Gucci’s Dramatic Rebirth: Demna’s “La Famiglia” Redefines the House’s DNA
When Gucci’s official feed cleared to blank white earlier this month, the fashion world braced itself. No archive. No countdown. Just silence. Then — La Famiglia landed: 37 portraits, 37 personas, and a new creative language for Gucci under Demna. It wasn’t a whisper; it was a declaration.
In one sweeping move, Demna erased the old, forced us to lean in, and made Gucci’s new narrative impossible to ignore.
Rather than teeing up a runway, Demna chose persona: framed portraits by Catherine Opie, each image carrying a nameplate (“La Diva,” “Ragazza,” “L’Influencer,” “Bastardo”) and visually constructed in ornate frames that evoke 17th- and 18th-century European portraiture.
These frames are not decorative afterthoughts — they anchor the campaign’s mythos. Framing experts note that the choice of gilded, blackened, silvered, or digitally altered frames carries cultural memory — emblems of power, lineage, and identity.
It’s as if each persona is a fictional heir in a Gucci dynasty, invited to exist within a “family album” built on fantasy, fashion, and narrative.
Demna’s La Famiglia doesn’t just dress people — it gives them voices. The campaign teases a world in which to wear a jacket is to embody an idea.
The collection itself hinges on references that straddle Gucci’s heritage and Demna’s signature aesthetic: fur outerwear, sequined gowns, leather co-ords, reimagined Bamboo 1947 bags, updated GG monograms, and Horsebit loafers resurfacing as narrative anchors.
Demna’s tailoring leans both classic and provocative. Suits break free, shirt fronts plunge, transparencies don’t duck behind restraint. He borrows from Gucci’s Tom Ford era, from Michele’s romantic archive, and flips them through his own lens.
This collection isn’t about cautious heritage — it’s about a confident reimagination.
Rather than a traditional fashion show, Demna premiered The Tiger, a thirty-minute short film co-directed by Spike Jonze and Halina Reijn, casting Demi Moore as matriarch Barbara Gucci and Elliot Page as her conflicted heir.
Set as a birthday dinner turned psychological labyrinth, the film weaves Gucci myth, identity, and the burden of perfection. Demna spoke of the message: “We try to be perfect — perfect son, perfect designer, perfect friend — but it’s impossible to get there.”
In staging the campaign this way, Demna signals that Gucci is not merely selling clothes: it’s selling a worldview, one that spans cinema, myth, and spectacle. The event was held in Milan’s Palazzo Mezzanotte and attended by top industry figures.
The decision to wipe Gucci’s archive, drop the lookbook a day ahead, and launch La Famiglia via Instagram channels is classic Demna disruption. It upends expectation and demands attention.
He is entering Gucci at a moment of acute financial pressure: the brand’s sales were down about 25 % in Q2 2025. Kering and Gucci are banking on Demna’s ability to recapture cultural momentum.
This is not just a creative reboot. It is a commercial gambit, a signal to insiders and consumers alike — Gucci is alive, and Gucci wants to be seen again.
Demna’s language has always flirted with irony — the Gucci version is no different. The personas, the excess, the staging: they all come with that wink of satire.
Yet the sparkle is real. The furs, the drapery, the jewelry: these are objects of beauty, not pastiche. Demna is walking a fine line between critique and celebration, and the tension is what makes La Famiglia pulse.
In this campaign, Gucci is both spectacle and mirror — asking us to see its myth and locate ourselves within it.
With La Famiglia, Demna has done more than reset Gucci’s visuals — he has reshaped its narrative. Haunted by archive, invested in myth, and wired for spectacle, this debut stakes a claim: Gucci under Demna will not be safe or quiet. It will be theatrical, layered, identity-driven, and unambiguously ambitious.
Because when Demna takes the helm, the stage resets — and Gucci is ready to own the spotlight again.
