Demna’s La Famiglia For Gucci Is Filled With Characters That Have Somewhere To Be and Someone To Destroy

There are fashion collections, and then there are origin stories. Mythologies, really, crafted in silk, sass, and sprezzatura. With La Famiglia, Demna’s first offering for Gucci is less a debut and more a flamboyant family reunion in a Florentine palazzo, where everyone’s overdressed, overdramatic, and somehow just right.

This isn’t Demna-as-disruptor, it’s Demna playing the high priest of House Codes, giving Gucci’s icons the reverence they deserve, but with the side-eye irony they never knew they needed. A travel trunk, L’Archetipo, opens the lookbook like a reliquary of the brand’s past lives, setting the tone: this Gucci is not quiet luxury, it’s complicated heritage. Think: 78-year-old bags with better bone structure than you.

From there, Demna casts a rogue’s gallery of Gucci archetypes: La Bomba, L’Influencer, Miss Aperitivo, La Cattiva and so on. Each dressed like they have somewhere to be and someone to destroy. It’s part Fellini, part fashion meme, filtered through Catherine Opie’s sharp lens, giving us portraits that feel like sacred icons for the Church of Excess.

And then there’s the styling: slingbacks squashed like they’ve been to five aperitivos too many, loafers worn with all the conviction of a Roman baron late to a wedding, transparent bodycon for men with a taste for martinis and menace. It’s a celebration of sprezzatura, yes, but also a knowing wink — dressing as performance, as pleasure, as defiance.

The silhouettes play their own binary game: from feathered opera coats that scream “Do you know who I am?” to hosiery garments so seamless they whisper “Don’t you wish you did?” Even the Flora print gets a vampiric remix. Floral, but make it after dark. Meanwhile, the GG monogram returns in full power mode: not scattered, but stamped with religious fervor. All or nothing, indeed.

There’s wit here. And a lot of it. Naming a character La Mecenate (the patron) in a luxury collection? That’s Demna tipping his Balenciaga cap to the absurdity of fashion’s self-importance. And La Principessa? She’s less royalty, more reality star with a trust fund and a horse.

Ultimately, La Famiglia is a clever, cinematic re-staging of Gucci’s greatest hits, but spun through Demna’s unique filter: intellectually referential, slightly perverse, and unapologetically glamorous. It doesn’t scream “new Gucci” — it seducesyou into believing this is what Gucci always was, or should have been.

Demna isn’t rewriting the Gucci bible. He’s just reminding us it was always a little sacrilegious.

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