The Great Gucci Reset is here. On Wednesday, the Italian fashion house called Demna, the mononem designer who transformed Balenciaga from a niche luxury home into one of the most provocative and boundary-breaking brands of the past decade, named it as the new artistic director. He will be in charge of women's clothing, men's clothing and accessories.
Gucci and Balenciaga are owned by Kering, a French conglomerate that owns St. Laurent, McQueen, Brioni and Bottega Veneta. No new designers for Balenciaga have been announced.
“Gucci stands for Fashion Authority,” said Stefano Cantino, Gucci's chief executive. “This is what we want to take home.”
Demna will be the first “star” designer to prove in Gucci's 104-year history. This appears to acknowledge the crisis they have experienced over the past two years after an obvious attempt to re-attack itself as a timeless luxury brand. Revenues plummeted 23% in 2024, while Kering stock prices have risen more than half since 2023.
The appointment adds more confusion to the already volatile fashion world where record numbers of fashion companies changed their design heads last year. Only half of Kering's brands have new designers in 2025.
“We were looking for a strong, opinionated designer,” Cantino said. “Dem is one of the few,” Cantino said, not only brings design skills but design skills to him. “Understanding modern culture, today's luxury, and a deeper understanding of the new generation.”
He also brings specific knowledge of Gucci. In 2021, then Gucci designers Demna and Alessandro Michele “hacked” each other's brands to reinterpret the most recognizable designs, with Demna replacing Gucci's famous double GS with a classic logo canvas accessory. And he is confident of Kaeling's CEO François Henry Pineau.
When Pineau named Georgia-born Demna Gvasalia (who lost her last name in 2021), he dropped his last name to Balenciaga in 2015, but the world of fashion was shocked.
Demna, now 43, received her master's degree from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium, and trained in the studios of Martin Marguilla and Louis Vuitton, but he made his name on Vetements, a cult label created in 2014. (Demna left the hearing in 2019.)
Nevertheless, over the decade of Demna in Balenciaga, revenues have increased from an estimated $390 million to nearly $2 billion, challenging the meaning of luxury, value and reliability in the process.
He took Crocs, IKEA totes and even garbage bags and placed them on the pedestal. He began trending monster sneakers almost on his own. He placed all ages, genders and beauty on the runway, creating immersive apocalyptic experiences that act as just as fashion as fashion. He was scandalized and excited about equality.
He worked with The Simpsons to create a Balenciaga video game and joined the Met with Kim Kardashian. He also resumed the couture line and did not lose sight of the purity of the silhouette that characterised the work of Balenciaga's name designer Cristobal Balenciaga.
Balenciaga's momentum suddenly stopped in 2023. This has caused a falsely judged holiday advertising campaign to raise online pedophilia allegations, casting a shadow over the brand's deep friendship with Demna and Ye following Ye's anti-Semitic rant. The cancellation was looming, but Balenciaga eventually distanced himself from the controversy and then recovered some of its strength. In January, Demna became Chevalier des Arts des Letress, recognising French contributions to fashion. He was wearing a T-shirt.
Demna's final Balenciaga show, held in Paris on March 9th, was a kind of career retrospective, reminding him of what he brought to the house. After the show he joked to reporters that the reason he was wearing the suit for the first time was because he was Demna 2.0.
Gucci news suggests that it was less of a joke than it looked back then.
“Demna's contribution to the success of the industry, Balenciaga and the group has been incredible,” François Henri Pineau said in a news release. “His creativity is exactly what Gucci needs.”
Kering's Deputy Chief Executive Francesca Bellettini called him the “perfect catalyst.”
Demna replaces designer Sabato de Sarno, who worked behind the scenes at Valentino before being charged with Gucci reset after seven years of Alessandro Michele's Mashpie Maximalism. (Mr. Michele was similarly second before rising to his position, working for former Gucci designer Frida Giannii.) While the Michele era was in favor of an annual income of around 10 billion euros, the taste began to move away from his trademark eccentricity, and he thought Gucci management was an answer.
It turned out to be wrong. Instead of positioning the brand as a slightly hip equivalent to Hermes, Derno's gorgeous minimalism seemed merely reduced. (You can see that one Hermes is enough.) Demna's job is to change everything, but it also needs to overcome the challenges of Gucci as well as the slowing down of the wider luxury industry.
There's a charm within it, Cantino said.
According to Dem, Cantino said, “The idea of proof that you can succeed with Gucci, do something different than Balenciaga and show a different perspective is very exciting.”
Gucci did not confirm when Dem showed his first collection, but he will begin in early July after the final Balenciaga couture show. (Gucci is not a couture house.) He divides his time between his Swiss home and his Gucci headquarters in Milan.
