In one of the most significant fashion shockers in recent history, Demna—Balenciaga’s radical creative dynamo—is going to Gucci.
“I am truly excited to join the Gucci family,” said Demna in a statement. “It is an honor to contribute to a House that I deeply respect and have long admired.”
Demna will show his final Balenciaga couture collection in July before starting at Gucci. The announcement caps weeks of fevered speculation over the future of Italy’s largest luxury house, which has been on a high-stakes hunt for a new designer to reverse falling sales since parting ways with Sabato De Sarno in February.
Ultimately, Kering—the parent company of both brands—went with the rainmaker in their midst. In the press release, Kering chairman and CEO François-Henri Pinault hailed Demna’s success at Balenciaga, which he joined in 2015. “His creative power is exactly what Gucci needs,” Pinault said. When Demna started, Balenciaga sales hovered around $350 million. By 2022, sales hit $2 billion.
Still, Demna is an undeniably gutsy pick for the primo job. (In 2022, Gucci’s revenues exceeded $10 billion.) If Gucci is synonymous with the horsebit loafer, Demna’s Balenciaga brings to mind sneakers so gigantic they would make Shaq’s feet look puny. Over the past decade he has turned clothing upside-down and inside-out every which way, and his aesthetic is much more Berlin club than Italian bourgeois. Demna’s official Gucci announcement portrait is a selfie, pursed lips and all.
But Demna is also one of only a few designers working today who can legitimately be described as a genius. The Georgia native is a truly original thinker who can spark widespread conversation while also making totally unique clothes that people actually want to wear. His work—whether artfully-shaped couture tuxedos or artisanally-distressed Erewhon sweatpants—thrums with a zeitgeisty energy that has a way of permeating broader pop culture.
As Demna told GQ last year, “I’m just so excited about the right now. Always. People often think of fashion like, oh, fashion has to predict what’s going to be. No, fashion has to be about right now. If you don’t connect to that, then it becomes decorative.”
Said Gucci CEO Stefano Cantino in the statement, “I have always admired Demna’s creative approach, that is both unique and powerful. His ability to honor the iconic legacy of a brand while embracing a modern sensibility is extraordinary.”
There is plenty of time to speculate over how Demna will rethink Gucci. You might remember the time then-Gucci designer Alessandro Michele “hacked” Balenciaga, a watershed moment in the collabo-sphere that revealed what Demna’s exaggerated hourglass silhouette would look like in the Gucci-verse.
But Demna might have given us a clearer hint on Sunday evening in Paris, where the curtain-rising look on the Balenciaga runway was a simple black suit. There was no exaggerated padding or ersatz sleeves, just precisely-fitting tailoring that still somehow embodied his hardcore sensibility. It was a new dimension to Demna’s signature high fashion edge.
Added Demna in the release: “I look forward to writing together with Stefano and the whole team a new chapter of Gucci’s amazing story.”
