How to tell a story like Demna: Gucci AW26

Demna’s debut at Gucci has been highly anticipated, both in the real world, and in my head. Conscious of the particularly interesting reshuffling of Michele to Valentino, Demna to Gucci and Piccioli to Balenciaga, I was invested in his plans to pull the house apart. During his tenure at Balenciaga, it was a brawl every time Demna released a collection. As my fashion friends and I would gather to give our two cents on whatever spectacle the CD delivered, it was a consistent “Hear me out”, season after season. I went from being a Demna apologist to a fan. When asked why I was so quick and persistent to defend him, despite all his faults (of which there are a few), I would say: “Because he’s doing something different”.

I was heartbreakingly NOT in Milan for the debut this season (I would have been there, of course, but I had to wash my hair that day), so instead we set up the livestream up on my humble MacBook Air, and let the show begin. The first look immediately set the tone of the show, as it should. Sharone Stone in Basic Instinct. Psychopathy, seduction, desire. As the cast descended on a travertine axis, balanced on a near-holy white light cutting through the Palazzo della Scintille’s darkness, Demna told us a story on the runway. Each model was a character, they served a purpose, and through them, Demna told us exactly what we’ve been waiting to be told. Let’s start from the beginning.

I would be remiss to ignore the clear parallels between this show and Tom Ford’s Era at Gucci. Specifically AW96 – 30 years ago. As previously discussed on Dazed MENA, we’re living in an age of archive worship. Fashion cannot move forward without looking over its shoulder. If a collection is not explicitly bowing to a beloved former creative director, it is labelled disrespectful. If it does not replicate a golden era, it is deemed a betrayal.

Demna knows this. He knows the people want “Tom Ford era Gucci”. He did not simply reference it. He staged its ghost. Demna is no stranger to internet discourse; the man is online. He has EsdeeKid attend the show, and Fakemink and Nettspend walk the runway. He’s tapped in. He’s aware of the people’s yearning for “Tom Ford Era Gucci”. He knows the irresistible pull of the 90’s momento mori, high-class sleaze transmuted into dirty luxury rap today. Rather than caving, he haunts us instead, resurrecting corpses of the era. The silhouettes were there, but the energy was off. Sluggish. Hungover. A little unwell. This was not the high-octane, slick-back fantasy of the 90s we romanticise. It felt as though we were in a video game like GTA. The vapid and drowsy.

The duality of Gucci is that you’ll see it on your favourite it girl, looking chic as ever, pinned to someone’s aspirational moodboard, and you’ll see it slung around a roadman’s chest, the green and red stripes donned like a badge of honour, and class. Demna revelled in this, sending Fakemink down the runway in something that truly felt like he just showed up in, which is genius. In this story, he’s setting out the characters in the world of Gucci, the clients, and there’s room for all of it. Demna isn’t here to alienate the street; bootlegging is a sign of approval, it’s validation, it’s cool factor.

In this world, the Gucci partygirl is buying her party favours from the man with the monogram bumbag.

The looksmaxxing Chad, in his leathertight shirt (so you can see how much he’s been benching), paired with his skinny jeans (the fruits of his legday labour must be shown), will mogg him and steal partygirl away.

Party girl’s mother, chic as ever, has taken her valium and a glass of Chardonnay and is ready to retire (she has no idea her daughter is at the club).

Demna is playing with his multifaceted new clientele and using their archetypes to fuel this story. So who is the new Gucci girl? A smudged eyeliner vixen who rolls out of bed straight to the club with her micro purse filled with nothing but a pack of vogues and one lipliner? Is there a new Gucci girl? Perhaps it’s the same clientele that’s been there all along

This could just be me (in fact, it probably is, I have a very active imagination and a penchant for overreaching), but all I could picture was the world in which American Psycho is set. The book was a dissection of 90s capitalist narcissism. Everyone looked the same. Spoke the same. Desired the same restaurants, the same women, the same markers of status. Identity was costume while wealth was performance.

The glamour was there, but it was deliberately monotonous. Seduction without vitality. Beauty without pulse. The models moved like they were exhausted by their own desirability. Glam zombies who were vaguely vacant. As if they had been up for three days scrolling and could not quite remember what they were meant to want. In American Psycho, the horror is not just the violence. It is the interchangeability. The way everyone blends into the same blur of ambition and appetite. Here, the archetypes felt just as flattened. The party girl. The looksmaxxing gym disciple. The chic mother on Valium. The roadman with the monogram. Hyper-specific, yet eerily cloned. Meme before person.

What that book did to the 90s, this show feels like it is doing to now. Not celebrating it. Not condemning it outright. Just observing it with a steady, almost clinical gaze. We are overstimulated and under-feeling. We consume aesthetics faster than we metabolise them. We perform identity before we form it.

And if Demna is telling a story, as I suspect he is, then this feels like the first act. The introduction of the characters. The establishment of tone. The world-building before the rupture. In American Psycho, the surface fractures slowly. The mask slips incrementally. If this is Demna’s narrative arc at Gucci, then this was the opening scene.