Demna's Gucci Cruise Was Hardcore, Euphoric, Unmistakably Gucci

A Gucci Cruise 2027 show shut down Times Square and featured 63 models walking on blackened concrete. The collection was framed as GucciCore, a core attribute of Gucci expressed as “Gucci feeling” rather than only recognizable Gucci looks. The aim was to recalibrate Gucci into an adjective and sensibility tied to dressed-up Italian glamour, wry humor, and an euphoric mood. Advertising across Times Square screens created a multi-sensory brand universe before the show, selling a mix of real and fake products, including high jewelry, pet accessories, and luxury water. The event functioned as both a demonstration of power and a marketing exercise, extending brand equity to large crowds.

"For his second Gucci show - second show, fourth collection, first stab at the touring big-top circus of Cruise, which has evolved from simply showing a selling collection into a multi-sensory, immersive brand exercise for the labels that indulge in such power play - Demna went big. Bigger. Maybe biggest. He shut down Times Square, one of the busiest thoroughfares on the planet, trudged by a quarter of a million people on a quiet day. Instead, he had just 63 models walk across its blackened concrete slabs, wearing his new Cruise 2027 collection."

"Demna called it GucciCore. What does that mean? In popular subcultural parlance - Gorpcore, Cottagecore and the like - it defines the most central, the most fundamental attribute of a particular thing. "Unmistakably Gucci" was Demna's own description of his aim in designing this show. But he has also sought to recalibrate Gucci as a word that's more than just a noun - it's about a brand as adjective, Gucci as a sensibility. Not so much unmistakable in Gucci look, as unmistakable in Gucci feeling."

"Which, in Demna's mind, seems to be synonymous with an Italian breed of dressed-up glamour, a wry sense of humour, a general mood not of the dystopian but of the euphoric. That was also the justification for an array of advertising for a universe of Gucci product - most fake, some real - that blasted across the Times Square screens before the show as distracting entertainment, selling everything from high jewellery (very real), to pet accessories (real stuff, on AI mutts), to luxurious water (faux, but believable)."

"It was also a deep plunge into brand equity, not only for a few hundred showgoers but the thousands gathered around to watch the modern fashion spectacle. As a demonstration of power - and a marketing exercise - it was hardcore."

Read at AnOther