WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE LONDON Gucci Cruise 2025
“To explore a creative direction is to bring yourself into an already-existing space and show it through your eyes, working from room to room with the goal of reshaping the building again. We choose London for the Cruise show, knowing that was the right choice. I owe a lot to this city, it has welcomed and listened to me. 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. Today we are here to celebrate that spirit. Tate Modern is the perfect cross-section to narrate the city’s essence, with its great Turbine Hall that welcomes and gathers everyone, and with the Tanks, generators of ideas.”
The Gucci Cruise 2025 fashion show frames it through the mind’s eye of Gucci Creative Director Sabato De Sarno. His memories and recollections of places, people and ideas are woven into a new story, reflective of both the deep and meaningful connections to the city through Gucci’s heritage, and his own personal experiences.
Sabato De Sarno The Gucci Cruise 2025 fashion show frames it through the mind’s eye of Gucci Creative Director Sabato De Sarno. His memories and recollections of places, people and ideas are woven into a new story, reflective of both the deep and meaningful connections to the city through Gucci’s heritage, and his own personal experiences. The show takes place at the Tate Modern, a public space that connects different people with culture, a diverse and unique arena for exchange, for unexpected juxtapositions and unanticipated rendezvous. The same was true of The Savoy hotel for Guccio Gucci, inspiring his creation a century ago. The architecture of the building itself represents modernity - function rethought, as a frame for art. Further reconsidered, for this show the outside is brought in: the bare concrete Tanks are invaded by a poetic panorama of greenery. Man and nature, sentimental versus minimal, it again embraces duality, demonstrating two sides of London, two sides of life - a symbolic antithesis echoed in the collection itself.
“Fashion design is a means to study, explore, interpret. After having expressed my ideas of desirability and sensuality, this is another piece of me, more romantic, more contradictory. I like taking something that we think we know and breaking away from its rules, taking it as far as it can go, without ever distorting it. Bringing it towards its opposite and finding harmony.” Sabato De Sarno Dichotomies: rigor and extravagance, strength in delicacy, Englishness with an Italian accent. Echoes of inspirations, ideas of our experiences of a city and its culture expressed through the clothes we wear. Codes of dressing - of propriety and properness - here are subverted, used as a means of provocation.
Short coats tailored in technical gabardine have a sharp precision, juxtaposed with wild chamomile flora motifs, a softness against the body. These flower embroideries are given new dimensions, executed in 3-D in laser-cut organza, assembled by hand, or hand-moulded shaped sequins, freely moving around the body. A feeling of protection and preciousness in outerwear set in opposition with chiffons, ruffles, lace - evening meeting everyday. Forever, a sense of tension between different ideas and ideals, different identities. A celebration of the individual. Those contradictions can give different points of view - twisting archetypes, challenging preconceptions. The sartorial fuses with workwear, street with salon. The fragile can become tough - the iconic lobster-clasp is transposed to a feminine pearl necklace, both function and decoration, like a badge of belonging. Horsebit details across suede pay tribute to the House’s link with the equestrian world. Denim is relaxed, while gestures are transformed through flat shoes - ballerinas, creepers. Attitudes can be altered and perceptions shifted.
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. Drawn from Italy of the early 70’s, the Gucci Blondie bag in leather or toile collides preciousness and pragmatism: held on the shoulder, its emblematic logo is leather-clad or enabled with a technique drawn from Gucci’s jewelry. Embroideries, tailoring, leatherworking, the hand. Here, craft and fashion can unify, crossing culture – they help create a new form of universal language, a shared human vocabulary.
Show key information below:
Soundtrack
Fuga - Yakamoto Kotzuga
The Power of Love - Frankie Goes to Hollywood
Heart of Glass (Crabtree Remix) - Blondie, Philip Glass
Devotion - Tirzah, Coby Sey
Sun – Koreless
See Now Buy Now
The Gucci Blondie took centre stage on the runway with Sabato De Sarno presenting it in his new iteration. The bag will be carried by celebrities including Debbie Harry.
Three variations of the bag from the runway will be available for immediate purchase through a See Now Buy Now initiative in very limited stores (including London network) from 14th May-26th May)
Product narrative:
In the early 1970s, the House created a new rounded iteration of the archival Interlocking G, the Gucci Blondie. The first bags, echoing the liberated spirit of the decade, featured the new emblem and were made in suede, a material which was common for the House to use at the time. The distinctive design bridged eras at the Cruise 2025 show in London, where it’s styled to be slung effortlessly over the shoulder, crafted from Tuscan leather or canvas with the GG monogram. Two versions of the signature logo are presented, one covered in leather and the other enameled following a technique the House used on jewelry in the 1970s. The Gucci Blondie bag, with the perfect roundness of its emblem, is instantly identifiable, weaving together House stories, creating a fusion of nostalgia and modernity.
Show set information
Starting from the Spring/Summer 2020 show in September 2019, Gucci’s physical shows have been ISO 20121 certified. Gucci extended this certification in 2020 to include the sustainable management of the presentations of its collections for fashion shows and for digital events, as well as for advertising campaigns. As a best practice under this certification to extend the life of sets, Gucci is donating a tapestry of around 10,000 plants - part of the Gucci Cruise 2025 Fashion Show set hosted at the Tate Modern - to community projects in London, including the initiative Life Under the Westway cultivated by not-for-profit organisation Grow to Know. If you would like any further information on this initiative, please let us know and we can share.
All high res images can be downloaded here.
Theo Bakana