Why Is Everyone So Upset About Demna Taking Over Gucci?
In the early afternoon of March 13, Gucci announced that Balenciaga designer Demna was to become its new creative director in July. A few hours later, the share prices of parent company Kering nosedived.
Why?
Reports from financial analysts suggest that investors, already skittish about the greater luxury slowdown, were turned off by the proposition of grunge-ish designer Demna taking over Gucci, a house associated with Italian luxury.
Just goes to show, fashion snobbery is a hard habit to unlearn.
Gucci needs a commercialized shot in the arm: Kering's most recent earnings report notes that Gucci revenue decreased 24 percent in Q4 2024. And Demna is the man who took Balenciaga from under $400 million in revenue to over $2.3 billion. On a purely cynical, entirely logical level, how is the 43-year-old designer not perfect for the Gucci job?
In a statement, Kering CEO François-Henri Pinault succinctly affirmed that Demna "is exactly what Gucci needs.”
But short-sighted investors aren't seeing the vision.
On March 14, Reuters reported that Kering shares dipped by over 12 percent in response to Demna's Gucci appointment, wiping out $3 billion in value. It then quoted a luxury consultant as saying, "Demna’s hype-driven, streetwear-centric playbook made Balenciaga a sensation ... but Gucci’s broader audience and deeper heritage necessitate a more refined approach."
In other words, Demna is too "streetwear" for a fancy company like Gucci.
As always, if a take feels too articulate, go see how people are phrasing it on TikTok.
"Demna to Gucci is idiotic," moaned one hyperbolic clip. Another screamed, "Gucci you need to explain why?!"
Explanation: Demna got the Gucci gig by making Balenciaga, and thus Kering, a lot of money.
And on the creative front, Demna is the most proven tastemaker left at Kering, what with Matthieu Blazy departing Bottega Veneta for Chanel.
I don't think it's hyperbolic to posit that, over the past decade, Demna's Balenciaga effectively reshaped fashion. You can turn your nose up at Demna's intentional provocations, the leather trash bags and the shredded shoes, and his intentionally "unglamorous" saleable fare, the XXXL-chunky sneakers and big, grungy jeans. But you can't deny the influence.
Ever since Demna took the reigns at Balenciaga, a cache of fashion truthers have sniffed at how he gloms onto garments demeaned as inelegantly ubiquitous: Hoodies, sweatpants, T-shirts. To the folks who believe that fashion ought to only be gorgeous gowns, Demna's oeuvre is straight Duchampian. But so it goes for all generational fashion talents, from Gaultier to Abloh.
Demna knows what works. And his commercial successes are proof.
The reaction to his appointment to Gucci reminds me of something uttered in relation to Demna's spiritual forebear, Martin Margiela (Demna spent a few years working for Maison Margiela in the 2010s). When recalling Margiela's 1989 runway debut nearly 40 years later, one writer said: "The critics loathed it. The industry loved it."
Anyone worried about Demna handling Gucci's "broader audience and deeper heritage" forgets that Alessandro Michele was a relative unknown when he became the house's creative director in 2015, the same year that Demna took over Balenciaga.
Sure, Michele had worked there for over a decade but most of his career had been spent working on accessories.
And let's not pretend like Michele's Gucci, as fabulously romantic as it was, succeeded simply because Michele was a visionary (which he was). Its record profits were driven by saleable items like fur-lined slippers, overtly branded hoodies, handbags, and the usual branded accoutrement — belts, glasses, fragrances, and so on. Like Demna's Balenciaga, Michele's Gucci shifted towards street-ready wearables.
The difference was in the packaging, as Michele presented the "utopia" to Balenciaga's "dystopia," as this very publication once posited.
Now, as Gucci finds itself in its own financial dystopia, Demna's commercial acuity likely sounds pretty utopian. As it should to investors.
And the Demna haters, all I can say is lighten up. The Gucci of tomorrow was never going to be the Gucci of yesterday — time to move on.
