La Famiglia
Demna’s First Strike at Gucci
Courtesy of Gucci. Photography by Catherine Opie.
Gucci’s future did not stroll down a runway. It detonated, quietly but deliberately, in a Catherine Opie lookbook dropped 36 hours before Milan. La Famiglia, Demna’s first move as artistic director, does not whisper a vision. It shouts a new “grammar” for the house and reframes Gucci with the designer’s trademark sardonic bite.
Across 37 portraits, the collection reads like a family album spiked with irony. Miss Aperitivo bathes in sequins, a caricature of Milanese cocktail culture. La VIC drowns in monogram. Il Narcisista bares his GG belt with a wink at Tom Ford’s unapologetic hedonism. Opie’s opening shot, L’Archetipo, places a gleaming new Gucci trunk at center stage. It is a blunt reminder that this empire was built in Florence in 1921 on luggage, not logos.
Courtesy of Gucci. Photography by Catherine Opie.
The cast sprawls like a theater of archetypes. Maria Carla Boscono, volcanic as L’Incazzata, smolders in scarlet 60s chic. L’Influencer, buried in oversized lizard leather, skewers the hunger for status. Nerd resurrects Alessandro’s eccentric bow-tied tenderness. La Contessa reigns in Flora print excess. Each character is less about style than diagnosis. Demna’s clinical and caustic eye dissects Gucci’s past and its place in culture now.
Each character is less about style than diagnosis. Demna’s clinical and caustic eye dissects Gucci’s past and its place in culture now.
Vogue’s Luke Leitch called this “the aesthetic base upon which Demna’s Gucci vision will be built leading up to his first show in February.” Yet La Famiglia feels more like a manifesto. It is a reclamation of Gucci’s codes, stripped of nostalgia and forced into Demna’s world of satire and provocation.
Courtesy of Gucci. Photography by Catherine Opie.
Courtesy of Gucci. Photography by Catherine Opie.
The timing is no accident. With Donatella Versace handing the reins to Dario Vitale after nearly three decades and Gucci resetting under Demna, the tectonics of luxury are shifting. This is not just a passing of batons. It is a demand for fashion to wake up, to embrace discomfort, to rediscover its sharpness.
Gucci’s family portrait is not only about belonging. It is a warning. The house is no longer a house of memory but of critique. And Demna, true to form, is smiling through clenched teeth.
Courtesy of Gucci. Photography by Catherine Opie.
Courtesy of Gucci. Photography by Catherine Opie.