It’s hard to get most New Yorkers to embrace Times Square, that neon-lit temple to unabashed consumerism and performance that has come to symbolize one particularly garish side of the city. But on Saturday night, Gucci pulled it off.
The pedestrian triangle sandwiched between Broadway and Seventh Avenue was transformed into a runway, the block from 47th to 48th Streets, a red carpet. Some 50 giant advertising screens were co-opted to serve as windows to the Gucci universe, full of images of star-strewn galaxies, rivers of lava, wildflower fields and a host of fake products, including Gucci water, Gucci chocolate, Gucci wellness supplements and Gucci travel.
Because you want to “drive the narrative,” a silky voice-over announced as a Gucci automobile flashed by in a video overhead. Passers-by gawked behind barriers as Kim Kardashian, Mariah Carey, Shawn Mendes and Lady Bunny took their seats.
The occasion was the unveiling of Demna’s first cruise show. The atmosphere was meta-kitsch. As for the clothes — they were good.
There were, in fact, more clothes on display than in either of Demna’s two previous Gucci shows: the short film that introduced his vision for the brand in September and the runway show in February, which was an ode to bodycon and not much else.
Maybe this was because Demna was introducing GucciCore: a seasonless line meant to define a foundational Gucci wardrobe that will remain available in stores year-round.
Maybe it was because he was thinking about the collection in terms of actual characters, the kind that might cross paths in a place like Times Square. Maybe it was an acknowledgment that it was time to sell some stuff.
Whatever the reason, “Dress for the job you want, and the job you have,” as the voice-over intoned, turned out to be not just an ironic twist on the adage, but the point.
There were slick suits for the boardroom poker player with a penchant for electric guitar, with tight little jackets and flared pants with the creases ironed in, pinstripes and sweeping overcoats with small shoulders. There were silk scarf dresses and sheepskins that resembled mink for the ladies who lunch, and glossy jeans falling off the hips paired with cropped leather bombers for the denizens of downtown.
There were oversize morning-after shirts worn as dresses over spiky knee-high boots, and gala-goer gowns in jersey and crystals. And there were a lot of accessories: squishy leather bags with gold chains atop Gucci shoppers, along with Gucci yoga mats and Gucci backpacks and Gucci headphones.
There were even some new ideas, especially in men’s wear, like Gucci striped webbing belts worn over a shirt to create an empire waist or over bare skin as a bandeau. (Those seemed more like a styling trick than anything else.) Also, more provocatively, there were double-breasted jackets tailored tight at the waist to create an aggressively hourglass silhouette without a corset.
Real-life New Yorkers, or at least people playing the part of New Yorkers, made guest appearances: the art dealer Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, Paris Hilton and Dree Hemingway. Tom Brady was helicoptered in to walk the runway in a leather motorcycle jacket and matching pants. (He should not give up his day job.) Cindy Crawford closed the show as a grande dame festooned with feathers.
At the end of the evening guests were bused to an after-party held in one of the Villard Houses on Madison Avenue, a Gilded Age mansion that was transformed for one night into the fictional home of a fictional Gucci matriarch, complete with black leather sofas, a weight room, a home office and a red-carpeted basement room with a Gucci pool table.
“I believe in manifestation, and I feel like I wanted this show to be about that — what Gucci can become,” Demna said the day before the show. As to what that might be, it’s starting to look more and more like a one-stop shop for the power players of the Manhattan of the mind.
Vanessa Friedman has been the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The Times since 2014.
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