GUCCI is celebrating its double G logo’s 50^th anniversary this year, which uses the initials of its founder, Guccio Gucci. The luxury house’s Fall/Winter 2025 fashion show for Milan Fashion Week last week showed its hold on fashion and the times through a presentation on a runway shaped like their double G. Academy Award-winning composer Justin Hurwitz opened the show, conducting an orchestra through a score he penned himself.

BusinessWorld was invited to watch the show’s livestream on Feb. 25.

The lineup of styles for women and men was drawn up by its design studio as the Kering-owned Italian label awaits its next designer.

The first look was rather drab: a fur coat conceals a gray skirt with a pale purple top, the only pop of color coming from a top-handled yellow bag. We want to contrast it with a finale look, but by the show’s engineering, it simply did not exist. Models continued to walk through the runway’s circuit as the first look came out again, perhaps due to the show’s theme, “Continuum.” As a release explained: “A continuum of craft, taste and culture that passes through time, the fashion house is one that has many owners and guardians: craftspeople and artisans, creative directors and designers, communicators and customers, each with their own histories entwined.”

In 2020, Gucci’s Fall/Winter fashion show showed extravagant eras on the precipice of failure: the 1900s before World War I; the 1930s going into World War II. The world pandemic that caused a lockdown followed soon after. The world doesn’t look too well with this new presentation of Gucci, showing traditional men’s suiting and serious, sober looks for women.

A lot of the looks presented are reminiscent of the sober but sexy designs of the house’s past Creative Director Tom Ford, who ran Gucci from 1995 to 2004. Mr. Ford’s lean into suiting and hard shapes in accessories would have been perfect for the financial disaster of 2008: then, young professionals co-opted workwear looks for leisure (perhaps to show off employment during an economic crisis; or to economize by combining wardrobes for work and play). We saw this in several looks for Gucci’s 2025 Fall/Winter show: think sexy office looks like a brown shirtdress with one of the house’s horsebits, nubby tweed coats and suits (though opulent fur still made a statement), a pink suit with a red scarf trailing behind, a sack coat, a burnt orange velvet dress with a pussy bow (this is less Tom Ford though, but more Frida Giannini during her 2006 to 2015 tenure), oversized gray blazers, and yin-and-yang turtleneck looks in all black and all white for the men.

“Today, the collection could be seen as foundational, that says something of Gucci in its codes and beliefs both past, present and future; things that have meant something to many, adopted and adapted in their own way,” said a statement.

Kering is in the process of revamping Gucci, its biggest label, and earlier this month announced the abrupt departure of designer Sabato de Sarno after less than two years. De Sarno shifted Gucci’s focus to more classic, minimalist designs, and emphasized a glossy red color in his collections.

Speaking to journalists before the show, Gucci Chief Executive Stefano Cantino did not give precise timing for the upcoming change of creative director, and said executives were focused on “working for the good of the brand.”

Previously one of the industry’s biggest success stories, with fast growth between 2016 and 2020, the century-old label fell behind when shoppers’ tastes shifted away from the baroque, gender-fluid designs by Alessandro Michele. Analysts do not expect a rebound until next year. — Joseph L. Garcia with a report from Reuters