By Giulia Piceni. Cover image Gucci courtesy.
Gucci SS26 by Demna: The Tiger and the New Era
Gucci has always thrived on reinvention. From Tom Ford’s sultry hedonism to Alessandro Michele’s layered maximalism, the brand has continuously mirrored cultural shifts while setting its own aesthetic agenda. Now, under Demna’s creative direction, Gucci enters a new chapter—one that merges Ford’s sensuality and Michele’s eccentric sophistication with Demna’s sharp irony and brutal honesty.
The unveiling of this new identity came not through a runway show, but through a cinematic event: The Tiger, a twenty-minute short film directed by Oscar-winner Spike Jonze and filmmaker Halina Reijn. Premiering on September 23rd in Milan, the film introduced the Spring Summer 2026 collection, Gucci: La Famiglia, in a narrative format. What could have been a traditional debut became instead a meditation on family, failure, and the power of surrender—staged with a Hollywood cast and framed as high art.
At the heart of the project lies a deceptively simple question: What would you do if you were locked in a room with a tiger? The answer unlocks the philosophy not only of the film but of Demna’s new direction at Gucci.
Starring Demi Moore as the matriarch of a chaotic family, the film blends cinematic drama, archetypal characters, and the brand’s new Spring Summer 2026 collection. More than a presentation, The Tiger is a parable of surrender, freedom, and the art of letting go. Here are five key points to decode the film and the new era it signals for Gucci.
1. The Gucci Family as Archetype
At its core, The Tiger is about family—but not in a sentimental sense. Instead, it stages a constellation of archetypes, each corresponding to familiar Italian clichés: the society lady, the pampered son, the diva, and the estranged relative. These characters were already teased in the lookbook released days before the premiere, presented as caricature-like figures whose styling was as exaggerated as their roles. By translating these archetypes onto the screen, Jonze and Reijn turned the Gucci collection into a living narrative. Every outfit became a form of character development, every character a personification of a sartorial choice. Fashion is not merely worn; it speaks, it betrays, it destabilizes.
This strategy recalls Demna’s earlier experiments at Balenciaga, where he categorized reality through uniforms for social groups such as politicians, executives, suburban teenagers, and celebrities. At Gucci, however, the gesture shifts. The archetypes are not cold sociological studies but affectionate exaggerations, rooted in Italian cinema and family melodrama. In this way, Demna makes Gucci’s new beginning less about abstraction and more about human messiness—embodied in clothes that are at once glamorous and ironic.
2. Gucci SS26: How Cinema Became the Runway
The choice of Spike Jonze and Halina Reijn to direct the short film was both unexpected and decisive. Neither filmmaker is a stranger to narratives about dysfunctional intimacy and the disintegration of façades. Jonze has long explored surreal and tender relationships, as in Her and Being John Malkovich, while Reijn has made her mark with biting social critiques such as Instinct and Bodies Bodies Bodies. With The Tiger, they turned Gucci’s collection into a cinematic event. The lavish interiors of a family home became the runway, and dialogue and conflict replaced the catwalk strut.
The film’s pacing—calm at first, then derailed into hallucinatory chaos after a spiked glass of champagne—mirrors the way fashion collections often unfold: structured silhouettes that gradually unravel into experimentation and excess. There are also deliberate cinematic echoes. Jonze and Reijn’s vision recalls Luchino Visconti’s Gruppo di famiglia in un interno, with its portrait of bourgeois collapse, while nodding to Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, another recent parable about femininity, perfection, and the horror of being consumed by one’s own image.
By weaving Gucci into this cinematic genealogy, Demna extends fashion beyond its traditional formats, embracing film as a tool for cultural commentary. Most importantly, The Tiger demonstrates Demna’s willingness to let others speak for him. He himself admitted, “I have learned to let go.” For a designer known for his control over narrative, this act of surrender marks a profound shift.
3. Barbara Gucci and the Fall of Perfection
At the center of The Tiger stands Barbara Gucci, played by Demi Moore with a blend of icy authority and raw vulnerability. Barbara is simultaneously the head of Gucci International, a mother, a hostess, and a woman caught in the impossible performance of perfection. Seated beneath the family portrait that enshrines her legacy, she welcomes children, relatives, and a guest journalist into her home for what should be a celebration. But perfection cannot last. As the evening spirals out of control, Barbara is forced to confront her exhaustion. She admits she is tired of being the perfect mother, the flawless executive, the eternal symbol of a brand’s reputation.
Echoing Demi Moore’s recent role in The Substance, Barbara embodies the collapse of the female ideal not through grotesque transformation, but through quiet confession. Her breakdown forms the moral axis of the film: the recognition that striving for constant control is futile, and that surrender can be liberating. Barbara’s voice, weary but resolute, becomes the channel through which Demna articulates his own creative philosophy. Just as she admits failure, he acknowledges that fashion need not always dominate the narrative; sometimes it can simply exist, vulnerable and open to interpretation.
4. The Tiger Explained: Gucci’s Metaphor for Freedom and Imperfection
The titular tiger is never seen but always felt, lingering as a metaphor. The question posed at the start—What would you do if you were locked in a room with a tiger?—serves as the film’s philosophical riddle.
Most of us imagine fighting, fleeing, or taming it. But The Tiger suggests another path: surrender. If you are in the cage with a predator, you become powerless. The act of letting go, of accepting vulnerability, becomes paradoxically a form of strength. For Demna, the tiger represents the uncontrollable forces of perception, criticism, and identity. A designer cannot control how the world will interpret his work, nor can a brand dictate every aspect of its public image. To acknowledge this impotence is not to admit defeat, but to embrace freedom.
In fashion terms, the tiger dismantles the obsession with control: the perfection of silhouettes, the predictability of codes, the rigidity of branding. Gucci, under Demna, positions itself as a space where imperfection and chaos can be reframed as beauty. Just as the characters lose themselves in a drug-induced spiral of questions, fears, and desires, the collection invites wearers to embrace contradictions rather than suppress them.
5. What The Tiger Reveals About Gucci’s Future
So what does The Tiger tell us about Gucci’s future? First, it asserts that Gucci is no longer content with fashion as spectacle alone. Instead, the brand seeks cultural resonance, embedding itself in film, philosophy, and collective narratives. Second, the collection itself—seen both in the film and later outside the premiere venue, where models paraded instead of walking a traditional runway—signals a hybrid language. It draws on Tom Ford’s sensual glamour, Alessandro Michele’s theatrical layering, and Demna’s irreverent irony. The result is neither nostalgia nor rupture, but a synthesis: Gucci as a house where contradictions are not erased but performed.
Finally, The Tiger sets the tone for Demna’s tenure. It frames Gucci not as a fortress of perfection, but as a laboratory of vulnerability. Fashion becomes a mirror of human fallibility—of chaotic dinners, awkward archetypes, and collapsing façades—yet insists that this imperfection is a new form of strength. The lesson of the tiger is clear: not all battles can be won, and control is often an illusion. By surrendering to chaos, Gucci begins again.
If you want to learn more about Gucci and the latest Cruise 2026 show in Florence, read more here.
