Demna’s Gucci debut: take a first look at the runway set

In March 2025, it was announced that the mononymous Georgian designer Demna – who rose to prominence with his 2014-founded label Vetements – was to step away from his decade-long tenure as creative director of Balenciaga. His next move? Heading up Italian powerhouse Gucci: ‘a brand that has defined and redefined what luxury means and what luxury dares to become’, as he wrote in a letter published to Instagram last night (26 February 2026) on the eve of his first runway show for the house.

In that letter, he explained that he has spent the last year or so as a scholar of the brand, seeking out what he calls the ‘Gucciness of Gucci’. It was a journey that led him to the ancient Tuscan city of Florence, where Gucci was founded 105 years ago by Guccio Gucci (born in Florence, he conceived the leather goods brand after a stint at London’s Savoy Hotel as a bellboy, identifying a need within the burgeoning travelling classes for sturdy luggage). There, Demna visited Gucci’s factories and archive, but also the Uffizi galleries, which are just a few hundred metres from the Palazzo Gucci on Piazza della Signoria (the latter, housed in the 14th-century Palazzo della Mercanzia, is home to a museum that catalogues the house’s century-long history).

It was within the Uffizi that he found himself in front of an artwork he had long been aware of (it is one of the most reproduced images in Western art) but not seen in real life: Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, a defining work of the Renaissance. ‘Standing in front of it, I felt overwhelmed,’ he wrote. ‘The beauty in it was unconditional; it was absolute. It made me realise how deeply the Italian Renaissance shaped everything I understand about art, about proportion, about desire, and about beauty.

‘When I left the museum and stepped into Piazza della Signoria, the first thing I saw was Palazzo Gucci,’ he continued. ‘In that moment, I understood the place Gucci holds within Italian culture.’

The experience of entering a museum was the inspiration behind the runway set for the A/W 2026 runway show, held at Milan‘s Palazzo delle Scintille today (27 February), a hall designed for sporting events by Paolo Vietti-Violi in 1923 (it would later host performances from La Scala when the theatre was damaged in the Second World War). Upon entering the show space and ascending a staircase, guests were greeted with a vast hall clad in travertine Stoneleaf. Made from ultra-fine sheets of Italian marble bonded onto sheets of fibreglass and transparent resin, the innovative material – which replaces the need for heavy blocks of stone – came to market when Stoneleaf was founded in 2013.

Populating this imagined museum were a series of sculptures replicating those found in the Uffizi museum and the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (subjects included Aphrodite and Artemis, and spanned Roman and Hellenistic eras). Each one was 3D-scanned before being recreated by Tuscan artisans in plaster, which was then treated to look like marble.

The space, according to Demna, was designed to represent Gucci’s own importance in Italy’s cultural canon. ‘My vision of Gucci is the coexistence of heritage and fashion,’ he said. ‘Here, they are not opposites, they are lovers. This first Gucci show introduces a universe of people, archetypes, consumers and dress codes that will shape my design language going forward. It is a foundation that begins my story at Gucci.’

Follow our live coverage of Milan Fashion Week A/W 2026.