Cindy Crawford stars as Gucci delivers a ‘fabulously spiky’ new collection
Gucci’s Cruise 2027 show by Lisa Armstrong
On Saturday night in Manhattan, Gucci co-opted the biggest stage in the world, taking over Times Square and every single one of those famous giant billboards. On the catwalk: Cindy Crawford, Tom Brady, the former quarter-back, best known in Europe for being the former Mr Gisele Bundchen, socialites Sabine Getty, Paris Hilton and the actress Dree Hemingway, who recently played Daryl Hannah in Love Story - a controversial portrayal that prompted Hannah to issue a public statement rebutting its inaccuracies.
Gucci
On the front row: Francesca Bellettini (deputy CEO of Kering), Kim Kardashian, Anna Wintour and Mariah Carey, who appears to require two people just to remove her coat and drape her extensions. In short, the people-watching was epic.
Luxury fashion is currently being buffeted by unfamiliar storms. After the 2008 crash, many brands experienced almost two decades of continuous growth. That party’s over. If you want to see how a modern fashion house operates in 2026, look to the products Gucci beamed down on the watching crowds who were rubber necking from behind the crash barriers and from double decker tourist buses: Gucci pets, Gucci high jewellery, Gucci gym, the famous Gucci Flora print, beloved by Princess Grace and still a best seller. Some of the billboard ads (notably the ones with dogs and bunnies) were AI. Most people won’t know or care. This is the future.
On the catwalk, models accessorised with Apple products, part of an ongoing partnership between the two brands and further evidence, following the $10 million which the Sanchez Bezoses paid to play mein hosts of the recent Met Gala, that tech is either eating fashion or saving it.
Demna (he dispensed with his last name while he was at Balenciaga), Gucci’s Artistic Director, is part-sociologist as well as designer. His catwalk teemed with New York archetypes: Mr Wall Street in a grey wool suit and a Gucci backpack; upper East Side mavens in the Gucci Flora printed leather coat or fake furs, with soft, slim black leather bags dangling from their elbows; women with alarming plastic surgery; “creative” execs in floor sweeping maxi navy coats and skirts, or scarlet pea coats with tight trousers that kick out from the knee; Kim Kardashian lookalikes in double denim or tight belted fake fur-trimmed jackets worn with stiletto knee high boots and pneumatic lacquered lips orbited with lip liner.
“I wanted to show this collection on the kind of people you might see in the street,” says Demna, ‘‘individuals with their own way of wearing clothes.”
While the hair and make-up veered into the gothic at times, the tailored trouser suits, mercerised knitwear, skinny pencil skirts and a new horsebit ballet flat looked like the foundations of a classic wardrobe, albeit one with a fabulously spiky point of view.
Like many designers at the top houses, Demna has realised that even the richest customers no longer want fashion that loses its currency after six months.
“Most of the clothes on the catwalk are part of GucciCore,” Demna says, “a permanent collection that will evolve over time, grounded in pragmatic pieces.”
Dior’s Cruise 2027 show by Lisa Armstrong
Dior and LA are almost as synonymous as Dior and Paris. Jennifer Lawrence picked up an Oscar wearing Dior. Rose Byrne dazzled in it this year and the brand is one of the lead characters in the Devil Wears Prada 2. No wonder its creative director, Jonathan Anderson, and chief executive Delphine Arnault decided to stage Anderson’s first Cruise collection for Dior in Los Angeles. It just so happens that a new Dior store recently opened here and there are lots of potential clients with immensely deep pockets – the music and film mogul David Geffen, for instance, who donated $150 million to the Los Angeles County Museum for a spanking new main building.
Dior
It’s barely been open a week, but on Wednesday the new Geffen wing shut down for Dior’s show. Pastel vintage Cadillacs were stationed in its vast, brutalist space like marooned satellites from another era. Celebrities included Al Pacino, Anya Taylor-Joy (pictured), Jeff Goldblum, Lauren Hutton, Sabrina Carpenter, Greta Lee, Mikey Madison, Miley Cyrus, Tracee Ellis Ross, Grace Gummer… the list goes on. Sunday Rose (photographed), Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban’s 16-year-old daughter, was on the catwalk.
Dior has been cosily embedded with Hollywood since its inception in 1946. Audrey Hepburn, Ava Gardner, Lauren Bacall, Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe were all clients. In 1950, Marlene Dietrich insisted on wearing Dior couture in Hitchcock’s Stage Fright. “No Dior, no Dietrich” she countered when the studio balked at the cost. It was reimagined for this collection in black and white and worn with a ruched maxi satin skirt.
Dior has more recognisable codes than Hollywood has sequels. Anderson’s task is to give them a fresh spin. One Bar jacket came with an asymmetric hem. Another dissolved into fringing. Several had been turned into coats. Dior’s saddle bag comes with car charms and paint finishes inspired by those vintage cars.
Textures are so rich, they border on the hallucinogenic. Are those jeans made from bouclé tweed? No, they’re treated denim. Some have silver chains. Sheepskins look like moire taffeta. Donegal tweeds were boiled to make them softer (this is not what happens when my washing machine accidentally boils wool).
As for eclectic: one moment we had Jean Harlow bias-cut gowns, then drop waists, then cotton shirts with numbers printed on them – the results of a collaboration with Edward Ruscha, America’s greatest living artist.
As for Christian Dior’s beloved flowers – Anderson is fully in, with rosette-embellished bags and shoes. Handmade silk California poppies cascaded down column dresses. Scarves composed of chrysanthemum and hydrangea rosettes were flung over silk blouses – the deluxe way to take a look from day to night.
Anderson blurs the lines between formal and informal, day and night, men’s and women’s wear. Add Philip Treacy’s (another Irishman) typography millinery into the mix (inspired by the hats Treacy designed for the late stylist Isabella Blow) and you have the new Dior: eccentric and as escapist as a Busby Berkeley musical.
“I like irony, I like fun in fashion,” says Anderson. “Ultimately it’s about personal style.”
Chanel’s Cruise 2027 show by Lisa Armstrong
Chanel is on such a high right now that the championing of older women, both on and off the catwalk by its artistic director, Matthieu Blazey, carries real power.
At this cruise show in Biarritz, staged in the town’s imposing Art Deco casino, against a swathe of white-crested Atlantic Ocean, 50-year-old Stephanie Cavilli (photographed), grey hairs left uncoloured; Christina Chung, the elegant 60-year-old mother of seven; and Laura Ponte, 53, walked under the spotlights, devoid of obvious filler and Botox too.
Chanel
On the front row, Tilda Swinton (65, photographed) and Sofia Coppola (a mere 54) were clearly in the less-is-more camp as well. Lest we forget, Chanel has a multi-billion cosmetics business, so this no make-up-make-up aesthetic means something. This is a brand that believes in synergy across all its products. We’re entering the era of “old money” make-up.
Also present: Nicole Kidman (58, photographed), the naturalness or otherwise of whose appearance is consistently debated, makes another point perhaps: women are refusing to become invisible as they age. Emma Balfour, one of the original Nineties waifs, was in the show too. At 47 she’s a stripling by today’s standards, but back in the Nineties, a modelling career at her age was an anomaly.
Under Blazy, Chanel is becoming less a uniform and more a dazzling array of possibilities, from the black “revenge” dress that opened the show (worn by model Noor Khan [pictured] and based on an original Chanel from around 1930) to the skirts, which are as much the star as the jackets. Variations include slouchy, just-below-the-knee styles, wraps and kilts, and the flamboyantly fringed and ruffled.
This, Blazy’s fifth collection, is as sophisticated in detail and craft as his previous ones. It’s hard to credit that just a year ago, the Chanel studio designed a resort collection that featured towelling short sets. Cute, but on a different level from the skills apparent here.
Biarritz, which was the playground of the super-rich before the First World War, possesses to this day a grand opulence Bournemouth or Eastbourne would kill for. It’s where Chanel opened her first clothing boutique in 1915 (her store in Deauville sold hats), which she only closed with the breakout of war in 1939. Chanel drew inspiration from Biarritz’s bathing costumes, jersey beachwear and sailor’s outfits, turning them into daywear and rewiring fashion in the process. Blazy, in turn, has transported her designs to 2026, casting her drop-waisted silhouettes in new, often specially woven viscoses, jacquards and silks, often plain from the front but embellished with bows at the back or sides.
A floaty, polka-dot burgundy and white skirt suit had barely been altered from its original of almost a century ago. Newspaper prints alluded to Chanel’s penchant for reading newspapers, “just like a man”, as she used to say. Logos, which seem a bit obvious for the original Gabrielle Chanel, were taken directly from the archives. “She was one of the first to use them this big on clothes,” Blazy explains. “But they weren’t simply branding. They were – and are – part of the construction.”
Bags come in raffia, stripes and tweed beading, shoes in glitter or patent. Some gold sandals had no sole, only a cap for the heel – a concept so outlandish it’s bound to catch on among Chanel’s most hard-core fans.
Long dresses shimmered like mermaid scales; colours were saturated and far richer than they have previously been at Chanel. The fact that the pop-up Chanel boutique – its first in Biarritz since 1939 – has attracted 1,000 clients a day since it opened earlier this week suggests its new breadth of vision – neither minimalist nor maximalist, but an invitation to celebrate individuality – is cutting through.
