Will Gucci’s Demna Strategy Work?

Dear BoF Community,

My initial reaction when I learnt that Demna would be appointed artistic director of Gucci was one of surprise. Although Demna’s name began to circulate as a potential candidate during Paris Fashion Week, I didn’t believe Kering would choose him to take on the challenge of restoring Gucci’s fashion credibility — and sales momentum — in a deeply troubled luxury market.

After gorging on fashion products during the pandemic, demand for luxury fashion is waning. Luxury customers are increasingly focusing their attention (and their wallets) on travel, dining and wellness. The only way to get them to pay attention to a fashion brand like Gucci is to offer something new and exciting, something that connects with the current moment and pushes fashion forward.

Is Demna the right person for the job?

Judging by the reaction from financial markets and fashion fans on social media, the answer is no. Kering shares plunged by 12 percent on Friday morning after digesting the announcement. Of the more than 9,000 people who replied to BoF’s Instagram poll linked to the breaking news on Thursday, only 10 percent of you believe that Demna is the right pick for Gucci to reassert its fashion authority. Sixty-seven percent of you think that Demna is not right, and another 23 percent are not sure, preferring to “wait and see.”

But I have a different view. Once the news began to settle in, and I had time to process the comments made by Kering’s deputy CEO Francesca Bellettini and Gucci CEO Stefano Cantino as to why they, together with François-Henri Pinault, made this choice, their logic began to make sense to me.

Kering needed a heavyweight name and could not take another gamble on an unknown quantity.

There are very few designers with the creativity, technical skills and proven ability to not just capture but shape the fashion zeitgeist.

Jonathan Anderson is tied to LVMH through their investment in his own brand and seems certain at this stage to be headed to Dior, after his farewell Loewe presentation in Paris on Monday.

Matthieu Blazy, whose Bottega Veneta shows were a highlight at recent fashion months, left the Kering group last year (a huge loss) and is readying his vision for Chanel which will debut in October.

Hedi Slimane has a proven ability to transform and build brands (Dior Homme, Saint Laurent and Celine), but his days of shaping the zeitgeist are long behind him. Likewise, Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri, an unmistakably successful creator of luxury products, does not have the requisite fashion quotient.

If Gucci wanted a fashion designer with a capital F, then Demna is a pragmatic choice. After 10 years, the once disruptive fashion aesthetic Demna brought to Balenciaga has run its natural course. Balenciaga needs a change and Demna needs a new creative challenge, and by installing the designer at Gucci, Kering is also creating opportunities to address other issues in the group, while retaining a top talent.

That Demna is already part of Kering also means there are no pesky non-compete agreements to contend with, and he can already begin to develop his ideas for Gucci while he works on his final Balenciaga couture collection which will be shown in July.

But still, the success of this strategy rests on one critical question. Can Demna himself move his creativity forward?

If Demna simply takes his Vetements and Balenciaga look and implements that at Gucci, it will not work. Indeed, we already know what that looks like after “the hacker project” that brought Demna’s Balenciaga and Alessandro Michele’s Gucci together in a vibrant mash-up of their unique looks at the height of their creative powers at those brands back in 2021.

But there is nothing that fires up a designer like Demna like the opportunity to reinvent a historic house like Gucci. I first got to know Demna through his brother Guram when they came out from the background of the designer collective at Vetements as the driving forces behind the disruptive fashion start-up which BoF was first to write about back in 2014.

Demna has a strong foundation of creative fashion education from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, and professional training at Margiela and Louis Vuitton, where he worked alongside both Marc Jacobs, and then Nicolas Ghesquière, two top designers with very different approaches to design and creativity at the world’s largest luxury fashion house.

Over the years, I have also had the opportunity to get to know Demna as a human being. I interviewed him for a BoF cover story in 2015 just after he was announced as the new creative director at Balenciaga and sat down for a rare television interview with him just as the pandemic lockdowns were lifting and he was set to debut his incredible first Balenciaga couture show in July 2021.

What I can say without a doubt is this: Demna is one of the most provocative and thoughtful people working in fashion, and is someone who is deeply committed to his work. Like all of us, he has had his ups and downs, and the Balenciaga PR crisis was a reality check for him on a number of fronts.

More recently, he has been focusing on his own personal wellness and happiness, and I think he is now emotionally ready for one of the biggest jobs in fashion. If there is anyone in fashion who is up for this challenge, it’s Demna. Now we just have to wait and see if he can find it in himself to deliver the goods. I am really excited to see what he does.

We have a lot more coverage on all the news in fashion from the week gone by, including a special breaking news podcast episode with Tim Blanks digesting this week’s big news from Gucci and Versace, in addition to our always popular, must-listen seasonal episode reviewing the fashion season that was. There is also our take on the Top 10 Shows of the Season, a report on the state of the Pat McGrath Labs business and an in-depth case study on how to succeed in China’s new reality.

I hope you will find the time to listen, read and learn about this exciting time in fashion.

Imran Amed, Founder and Editor-in-Chief

Here are my other top picks from our analysis on fashion, luxury and beauty:

1. Top 10 Shows of the Season. Duran Lantink leads BoF’s list of best shows from the Autumn/Winter 2025 season.

2. The BoF Podcast | Tim Blanks and Imran Amed Reflect on Autumn/Winter 2025. BoF editor-at-large Tim Blanks and Imran Amed, BoF founder and editor-in-chief look back at the key moments of fashion month, from Haider Ackermann’s debut at Tom Ford to Sarah Burton’s first collection for Givenchy.

3. The BoF Podcast | Demna Takes Gucci, Versace’s New Chapter Begins. As Demna is set to become artistic director of Gucci, and Donatella Versace passes the baton to Dario Vitale after nearly three decades at the creative helm of Versace, the fashion industry is bracing for much-needed creative transformation. BoF founder and editor-in-chief Imran Amed and editor-at-large Tim Blanks unpack what this means for the wider industry.

4. What Happened to Pat McGrath Labs? The brand founded by the legendary makeup artist nearly a decade ago is struggling. Once valued at over $1 billion, the line is worth a fraction of that today. Multiple rounds of layoffs, and signs of behind-the-scenes turmoil raise questions about what went wrong and how the business can get back on track.

5. Case Study | The Playbook for Succeeding in China’s New Reality. Once fashion’s most reliable growth engine, the Chinese market is shifting as consumer spending cools and shoppers with more choice than ever gravitate toward savvy domestic brands. Opportunities for international players are still plentiful, but the old formula for succeeding in China is no longer relevant. Brands need a new game plan to stand out.

6. Brands That Dominated the Social Conversation During Milan Fashion Week. DSquared2, Moschino and Versace led the user-generated conversation on social media during Milan Fashion Week according to BoF Insights’ new social intelligence tool PULSE, powered by Quilt.AI.

This Weekend on The BoF Podcast

Demna’s move to Gucci, announced after weeks of feverish speculation, stunned industry observers and sent shockwaves through financial markets, with Kering shares dropping sharply by more than 12 percent. While some hail this as an opportunity for Demna to reinvent Gucci through his distinctive cultural lens, others question his ability to break free from his Balenciaga legacy. BoF founder and editor-in-chief Imran Amed posits, “The really big question here is, can Demna do something different?”

Meanwhile, Donatella Versace’s transition from chief creative officer to chief brand ambassador marks the end of a storied era and the beginning of a new chapter under Dario Vitale. Highlighting Donatella’s cultural impact, BoF editor-at-large Tim Blanks notes, “Versace was one of the few names that registered with people who didn’t know anything about fashion.”

Fresh off a stellar tenure at Miu Miu, where he helped to ignite record growth, Vitale faces the ambitious task of balancing Versace’s iconic legacy with a renewed contemporary relevance. With whispers of potential acquisition by Prada Group swirling, Versace stands at the precipice of transformation.

This season, all eyes were on the debuts of Haider Ackermann at Tom Ford and Sarah Burton at Givenchy. Meanwhile, designs at Alaïa and Valentino continued to push boundaries with daring silhouettes that either stood away from the body or felt purposely incomplete.

Behind the new faces and unconventional shapes was a deeper exploration of eroticism. From Ackermann’s sensual glamour at Tom Ford to what Tim Blanks calls the “quiet eroticism” of Burton’s Givenchy, designers seemed united by a playful fascination with the body — and a desire to subtly challenge its boundaries.

“Fashion is a very fetishistic art form,” says Tim Blanks, BoF’s editor-at-large. “It has its fixations on the body and the way it fetishizes objects, but fashion is about fetishizing beauty and ugliness. A lot of these different things have been coming up over the last few years.”

Following the conclusion of the Autumn/Winter 2025 shows, Blanks sits down with BoF founder and editor-in-chief Imran Amed to discuss the highlights of fashion month.