The China Mail - 'Brilliant artist': Provocateur Demna takes on slumping Gucci

The 44-year-old, who fled the war-wracked Georgian region of Abkhazia as a child and dropped his surname "Gvasalia" in 2021, will bow out with a last show for Balenciaga on Wednesday before switching to Gucci -- both firms owned by France's luxury giant Kering.

"Demna's contribution to the industry, to Balenciaga, and to the group's success has been tremendous," Kering chairman and CEO Francois-Henri Pinault said at the time. "His creative power is exactly what Gucci needs."

Investors were not so convinced and shares in Kering, which counts on Gucci as its main profit generator, fell around 12 percent on the day of the announcement before slumping even further.

Other more established and mainstream designers from Hedi Slimane, Maria Grazia Chiuri or Pierpaolo Piccioli had been linked to the vacancy.

Some analysts have questioned whether Demna's recipe for success at Balenciaga -- which leant heavily on provocative, streetwear-influenced design and showmanship -- can be replicated at the more classic Italian house.

"He is iconoclast and ironic, which is good to attract attention toward a small brand like Balenciaga," Luca Solca, a luxury analyst at the Bernstein brokerage, wrote afterwards. "However, we are not sure the strategy would work as well for a bigger brand."

- 'Absolutely uncompromising' -

Demna's final show for Balenciaga will take place on Wednesday during Haute Couture fashion week in Paris and he will join the Italian label the very next day.

During a decade at the Spanish-born but Paris-based brand, he drove sales and attention sharply higher with a mix of headline-grabbing creations as well as personal publicity -- not always positive.

He achieved notoriety with his $2,000 "Ikea" bag, a luxury leather version of the 99-cent original.

He followed it up with an $1,800 garbage bag -- the so-called "trash pouch" -- in a show in March 2022 that was dedicated to Ukrainian refugees.

Other daring designs included a head-to-toe black shroud that US reality television star Kim Kardashian -- a personal friend -- wore to the Met Gala in 2021.

A-list celebrity endorsements have been plentiful, but have not always worked out.

Kanye West —- Kardashian's ex and another friend -- opened Balenciaga's show in October 2022 shortly before the first of several anti-Semitic outbursts, and the group had to cut ties with the rapper.

Demna's lowest point came in February 2023 when he was forced to apologise for an ad campaign that appeared to reference child abuse and had underage models in what looked like bondage gear.

He has plenty of fans among Gen Z tastemakers, however.

"I've always gravitated toward Balenciaga, because I love Demna's vision," British pop sensation Charli XCX told British Vogue last year.

"He feels like he's speaking his own language, which is absolutely uncompromising, and to me, that's what makes a brilliant artist."

- 'Aggression and darkness' -

Annual sales at Balenciaga were estimated to be $350 million when he arrived and had surged to about $2 billion in 2022, according to GQ magazine.

Gucci's fortunes have headed in the other direction: they slid 23 percent last year, prompting Kering to fire creative director Sabato de Sarno after only two years in the job.

Demna is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp in Belgium and went on to work at Maison Margiela and Vuitton.

He co-founded the label Vetements with his brother in 2014, a year before he was named to the top job at Balenciaga.

For many years, his childhood trauma fleeing pro-Russian separatists in his homeland affected his work, but he told Vanity Fair in 2021 that counselling, meditation and exercise had helped exorcise some demons.

"Fashion used to feel like a battle for me. That is why there was a lot of aggression and darkness in what I did. Today I feel at peace with the system," he said.

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