palazzo delle Scintille. Lined with recreations of Roman and Hellenistic statuary, Demna mentioned he needed to reassert the place that Gucci holds inside Italian tradition – as a lot part of the nation’s character because the masterworks contained in the Uffizi (the gallery occupies the identical piazza as Palazzo Gucci, the religious dwelling of the model, which was based within the Tuscan metropolis in 1921).

The realisation had come whereas viewing Sandro Botticelli’s The Start of Venus – a piece that Demna had encountered endlessly (it is among the most replicated items of artwork in historical past), but by no means considered in actual life. ‘Standing in entrance of it, I felt overwhelmed,’ he wrote. ‘The wonder in it was unconditional; it was absolute. After I left the museum and stepped into Piazza della Signoria, the very first thing I noticed was Palazzo Gucci. In that second, I understood the place Gucci holds inside Italian tradition.’

This afternoon in Milan (25 September 2026), Demna held his second runway present for Gucci, staged in a simulacrum of a Gucci retailer meticulously constructed inside the Allianz Mi-Co occasions area. It was designed to resemble Demna’s new ‘retailer idea’ for the home, which can start with a renovated Paris retailer that opens in late October on Avenue Montaigne (additional shops around the globe will observe).

Inside it, nods to historic antiquity – stone frescoes, recreations of classical statues, units of urns – recalled his debut’s showspace; elsewhere, planes of marble, velvet banquettes and high-pile carpets signalled Gucci’s affiliation with luxurious. The designer mentioned he needed it to have ‘monumental’ high quality – a return to the times when the Gucci retailer was a real temple of want (within the late Nineteen Seventies, high-spending shoppers at New York and Los Angeles shops got a golden key to entry the unique Gucci Galleria).

‘My first 12 months at Gucci was devoted to understanding and formulating what Gucci stands for,’ Demna wrote in a letter to friends. ‘The conclusion of my analysis is that Gucci stands for being rooted within the want to belong to a extra glamorous world, and within the audacity to remake that world in your individual picture.’

The present that adopted noticed fashions traverse the present area as if haughtily purchasing for purses or footwear (certainly, actual product from current collections hung across the ‘retailer’). ‘Gucci is about luxurious that wishes to be seen – it’s concerning the rigidity between propriety and sensuality,’ he mentioned. ‘The home begins with polished bourgeois respectability, however its most memorable durations introduce eccentricity, hazard or intercourse attraction into that respectable world.’

As has turn out to be his signature – at each Gucci and Balenciaga, the place he was artistic director beforehand – the gathering started with archetypes, amongst them ‘The Rebellious Aristocrat’, ‘The Snob’ and ‘The Eccentric’, which had been right here conjured by a solid which included Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Poppy Delevingne and Alex Consani. Bourgeois ‘fur’ coats and sinuous glowing robes met body-contouring riffs on equestrian apparel, louche double-breasted tailoring and overcoats, in addition to components of prep: layered polos, tucked-in ties and sweaters worn over the shoulder all featured. Elsewhere, the horse bit grew to become a recurring motif, whether or not miniature on the collar of a shirt or the pocket of a leather-based jacket, or supersized as a fastening on the again of a jacket or slung across the waist.

‘It seems prefer it’s my first present for Gucci,’ he mentioned backstage after the present, which he described as ‘damaged bourgeoisie’ – a departure, he mentioned, from his ‘consolation zone’. ‘I can not base my complete imaginative and prescient on the Nineties – [on] snobby style glamour,’ he continued. ‘However you consider Gucci earlier than style, earlier than Tom [Ford], that is the way it was, it was all about this claimed bourgeoisie. It’s quintessentially Gucci.’

Keep tuned to wallpaper.com for extra from Milan Style Week S/S 2027.