Demna’s Gucci Debut? Think “Evil Tom Ford”

Even among 2025’s many big-time fashion debuts, Demna’s first Gucci collection is arguably the biggest of them all. This is the man who set Balenciaga on world-shaking path to newfound relevance. What would he do for an, arguably, even bigger house?

Well, if Demna’s vision for Balenciaga was unpretentious grunge, Demna’s vision for Gucci is apparently “evil Tom Ford.”

It was widely known that Demna’s Gucci debut was planned for 2026 and a little less widely known that a first look was reportedly planned before the end of 2025. But no one had any idea that Demna’s Gucci might be revealed so suddenly and, yet, so casually.

In the middle of August, Demna’s husband, musician Loïk Gomez, published and quickly deleted an Instagram photo of himself wearing a leather jacket, black shirt, faded straight-leg jeans, and long-toed shoes.

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Clothes that could’ve come from anywhere, until you notice the enormous “GG” belt buckle.

This was presumably the first accidental look at Demna’s Gucci, though that’s not confirmed. But given Loki’s predilection for exclusively wearing his partner’s designs, including plenty of then-unreleased stuff, let’s contend with the possibility that it is.

This does reflect a departure for Demna. It’s not a whole-cloth inversion of his Balenciaga designs, mind you, as the pointy shoes and faux-dirty jeans are vintage Demna. But he was more famous for enormous, hem-scraping denim trousers and shoes so elongated that they looked like tiny skate ramps. You knew Balenciaga when you saw it.

Loki’s shiny bad-boy leather jacket, meanwhile, is far less distinct than the enormous calfskin bombers that Demna proposed at Balenciaga. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Earlier this year, Demna said that he had grown weary of “oversize” clothing. Unnamed industry sources further asserted that the Georgian designer was specifically mining inspiration from Tom Ford’s immensely influential ’90s-era Gucci, when the Milanese house was saved from fashion doldrums by a fresh wave of sex appeal.

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It sure makes sense on paper.

Tom Ford’s Gucci tenure is still held up as one of Fashion’s Great Bygone Eras, both a commercial and critical smash. Demna’s time at Balenciaga may have been divisive, often intentionally so, but you can’t argue the influence or sales figures. He knows what people want to wear and he knows what people what to buy. A return to form is just the ticket for a house seeking a savior.

But Demna doesn’t do imitation. It’s a mistake to assume that he’s merely raiding the archives. Anyone can raid the archives. Demna specializes in flipping retro inspiration into provocative newness. Going off of Loki’s look, Demna’s take on the Tom Ford aesthetic would be grungier, edgier. This is where the “evil Tom Ford” moniker comes in: slim-fit but dark. More grounded than Balenciaga but no less moody.

Tom Ford’s Gucci was made incendiary by its envelope-shoving skin factor: models on the runway without shirts and often even without pants, their thongs and bikini tops only barely concealing any flesh. Full frontal isn’t really Demna’s style. Really, it’s shocking enough to simply slim down his signature silhouettes into plain ol’ darn-good clothes. And given the luxury’s current yen for real-world garments, it’s also quite savvy.

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