Tom Brady in Times Square: Inside Demna’s Audacious NYC Gucci Show
There has never been a luxury fashion show in the heart of Times Square, and there probably never will be one again. “It’s a fucking logistic nightmare,” said Demna on the eve of his first Gucci cruise show, which shut down a few blocks of Broadway on a balmy Saturday night where it felt like the entire city was outside. Which was kind of the point. The designer chose the location because it is “the most impossible thing.”
As I noted in my report from the Dior cruise show last week in LA, one purpose of these mid-season extravaganzas is to wine and dine very important clients, so the “resort” experience tends to be seamless and smooth, with everything designed to reinforce an airtight fantasy narrative wrapped up in a vacation-like atmosphere. But where’s the fun in that?
At around 8:20 p.m., a group of Condé Nast editors polished off the last handful of french fries at Sardi’s and trooped a few blocks uptown to the show entrance. We wound our way through a river of tourists, navigated a couple of barricaded sidewalks, sidestepped a Spider-Man street performer and a whirling 360-degree selfie platform, and eventually made it to 48th and Broadway, where Gucci had erected a block-long photo call that fed into a walled-off slice of asphalt right at the bottom of the canyon of Times Square’s famous advertising screens.
A few minutes later, the screens—50 in all, which stretched for blocks—flickered and came back online beaming gonzo Gucci ads for products that mostly don’t exist: Gucci chocolate, Gucci automobiles, Gucci pets. It was as funny as it was impressive. As soon as they turned on the crowd went quiet and still, standing strangely awed by this absurd luxury manifesto in the center of the consumerist universe. (One wondered what the tourists a few blocks away made of the 360-degree campaign for “Gucci Life” longevity supplements framing their selfies with Times Square Elmo.) In an only-in-Times Square scene, Mariah Carey, Esdeekid, and Kim Kardashian sat near the drag queen Lady Bunny, who was perched on a front-row bench with a towering blonde bouffant.
Other designers could learn from Demna’s audacity and his finesse for uncannily humorous spectacles. So many fashion shows are weighed down by a heavy-handed dollop of house codes and history, to the point where the idea of making pants is laden with a gravity that feels totally out of step with the moment. But Demna is a master of popping the fashion fantasy and corrupting it with our bizzaro reality. And he’s not afraid to challenge himself.
“I was talking to my shrink and she was like, ‘You’re ready for this, Demna.’ This is like an ultimate exercise of letting go of control, because there’s nothing in your control,” Demna told me. Given the location, rehearsals were near-impossible, and everything had to be loaded in and out in only four hours.
