Gucci has unveiled The Store Show in Milan, Italy, the first collection in which Creative Director Demna presents his complete personal vision for the House. Staged as a retail environment, the show offers a glimpse of his vision for the Gucci store of the future.
For Demna, the concept of The Store Show goes beyond the physical store. After spending his first year at Gucci understanding what the House represents, he describes its identity as “being rooted in a desire to belong to a more glamorous world, and in the audacity to remake that world in your own image”. Gucci, he says, is “about luxury that wants to be seen” and “the tension between propriety and sensuality”.
That tension is reflected in the collection’s three personalities: “The Rebellious Aristocrat”, “The Snob”, and “The Eccentric”. Menswear and womenswear unfold in succession as two collections within a single show, mirroring the way the lines are offered in store.
Menswear begins with cropped trousers and loafers worn without socks, establishing a quintessentially Italian attitude before moving into sharp, fitted tailoring with pagoda shoulders and stonewashed textiles. Demna’s Gucci silhouette emerges through cropped, puff-shaped outerwear worn over slender, slouchy denim in precious and authentic fabrics.
Womenswear opens with bourgeois dress codes tinged with an equestrian sensibility, followed by sharply tailored pantsuits and skirt suits with a metropolitan edge. Severe pagoda-shouldered garments lead into puff-shaped jackets styled with masculine shirting and rugby tops, alongside pleated A-line skirts in Scottish tartans, leather, and checked wool.
The House’s equestrian identity is woven throughout the collection, with oversized and miniature Horsebits punctuating the looks. The 3X cummerbund belt cinches “New Romantic” ensembles of sharp-shouldered blouses, drainpipe trousers, and layered jewellery, while delicate lingerie introduces a more nocturnal mood beneath voluminous shearling. The collection culminates in fluid eveningwear, including a slinky “gravity” gown secured by a hanging teardrop weight.
Accessories reinforce the balance between Gucci’s heritage and Demna’s new direction. A sleek “uptown” Horsebit tote is joined by bamboo-handled handbags, slouchy messengers, the 3X party bag, and a bamboo-shaped mini duffle. Meanwhile, the GG Marmont and Ophidia reaffirm the presence of established House signatures.
Footwear ranges from a modernised Gucci loafer with a driver sole and angular toe to an elegant slipper with overlong tassels, an angular metal-heeled stiletto, and an equestrian knee-high heeled boot embellished with monogrammed stirrups.
But the thinking behind The Store Show reaches beyond the clothes. Demna traces the idea of Gucci back to The Savoy hotel in London, describing it as a meeting place for aristocrats, artists, creatives, and people from entirely different worlds. He wants Gucci to embody that same spirit today: a place where people who might appear to have nothing in common can meet, connect, and inspire one another.
This idea of Gucci as a meeting point is central to Demna’s understanding of the House. He sees its history as being carried not only by recognisable design codes, but by “personalities, identities, and lifestyles”, moving between aristocracy and pop culture, Florence and Hollywood, heritage and mass desire, and belonging and rebellion.
The Store Show therefore presents Gucci as more than a collection: it is Demna’s vision of the House as a space of possibility, where its heritage can be remade through different personalities, identities, and ways of dressing – and where “anyone can become whoever they choose to be”.
