Demna is leaving Balenciaga to become the new artistic director of Gucci, tasked with jolting the Italian fashion house out of its doldrums with a gust of strong creativity.
“Demna will bring to Gucci something exceptional. His way of defining fashion today is pretty unique, and this is what Gucci deserves and needs for the future,” said Gucci chief executive officer Stefano Cantino, speaking to a clutch of reporters summoned to the Paris headquarters of Gucci’s parent company Kering for the announcement.
“We are in agreement that Demna is one of the best creative directors of his generation, without any doubt,” he added. “He has proven his capability to reshape Balenciaga during his tenure, its identity and, of course, its fashion point of view.”
Demna’s new official portrait Photo by Demna/Courtesy of Kering
At Cantino’s side was Francesca Bellettini, Kering deputy CEO in charge of brand development, who noted Demna would wrap his tenure at Balenciaga with an haute couture show on July 9 and start at Gucci shortly after.
It has yet to be determined when the Georgian designer might unveil his first collection for Gucci.
Ahead of him lies “a holistic work around the brand,” Bellettini stressed.
She also brushed away all questions about Demna’s eventual successor at a house he’s made synonymous with hoodies, oversize tailoring, heavy-soled sneakers and hype collaborations — including one with Gucci in 2021.
Demna succeeds Sabato De Sarno, who exited Gucci in early February after a two-year collaboration. The fall 2025 fashion show in Milan on Feb. 25 was presented by the brand’s design office.
Thursday’s announcement came at the tail end of a fashion month rife with creative upheaval, and rampant speculation about who would ultimately land at Gucci, one of the most troubled megabrands in today’s luxury landscape.
Demna’s appointment sets the stage for another bumper crop of designer debuts, with Matthieu Blazy slated to show his first ready-to-wear collection for Chanel, and Jonathan Anderson said to be headed for Dior, though nothing is official yet.
Both Kering and LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, parent of Dior, seem to be placing bets in putting their strongest horse on their biggest and most crucial brands.
Balenciaga fall 2024 couture preview photographed for WWD on June 26, 2024, in Paris. Kuba Dubrowski
Other European brands with new designers yet to show their first collections include Versace, where Dario Vitale is succeeding Donatella Versace; Jil Sander, which just hired Simone Bellotti from Bally; Celine, now under Polo Ralph Lauren alum Michael Rider; Maison Margiela, which will now be helmed by Glenn Martens; Bottega Veneta, where Louise Trotter succeeded Blazy, and Carven, where Mark Howard Thomas succeeded Trotter as its director of design.
Additional changes are also said to be looming at Loewe, Mugler and Jean Paul Gaultier, to name but a few.
To be sure, many eyes will be on Gucci, which has been losing steam since the 2022 exit of creative director Alessandro Michele, who ignited a renaissance at the brand that lifted it to nearly 10 billion euros in revenues — until the market grew fatigued with his exuberant, retro-tinged designs.
With De Sarno as Michele’s successor, the brand has been pursuing an elevation strategy and, as reported, management had been pinning its hopes on the introduction of new handbag lines, a shorter time to market and a streamlined distribution and offer.
However, De Sarno’s collections were met with mixed reviews and his timeless take on signature pieces did not gain enough traction for a turnaround.
Equity analysts have been pressuring Gucci to name a high-profile designer to help revitalize the brand and regain market prominence.
Carey Mulligan wearing Balenciaga at the 96th annual Academy Awards on March 10, 2024, in Hollywood. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images) Getty Images
Gucci reported a 24 percent drop in organic revenues in the three months to Dec. 31, worse than the 23 percent decline forecast by analysts. In 2024, the brand accounted for 63 percent of parent Kering’s operating profit.
Most of Kering’s luxury brands also saw organic sales weaken in the fourth quarter. Saint Laurent was down 8 percent, and the “other houses” group, which includes Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen, reported a 4 percent decline.
Last month, Kering chairman and CEO François-Henri Pinault assured investors that the group had “reached an inflection point, and that after a year of stabilization in 2025 we will gradually resume a trajectory of steady and increasingly profitable growth.
“Gucci will come back. I have absolutely no doubts about this,” he added.
In a joint Kering-Balenciaga press release, issued Thursday after the close of trading on the Paris Bourse, Pinault said: “Demna’s contribution to the industry, to Balenciaga, and to the group’s success has been tremendous. His creative power is exactly what Gucci needs. As I thank him for everything he has accomplished over the past 10 years, I look forward to seeing him shape Gucci’s new artistic direction.”
For his part, Demna said: “I am truly excited to join the Gucci family. It is an honor to contribute to a house that I deeply respect and have long admired. I look forward to writing together with Stefano and the whole team a new chapter of Gucci’s amazing story.”
A look at the Balenciaga fall 2025 on March 10 in Paris. Kuba Dabrowski/WWD
During the briefing, Bellettini and Cantino touted Demna’s capabilities.
Bellettini said Demna was immediately enthusiastic about Gucci and came up with a compelling proposal “to make the brand cool and relevant.”
The designer subsequently trolled through archives of the Italian brand, which dates to 1921, and liked what he saw.
“We believe in his capability of blending such a strong heritage with an incredible fashion touch,” Cantino said, also lauding Demna’s ability to interpret the contemporary culture and define “what is luxury today for young generations and, of course, for the future.”
Asked about Demna’s penchant for dark, dystopian themes and an underground sensibility, Cantino assured that the designer would not transpose his Balenciaga aesthetic: “His intention is to do at Gucci something that is right for Gucci.”
In retrospect, his fall 2025 show for Balenciaga, more approachable than usual, could be read as a demonstration by Demna that he can design a straightforward men’s suit, a luxurious woman’s coat and less bombastic accessories.
He even donned a black suit and dress shirt instead of his usual grubby hoodies and T-shirts for the backstage scrum after that show, declaring, “Maybe I’m like Demna version 2.0. Maybe I grew up enough to wear a suit as a designer.”
A close-up on a Balenciaga speed trainers sneaker (2017) during the “La Mode En Mouvement #3 – Fashion on the Move #3” Exhibition at Palais Galliera on Feb. 6, 2025, in Paris. (Photo by Marc Piasecki/Getty Images) Getty Images
Cantino and Bellettini also took pains to describe the crucial groundwork laid ahead of Demna’s arrival, including production efficiencies, quality improvements, better delivery times and talent upgrades across the organization.
“Now the company is very ready to ignite, to sustain and to give very strong creativity the chance to shine,” Bellettini said.
Asked about De Sarno’s legacy at Gucci, she called his contribution “immense.”
De Sarno was an outside hire, recruited from Valentino, where he rose to the position of fashion director overseeing both men’s and women’s collections. The Naples-born designer also worked at Prada and Dolce & Gabbana earlier in his career.
At Gucci, De Sarno worked under three different CEOs — Marco Bizzarri and Jean-François Palus came before Cantino — and with a revolving door of marketing and communications executives including Robert Triefus, Susan Chokachi, Alessio Vannetti and now Valérie Leberichel.
In contemporary times, Gucci has typically promoted designers from within. Michele was an associate of one-time creative director Frida Giannini, who herself worked under Tom Ford, the designer widely credited with reviving the brand during his tenure from 1995 to 2004.
According to sources, contenders to succeed Demna at Balenciaga could include Pieter Mulier, who has heated up Alaïa to the boiling point, and Daniel Roseberry, so far the most successful creative director at Schiaparelli, having led the couture house into ready-to-wear.
Born in Georgia, Demna studied international economics at Tbilisi State University before he enrolled in Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, which spawned the original Antwerp Six in the early ‘80s.
He graduated with a master’s degree in fashion design in 2006, later that year collaborating with Walter Van Beirendonck, one of the Antwerp Six, on his men’s collections.
He joined Margiela in 2009 after the maverick Belgian founder retired and was responsible for the women’s collections. In 2013, he moved over to Louis Vuitton, where he was senior designer of women’s ready-to-wear collections, initially under Marc Jacobs and briefly under Nicolas Ghesquière.
But it was his Vetements project — cofounded in 2014 with his brother Gurum Gvasalia — that thrust him onto the international radar with an impassive, alternative brand of cool.
He ignited a streetwear juggernaut that had a wide influence on fashion: Soon his extra-long sleeves and monster shoulders were all over the runways, and $800 hoodies with wry slogans or logos became covetable items for sneaker heads and fashionistas alike.
He joined Balenciaga in 2015 and did not change his stripes, gleefully and openly appropriated signposts of consumer culture, taking a sociological approach to analyzing what triggers consumer desire, and stretching the boundaries of what is considered luxurious and chic.
With black fingernails and facial scruff in his debut years, Demna was seen as a ringleader for all things underground and alternative, exalting the grittier elements of Paris in his collections, along with jolts of S&M and punk, seen in kinky face hoods and spiky sunglasses.
Balenciaga fall 2022 Kuba Dabrowski/WWD
He stepped down at Vetements in 2019, stating that he accomplished his “mission of a conceptualist and design innovator at this exceptional brand.”
Armed with Balenciaga’s mightier budgets, he emerged as one of fashion’s consummate showmen, staging gripping runway spectacles in sets evoking submerged stadiums, a grand parliament or a giant pit of mud.
There were dark moments, however. Demna and the house of Balenciaga was engulfed in crisis at the end of 2022 and well into 2023 over advertising images that critics claimed condoned the exploitation of children.
Demna’s two-way collaboration Gucci in 2021 was characterized as “hacking” each other’s collection.
Michele unveiled a Gucci collection that included interpretations of the silhouettes and emblems of Demna’s Balenciaga, while Demna offered a range of “conceptual interpretations of Gucci‘s recognizable signatures as Balenciaga products.”
A style from Gucci and Balenciaga’s Hacker Project. Courtesy
At the time, Demna told WWD what a thrill it was to “vandalize a bit” a Gucci tote bag with a message in black spray paint. “I had the pleasure of doing that on the prototype.”
