Courtesy of Gucci
Ahead of his debut show in February of next year, Demna launched his Gucci era on screen in place of a runway. The creative director unveils The Tiger, a star-studded short film that blurs the lines between cinema, celebrity, and couture.
For his eagerly awaited debut at Gucci, Demna chose Hollywood over the runway for his special execution preview, reimagining the brand’s classic glamour for the streaming age. Steering clear of clichéd House of Gucci storylines, no Gaga melodrama or brooding Adam Driver, Demna presented his concept through The Tiger, a short film co-created with Spike Jonze and Halina Reijn.
The film served as both a presentation and a cultural manifesto. Starring Demi Moore, Edward Norton, Ed Harris, Elliot Page, Keke Palmer, Alia Shawkat, Julianne Nicholson, Heather Lawless, Ronny Chieng, Kendall Jenner, and Alex Consani, The Tiger stitched together a tapestry of personalities as eclectic as Demna’s own Milanese orbit since relocating last summer. Its central figure, Barbara Gucci (played with delicious camp by Moore), presides as Head of Gucci International and Chairman of California. She assembles her children and guests, including the fictitious Vanity Fair editor Harlon Whitman, for a birthday soirée gone off the rails when the family unwittingly ingests “Conscious Bliss,” a collagen-based homeopathic tincture by Soft Soul. Chaos, predictably, ensues.
Like all Demna projects, the references are layered, even dizzying: Isabella Adjani’s hysterical performance in Possession, the power struggles of Succession, Zoë Kravitz’s unsettling directorial debut Blink Twice, and Demi Moore’s own grotesque turn in The Substance. Yet the result is more than a cinephile’s moodboard. The Tiger points toward fashion’s accelerating marriage with cinema, not merely as inspiration but as a distribution model.
Magazines may now exist as collectible objects rather than mass media, but film, television, and short-form reels have become the new fashion catalogues, narrative engines for brand mythologies. This strategy is hardly unprecedented: Saint Laurent’s production arm under Anthony Vaccarello has already premiered films (Strange Way of Life, Emilia Perez) at Cannes and beyond, blurring the boundaries between luxury house and studio system. What Demna achieves with Gucci is less about inventing the wheel than about claiming it loudly, theatrically, and with a cast list calibrated for virality.
Absent was the “archaic” catwalk show or lookbook images. In its place: a hybridized spectacle where actors doubled as models, ambassadors doubled as extras, and the live-streamed red carpet outside Milan’s Palazzo Mezzanotte rivaled the film itself as entertainment. BTS Kim Seokjin, Lila Moss, and Alia Bhatt lent their presence to a tableau where celebrity becomes both content and commodity.
Does it work? As a fashion presentation, the clothes (sharp tailoring softened by sheer silks, jet-black leather offset by jewel-toned chiffons) risked being overshadowed by the cinema. But as a statement of intent, Demna’s preview suggests Gucci will play on a much larger scale than the runway.
Demna’s Gucci debut show will be held in February 2026 during Milan Fashion Week.
