The Gucci show on Saturday was Demna’s Milan Fashion Week debut, and I’ve read varying things about it — GQ fawned, and Harper’s Bazaar basically did too, but it didn’t pass the eyeball test to me. Demna was quoted by both as saying he wanted to return Gucci to “cultural relevancy,” which… sure, it’s slumped since Alessandro Michele, but it’s never been HURTING for relevancy. Harper’s also said Demna “doesn’t provoke for the sake of provoking” and that is a load of horseshit as far as I’m concerned, based on the entirety of his Balenciaga tenure — the runway shows with bespoke foul odors and fake snow, the idiotic shoes that would end up in stores, and even that ad campaign that got him briefly put in fashion jail.
It’s apt that Kate Moss closed the show, given that she was the face of the waif era of modeling, and Demna is leaning heavily into tight, skinny cuts for very specific body types, which everyone is calling “sex appeal” but which might also be a boon to the yeast infection industry. All of this makes me SO GLAD I do not have to try and cover fashion from a poncey perspective and that I’m not beholden to advertisers and relationships, and can just be like, “A lot of this is boring and/or ugly!!!” God bless independent media.
