Gucci turns Times Square into a runway: Cindy Crawford and Tom Brady as models
The show was broadcast live on the billboards. “I wanted to do the impossible and put Gucci at the centre of this metropolis,” Demna says.
Gucci creative director Demna has presented his first cruise collection for the Italian house in New York, turning Times Square into a runway. The brand’s owner, Kering, is trying to revive its faltering flagship label.
The show was broadcast live on the billboards of one of the most visited places on the planet. It was a nod to Gucci’s connection with Manhattan: this was where the house began its international expansion, opening its first store outside Italy here in 1953.
The “GucciCore” collection “feels like a homecoming for the brand”, Demna said. “I wanted to do the impossible and put Gucci at the centre of this metropolis.”
Cindy Crawford and the former quarterback Tom Brady walked the runway, among models presenting the range of Demna’s styles: from business suits and trench coats to floor-length gowns. Anna Wintour and Mariah Carey sat in the audience. The collection’s breadth, the designer said, reflects “the multiplicity of styles that intersect like the streets of the city”.
Cruise collections, once confined to the resort wardrobe, are now increasingly staged in places that let a brand tie the clothes to a geographical narrative. They sit alongside the main calendar of two seasons a year. Gucci’s decision to show in New York coincides with a broader pivot by European luxury towards the North American market: Dior presented its cruise collection in Los Angeles the same month.
This is Demna’s second outing at the house, after his runway debut in Milan in February. The Georgian designer spent ten years at Balenciaga, also owned by Kering, and took over Gucci in July last year, succeeding Sabato De Sarno, who had led the label for two years.
The stakes are high: Gucci generates most of Kering’s profit. The brand’s first-quarter sales fell 8% year on year — the war in Iran hit spending by Middle Eastern shoppers and curtailed international travel; the group called the quarter’s results a “first step” in its recovery. Chief executive Luca de Meo, appointed in September, has promised to more than double the group’s operating margin and restore Gucci’s appeal.