It’s been a busy couple of weeks for fashion lovers. First the Met Gala, then Chanel showed its Cruise collection, Australian Fashion Week kicked off in Sydney and now Gucci has made us all wish for a chic mid-summer vacation.
The Italian fashion brand presented its Cruise 2025 collection at the Tate Modern art gallery in London, not known for its sunny climes, but definitely a worthy holiday spot.
The occasion, Sabato De Sarno‘s first cruise show, allowed the creative director to explore both his own and brand founder Guccio Gucci’s favoured London moments and icons. The show notes romantically declared: “We’ll always have London.”
Stars and stylish friends of the brand agreed, flocking to the front row at the iconic gallery of modern art, transformed for the occasion into a lush plant-lined runway.
Music stars Dua Lipa, Debbie Harry and Solange Knowles joined Demi Moore, Kate Moss and actors Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal at the show, among plenty of other well-known faces.
Called Gucci Londra (London in Italian) the collection drew together a mix of cultures, eras and aesthetics the diverse city is known for.
“I owe a lot to this city, it has welcomed and listened to me,” De Sarno explained.
“The same is true for Gucci, whose founder was inspired by his experience there. The House’s return is driven by a desire to be immersed in its distinctive essence, its creative driving force with its limitless capability to put together contrasts, make them converse, and find ways to coexist.”
‘Englishness with an Italian accent’, was one way the brand explained the pieces in the collection, pointing to the beauty in contrasts and dichotomies. ‘A sense of tension between different ideas and ideals, different identities’.
Codes of dressing – of propriety and properness – were subverted, used as a means of provocation. Short coats, juxtaposed with wild chamomile flora motifs, flower embroideries given new dimensions, sartorial fused with workwear, street with salon, evening with everyday.
The fragile becomes tough – the iconic lobster-clasp is transposed to a feminine pearl necklace, horsebit details across suede pay tribute to a link with the equestrian world.
Meanwhile, symbols of British style – tartans, tailoring – and emblems of Gucci are reconsidered, re-energized for a new generation, a different time. Plaids are reinterpreted as the most delicate embroidered bead fringe, their graphic shapes newly animated.
‘Here, craft and fashion can unify, crossing culture – they help create a new form of universal language, a shared human vocabulary,’ the brand pointed out.
