Gucci Cruise ‘27: Demna Sells Anti-Consumption in Times Square

If you are Demna, equipped with the unfathomable horse of resources that comes with being a creative director of Gucci, where would you host a show to criticise overstimulation and overconsumption? At the heart of capitalism, of course! And what better place there is for the purpose, than the Times Square in New York? That too, in the peak hours of a Saturday night?

Only a brand of the stature of Gucci could pull off something like this, because not only did they control traffic out of the square, the Italian fashion house also went as far as utilising every ad screen (they're called spectaculars) for the runway.

And they made good use of these. The show started with a screening of a plethora of advertisements of Gucci properties, the kind you'd see in cinema halls: some like Gucci Underwear and Gucci High Jewellery which actually exist, and others a dystopian view of what could be: think Gucci Pet, or worse Gucci Water and Gucci Life.

So this is where the night saw the likes of Mariah Carey, Kim Kardashian, Lindsay Lohan, Shawn Mendes at the star-studded front row of Gucci’s first cruise collection display under Demna – which, by the way, wasn't much of a cruise collection at all.

Instead, the Georgian designer sent down models in “a core wardrobe of staple pieces that form the foundation of the House’s stylistic language”.

In what he's named “GucciCore” (I wonder what Pinterest has to say to that), Demna dresses his models as the ever-busy New Yorkers you'd come across in daily life. It ties back to the concept of archetypes he has been toying with since his La Famiglia collection: high society ladies making their way to their lunch reservations, the office-going corporate man on his way to catch the subway, the boss babes going straight to the party after work, the academic walking down the road with books in hand, people running errands to and from the bodega in their most comfortable, no-f****s-given clothes… everyone's just too busy for you to disturb them.

There's a bright red peacoat made from the same English wool used to make coats for the English Royal Guard. A cropped leather jacket lets the paisley-print of the shirt beneath show just enough before the pencil skirt starts. One model, drowning with two bags on one shoulder, holds a yoga mat carrier in another hand. Cell phones and gloves are held out in nonchalant disinterest. Huge flower bouquets become colourful accesories to a collection that's predominantly black. A ridiculous number of faux fur coats (two of which are delightfully printed with the house’s flora motif on the underside) and trenches tower over the looks.

The Gucci Web becomes a single strip of green and red bandeau top styled on men: in one look, it is a belt holding an oversized black shirt, in another it wraps across the chest itself (they're finally selling the gymbros a bra). Former football quarterback Tom Brady can't help but smile smugly as he walks down in an all-leather ensemble.

If Primavera had the tightest fits you could think of, GucciCore keeps the logo belt and goes for the most comfortable oversized pants. Speaking of oversized, they only feature in menswear: the most that womenswear gets in bottomwear, should they have anything at all, is straight cuts and flared pants (not to forget the pointed toes in practically every shoe).

You can still feel every bit of the Tom Ford sexiness that dominated the previous collection. Sure the signatures that you associate with Gucci are there, flowing down in the canary yellow printed dress that a brunette Paris Hilton wears along with the flora-printed fur coat mentioned before. Even better is the white flora printed overcoat an elderly society woman wears to a leisurely stroll in the park. There's also a surprising touch of Rick Owens in two menswear looks with inflated wrap tops. But the Demna-isms overpower them all, to the point that you wonder sometimes it you're watching a Balenciaga show. This is especially strong in the feathered gown Cindy Crawford wears as the closing look.

Of course, Demna is own brand now, regardless of where he works, and appealing to his signatures only brings in more of his fandom to Gucci (a comment I read online went as far as calling him the modern anthropologist). And sure, there has been a lot of discourse surrounding him and his ways of finding faults with the capitalist world while benefitting from it throughout his career. But ultimately, it's Demna who has the last word: his gimmicks go viral just as planned, and Balenciaga’s revenue went up from just around $350 million to 2 billion in less than ten years of his appointment.

But the Gucci Cruise 27 collection has very few such gimmicks. You could say he doesn't need the gimmicks to keep Gucci in the cultural conversation like he did with Balenciaga. Instead, this is a collection that was purely made to sell and merchandise. GucciCore introduces a limited edition collection of accessories, shoes, jewellery and handbags that will be up for sale only in the five Gucci store across New York and across e-commerce sites in the United States only, as an ode to New York.

And why so much for New York, you ask? After all, this was where the Gucci opened their first store outside Italy in 1953. So if you're homaging the city, why not shut down it's biggest square for the tribute?

Check out all the looks from Gucci Cruise '27 here: