Gucci Autumn/Winter 2026 has been boasted as a Tom Ford-ian renaissance, a return to the eroticism of the ‘90s, or even a prelude to a new Gucci era. Almost as if the freshly appointed creative director, Demna Gvasalia – the Georgian designer hailed as the saviour of Kering’s most coveted label – had created such an earth-shattering vision to be considered a new genesis in the book of Gucci’s history.
Unfortunately, the brand’s annals will remain temporarily closed, as the collection, which was showcased in Milan at Palazzo delle Scintille – the Palace of the Sparks – failed to shine.
A plethora of monochrome outfits swallowed the runway: skintight dresses on the Italian version of the ‘ladies who lunch’, with a new rendition of the Bamboo Bag dangling from their forearms. Their heel-clacking walk was alternated with the sculptured torsos and the vacant stare of Adonis-looking ‘party boys’ in glossy black t-shirts and logoed belts, straight out of an A-list club—where nobody wants to actually go.
During a season in which skinny jeans seem to have made their comeback, Gucci is but the icing on the cake, with its vermillion iterations, the very colour of unspoken rage, like the one seen in Amelia Grey’s maybe too smoky eyes, paired with a plain white t-shirt and black leggings, ready to conquer the front row of a reformer Pilates lesson. Waist-bags and baseball caps covered with the double-GG pattern seemed to be all the rage, with the occasional appearance of fur-lined slippers.
Sequins made their appearance throughout, both on Emily Ratajkowski’s mirrorball outfit and on Gabriette’s translucent dress, which framed her black underwear, as she strutted down the runway in perilously high pumps, the epitome of early 2000’s party culture or just an unnecessarily tawdry ensemble?
The evening category of the show, which led to its closure, was the exemplification of the concept “stick to the status quo”, with Alex Consani interpreting a golden Lady Liberty and Kate Moss closing the show in a bedazzled black gown with the famed 1997 G-String bearing the silver Gucci logo. A fitting conclusion to a collection which was more of a melting pot of all the ‘ghosts of Gucci Past’, smothering impressionable crowds with ‘90s references, sparkly distractions and it-boy guests (fakemink, Esdeekid, Nettspend) to dissuade them from looking at the overall lack of vision.
Since Demna’s cinematic Gucci debut, The Tiger, one thing has remained unchanged: his surgical method of dissecting people, turning them into archetypes. However, will this skill end up revealing itself as friend or foe in the long run?
