For some, he will be Gucci’s savior. For others, the destroyer of a brand so desperately in need of fresh lifeblood. Yes, we’re talking about Demna. The Georgian creative who has just unveiled his first official collection — sending, let’s be honest, a very clear message. Gucci’s audacity is back: the boldness of a house driven more by instinct than diplomacy, by risk rather than restraint. And, there’s no point denying it, that is precisely what many did not want to see. It is easy to call for novelty when speaking about a brand that carries so many meanings depending on who is looking at it. It is also unfair to expect a safe, well-behaved exercise. Demna has not arrived to reassure anyone. He has come to bring Gucci back to its productive clash.

Bringing Gucci back to its productive clash

That is the underlying question. However much one may wish to draw from the house’s codes, its extraordinary craftsmanship, the artisans who made it great, there is a clear before and after in Gucci’s cultural imagination. And that shift was defined by Tom Ford — whom Demna has cited as an inspiration, at least in intention. Lush. Divisive. There are at least two useful — though not essential — ways to read the recently unveiled Fall/Winter 2026 collection. The first is purely about product and, let’s admit it, we rather liked it. If only for the sheer amount of leather on the runway. It had presence. Character. Almost like a study in sculpting the body. Through leather, for instance, Demna accentuated every muscle of a model’s physique. Or with leather jackets worn directly on bare skin. Then there is the stylistic dimension.

Living in contradiction

What idea lies behind it? More accurately, ideas — plural. Because Demna does not construct a linear narrative; he constructs a system of tensions. And Gucci, spoiler alert, needs to live in tension. Fall/Winter 2026 is precisely that: a magnetic field in which the poles never neutralize each other. They repel, confront, overlap without ever fully aligning. This is where the letter accompanying the collection becomes crucial. When he writes that fashion and heritage “are not opposites but lovers,” he is stating that Gucci exists only within contradiction. Not in purity, not in strict loyalty to its codes and not in nostalgia.

Gucci lives in productive clash. This first collection is built as a dialogue between archetypes — between impulses rather than categories. Between what Gucci has been and what it might become, without ever definitively choosing a side. The new speaks to the old, but contaminates it, reactivates it, throws it back into circulation. It carries with it family history and exaggeration. Sex returns as language rather than ornament. It carries that unresolved tension that has always run through Gucci — and that Demna has no intention of taming. Because a moderate Gucci cannot exist. Nor can a purist Gucci. So does it make sense to talk only about horsebits, double Gs, or skin-tight sequins? One question remains: amid all this creative energy, what does the final customer actually need?