Demna's third Gucci show restages a flagship store, and critics call it too Balenciaga

Gucci's Spring Summer 2027 show in Milan opened on a set built to resemble one of the house's own flagship stores. Artistic Director Demna lined the space with marble walls, velvet seating, rails of clothing and shelves stacked with accessories, turning the runway itself into a retail floor.

In his show letter, Demna described the collection as a desire to belong to a more glamorous world. That world arrived through a cast of recurring types: horse-riding princesses, Milanese sciura in wind-defying coifs, prep-school brats, nightclub sirens, old-moneyed gentlemen and wannabe socialites moving through the same rooms.

Womenswear opened on Gucci's equestrian codes, drawing on the riding jacket, horsebit hardware and equestrian tailoring we have covered as part of Gucci's presence among the icon handbags and accessories that anchor our coverage of style more broadly.

A fitted three-button riding jacket carried tiny silver horsebits at the lapels, worn with tight white breeches and tall riding boots, before the show pivoted into a more bourgeois register of crisp trenches and precise coats.

Shirt dresses and immaculate tailoring followed, worn with what read as the self-possession of someone who has never queued for anything. Tartan kilts were blown up with oversized horsebit hardware, and rugby shirts arrived with collars popped for a preppier edge.

Bomber jackets swelled around the body while low-slung jeans were held by belts bristling with multiple buckles. Heavy chains were piled against the clavicles, and Demna's tailoring found peaked shoulders and pulled-in waists, cut closer than the monumental shapes tied to his years at Balenciaga.

Menswear leaned on cropped trousers, bare ankles and loafers, summoning the late-1980s and early-1990s Gucci man, a figure caught between inherited privilege and practiced nonchalance. Against more Gothic tailoring and elongated proportions elsewhere in the show, that bourgeois ease read as unexpectedly fresh.

Evening wear pushed the same fantasy toward overt seduction. The final gown was slung over one shoulder and held in place by a teardrop-shaped metal weight, an engineering trick dressed up as nonchalance in the show's closing look.

Demna framed the collection as a roundup of riding clubs, European drawing rooms, boarding schools and after-dark venues where decadence and sweat mix. The range of references was deliberate, spanning daywear discipline and nightlife looseness inside a single 40-odd look show.

Why critics are split on the direction

The quality of the execution and the intent behind it were not in dispute among critics who saw the show, given Demna's record of commercial success at Balenciaga. What divided opinion was whether the collection tipped too far toward that Balenciaga sensibility rather than a distinctly Gucci one.

Others questioned whether this third collection, Demna's latest attempt at repositioning the house, again failed to recover the allure and desirability Gucci carried under Tom Ford and Alessandro Michele. The comparison to those two eras remains the yardstick critics keep returning to.

The stakes behind that debate are financial as much as aesthetic. Gucci has been underperforming for four years running, with steep sales declines that have weighed on Kering's results and put pressure on each successive creative regime to reverse the slide.

A Florentine name under new stewardship

Gucci began as a Florentine leather workshop before becoming the engine of Kering's luxury portfolio, a house that has proven its own logo can function as both liability and asset depending on who is designing around it. Demna's flagship-store staging is his third attempt at defining that balance.

We have tracked Gucci's standing elsewhere in the market: our ranking of the most popular luxury brands online places Gucci second behind Dior, ahead of Chanel, Hermes and Louis Vuitton, based on search interest, brand value and social conversation.

Our running account of the house's handbags, including in our guide to the best Gucci bags worth keeping for life, has treated the brand's leather goods as enduring rather than seasonal. This show's rails of accessories staged that same inventory as scenery rather than product.

No date has been given for when the Spring Summer 2027 collection reaches Gucci's stores, and the brand has not detailed pricing or which looks will enter the commercial line. The commercial debate the show set off looks likely to run until sales figures for the collection are known.