Gucci Fall Winter 2025-2026 “A Masterclass from Past”. Story by Eleonora de Gray, Editor-in-Chief of RUNWAY MAGAZINE. Photo Courtesy: Gucci. Video: Runway Magazine.

Gucci Fall Winter 2025-2026: A Masterclass in Running Out of Ideas

Gucci has done it. They’ve taken a step so far back in time that they’ve landed in the exact moment the brand first gained recognition—only now, it’s less of a triumphant return and more of a museum tour gone horribly wrong. Call it “back to basics,” call it “heritage appreciation,” but what we just witnessed was a collection that feels less like a creative endeavor and more like a desperate séance, conjuring up Gucci’s past with no attempt at giving it a reason to exist in the present.

The grand gesture of the night? A runway shaped like the Interlocking G, in honor of the logo’s 50th anniversary and Guccio Gucci himself. But while some brands use anniversaries as a launchpad for reinvention, Gucci has opted for full submission, presenting a collection that’s not just inspired by the archives—it is the archives, unedited, untouched, and unbothered by the past five decades of fashion evolution.

When ‘Tribute’ Becomes a Trap

Let’s start with the womenswear. A dreamy lineup of pale pink and violet coats drifted over lace and silk lingerie-style pieces, serving up a vision of fragile femininity that would have been groundbreaking—if this were 1955. Unfortunately, it’s not, and this sheer-slip-and-coat pairing has been exhausted by countless brands, most notably Fendi, who at least had the decency to do something interesting with it. Gucci, on the other hand, has simply played a game of “find and replace” with its own history, swapping out the years but keeping the same tired formula.

And then came the fur—fake, of course, because even nostalgia has its limits. The jackets and coats were clearly intended to bring a sense of opulence, a textural contrast against the delicate underpinnings, but instead, they just reinforced the nagging feeling that this collection was cobbled together from a Pinterest board titled “Vintage Gucci Aesthetic.” If the goal was to modernize archival elements, then someone in the atelier must have forgotten to actually do it.

For anyone still holding out hope for innovation, Gucci had one last surprise: pencil skirts in the most aggressively uninspired shade of grey imaginable. Meant to inject some corporate chic, these stiff silhouettes screamed less “power dressing” and more “mid-level management at a company that still uses fax machines.”

Menswear: The Lost Boys of the 1960s

When ideas run dry, worshiping the founder is always an easy fallback. And what walked down this symbolic runway? Velvet suits that look like they were stolen from Jean-Paul Belmondo’s dressing room in Le Magnifique, glittering leather crossbody coats that seem to be trying (and failing) to be edgy. It’s nostalgia without the reinvention, history without the vision—just a greatest hits album on repeat.

Surely, the menswear would offer some relief—an unexpected twist, a rebellious streak, something. Instead, Gucci doubled down on its time-capsule aesthetic, trotting out glossy crossbody moto jackets that looked like they had been pulled from a forgotten Y2K biker flick. Were they supposed to be edgy? Maybe. But when placed next to an entire collection that refuses to acknowledge the existence of the 21st century, they just came across as a last-minute attempt to inject some modernity.

And then, there were the long leather coats. Sleek, dramatic, glistening under the runway lights—if this were a costume fitting for an old-school Italian mobster film, these coats would be Oscar-worthy. But this isn’t cinema, it’s fashion, and draping your models in crime-lord cosplay doesn’t automatically make it forward-thinking. It makes it lazy—a throwback aesthetic with no new point of view, no subversion, no attempt to evolve.

Gucci’s Greatest Hits—On Repeat

The real problem isn’t that Gucci is looking to its past. It’s that they refuse to do anything with it. There’s no remix, no reinterpretation, no evolution—just a well-funded reenactment of what once was. Other brands have dipped into their archives and emerged with something fresh (see Prada’s ability to make the past feel urgent and relevant). Gucci, on the other hand, has chosen to sit inside a self-imposed time loop, as if the only way forward is to walk directly backward.

And let’s talk about that runway. If the Interlocking G was meant to symbolize Gucci’s legacy, then it also functioned as a visual metaphor for this collection’s biggest flaw: it went in circles. Nothing about this show suggested a step toward the future—just an endless loop of nostalgia, designed for an audience that prefers fashion as a history lesson rather than an art form.

So, congratulations, Gucci. You didn’t just pay tribute to your past—you became permanently stuck in it. And if this is the future of fashion, then we might as well start selling time machines. At least that would be innovative.

See All Looks Gucci Fall Winter 2025-2026