After the Screening, It’s the After-Party! Inside Gucci’s The Tiger Dinner With Alex Consani, Demi Moore, and More
Demna’s reputation as fashion’s resident mischief-maker was sealed with his opening salvo in Gucci’s reinvention. Yesterday’s lookbook drop proved the point: in less than 24 hours, it had been sliced, diced, psychoanalyzed, and picked apart with forensic obsession. La Famiglia (as the lookbook was dubbed) is a sardonic parade of Italian archetypes, from “La Bomba’s” provincial bombshell glam to “La Sciura’s” piccolo-borghese propriety, all the way to “La Milanesa,” who was swathed in pre-PETA yards of mink. But it was nothing more than the amuse-bouche, a sly prelude to tonight’s real main course: the screening of The Tiger, a short film he handed over to the surreal imaginations of Oscar-winning director Spike Jonze and Halina Reijn of Babygirl, starring Demi Moore, Edward Norton, Ed Harris, Keke Palmer, and Elliot Page, among others. Hardly a cast of newcomers—more like A-listers on speed dial.
The Tiger (Moore, in a starring titular role) prowls around as Barbara Gucci—Head of Gucci International, Chairman of California (yes, apparently that’s a job title), and full-time mistress of an immaculate façade. For her birthday, she summons her children and a very important guest (a famous Vanity Fair writer whose books are known for being tediously interminable) to the family estate.
On the surface, Barbara has it all under control: the brand, the guests, the perfect hostess routine, motherhood-on-schedule, and, obviously, the perfect new Demna-fied Gucci wardrobe. Beneath it all, she’s juggling like a circus act on a tightrope. Naturally, the evening doesn’t stick to script. One crack in the polish (and many doses of an adaptogen-fueled wellness tincture in the champagne) and suddenly the empire of appearances begins to wobble, crumbling into a sort of dystopian psychedelic nightmare, forcing the family to improvise a new version of “together.”
The screening took place in a movie theater dressed up in brown plush that whispered, yes, I’m sumptuous and expensive. Demna held court with François-Henri Pinault, new Kering CEO Luca De Meo, and Gucci’s freshly crowned CEO Francesca Bellettini, plus a row full of celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow and Serena Williams. When asked in which of the lookbook’s characters he saw himself, Demna shot back: “Il Ragazzo. But please—not the Il Ragazzo della Porta Accanto (The Guy Next Door). And definitely not Il Figo (The Cool One). That would be a bit too much for me.”
Whether he likes it or not, Demna is Milan’s new Cool One. He said he liked Spike Jonze for the job because, “I’ve admired his work for a long time, since I saw Adaptation. And Her is probably one of my favorite movies, conceptually. And I really wanted to work with someone who could bring a strong artistic dimension to it. So it’s not an ad, it has a depth and artistic point of view.” He added, “It’s a film that has a very important and deep message.”