Milan Day One: How to Revamp a Brand

MILAN — Fashion’s reset started today in Milan, but the notion that a new creative director must wipe the slate clean doesn’t necessarily make for the most effective strategy.

Case in point: Demna’s debut at Gucci — first dropped on Monday as a lookbook of Catherine Opie-lensed Italian archetypes — referenced predecessor Alessandro Michele’s work for the house, particularly his penchant for building characters and then dressing them up, as well as the legacy of Tom Ford, scantily clad and chillingly cool, not to mention Demna’s own work at Balenciaga, give or take a GG.

The effect was something like a collection zero, a starting point, a foundation.

Gucci seemed to spare no expense in pushing the launch. The same characters from the lookbook appeared on the red carpet Tuesday night as a preamble to a short movie — “The Tiger” — directed by Spike Jonze and Halina Reijn, and starring none other than Demi Moore, Edward Norton, Ed Harris and Elliot Page, screened in a cinema designed by Niklas Bildstein Zaar.

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It was a substantial piece of work that grappled with identity and ego, but was it ultimately more than filler that buys Demna time as he concocts one of his viral shows for February? The clothes were scarcely relevant to the grotesque family tale on screen. Will they sell? We’ll soon find out as they’ll be in stores by the end of the week.

Now that he is doing double duty at OTB stablemate Maison Margiela, is Diesel designer Glenn Martens in danger of creative fatigue?

Martens’ latest outing for the group’s flagship brand, which he’s been knee-deep in revamping since he joined in 2020, was another experiment with presentation formats: True to his bubbling mind and the pop spirit of the label, the designer aimed to bring the customer closer with a city-wide egg hunt, featuring glassy, human-sized eggs, each containing a look on a live model.

The idea fit well with a collection in which distressed fabrics, a Diesel signature, took on a double-faced tingle, with the inside and outside of the garments in constant dialogue.

If Martens was extroverted, Lorenzo Serafini played introvert at Alberta Ferretti, envisioning an impalpable wardrobe of Mariano Fortuny-esque caftans, peplums and Delphos gowns for the perfect hostess entertaining guests in her patrician mansion, a bit like Tina Chow, who in the 1980s, draped in vintage pleats, played that role at her husband’s New York restaurant. There was grace and elegance, but Serafini’s voice felt a little faint.

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