Gucci With Demna: The Biggest Test in Italian Luxury This Year
On September 25, 2026, at 2:00 p.m., Gucci shows in Milan. It will be Demna's second women's ready-to-wear collection the collection the man Kering chose to save its most important brand must now consolidate into a coherent project, after two years of crisis. No show this season carries a comparable weight.
THE COLLAPSE AND THE CHOICE
The numbers are unambiguous. In 2025, Gucci's revenues fell 22%, dropping to €5.99 billion from €7.65 billion the previous year. Kering the group that controls Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, and others closed the year with revenues of €14.7 billion, -13%. For a group in which Gucci represents 41% of total revenue, a decline of that magnitude is not a market fluctuation. It is a structural crisis. In February 2026, Sabato De Sarno left. The official statement spoke of a "consensual decision." In an industry that knows its own mechanics, the -22% had already said everything. Kering's response was the most ambitious and most risky move possible: they called Demna.
WHO DEMNA IS AND WHAT HE DID AT BALENCIAGA
Demna Gvasalia took creative control of Balenciaga in 2015. What he did in the decade that followed is one of the most analyzed case studies in recent luxury history: he transformed a couture house into a cultural phenomenon, made ugly shoes desirable, and turned irony about fashion into a product that fashion itself bought at very high prices. The language he built is specific and recognizable: deconstruction of form, critique embedded in the object, ugliness as a deliberate aesthetic category. It is a language that presupposes an audience capable of critical distance an audience that understands the ugliness is a quotation, not an error. That language generated extraordinary commercial results for Balenciaga. It also, inevitably, raised the question of how long an aesthetic built on provocation can sustain growth before exhausting itself.
THE GUCCI PROBLEM
Gucci is a different object from Balenciaga in almost every relevant sense.
Balenciaga was a niche house when Demna arrived it had a strong couture identity, an intellectual history, a specialist audience. His task was to expand that identity toward the mass market without destroying it. Gucci is already, and has been for decades, one of the most recognizable brands in the world. Its archive is simultaneously Italian, global, aspirational, pop, and luxury. It must appeal to a Chinese customer buying their first luxury bag, a Milanese buyer who knows the house's history, an American influencer seeking the logo, a European editor who wants the anti-logo.
It must work for all these audiences simultaneously, at volumes Balenciaga has never had to manage.
The question September will answer is not whether Demna is capable. The question is whether his language built on fashion's internal critique, on irony as a core value can translate into a brand that must sell millions of units across hundreds of markets.
THE EARLY SIGNALS
The first half of 2026 showed stabilization: Kering +1% on a comparable basis, Gucci -2% but better than market expectations. Kering's stock responded positively. Analysts spoke of a "turning point."
But a -2% is still a decline. And Demna's first women's collection SS26, shown last September divided opinion sharply: widespread conceptual appreciation from critics, open questions about commercial accessibility. The second collection is the moment when a designer stops making a first impression and begins building a world. It is the moment when the market decides whether it believes in the project or was simply waiting to see.
WHAT TO WATCH ON SEPTEMBER 25
Three signals to observe in the September 25 show:
The product. The pieces Gucci shows become the buyer orders for the season. If the collection produces garments and accessories that stores want to buy, the commercial recovery is real. If it produces only images for the press, the -2% will become something worse.
The front row. Who sits in the front row at a Gucci show says more than any press release: VIP clients, key magazine creative directors, commercially relevant influencers. The front row composition signals how much confidence the brand has in its own direction.
The narrative after. How Demna talks about the collection in the press conference. Whether he uses the language of critique or the language of seduction. Whether he speaks to those who want to understand or those who want to desire. The answers to these three questions will tell us whether Gucci is returning or still searching for the road. Gucci shows Friday, September 25 at 2:00 p.m. Weshmind will publish its analytical review the same evening.
