déjà démodé
things right now 031—week of 04.08.25
Demna at Gucci or 032c’s Transmissions
My good friend Jordan Richman has a new column up at 032c addressing the departure of Balenciaga creative director Demna Gvasalia and his new role at Gucci. His first question is most pertinent, how much does the luxury consumer actually care about the creative director? Probably less than we think:
I once heard a statistic suggesting that the majority of luxury heritage brand customers don’t even know the names of the creative directors behind the brands they buy. If that’s accurate, why do we in cultural media care—and write these insipid think pieces—about designers departing brands? Nevertheless, I persist. Demna is leaving Balenciaga for Gucci. After ten years, his departure marks the end of an era. During his tenure, he delivered “normcore,” “cringecore,” and ultimately, the end of the “-core” suffix altogether as fashion moves in the direction of something more “boom boom.” The fashion world has not stopped buzzing. New fashion “news” Instagram accounts arise all the time, spreading “information” at the pace of the impending measles pandemic and ruins the exclusives of major media companies—sometimes by several hours, other times by six months. The never-ending game of creative director musical chairs has left the business exhausted, and with so much instability, it has spoiled what was once the lifeblood of the industry—gossip.
Furthermore, should we expect meteoric growth at Gucci to rival Balenciaga’s performance over the last decade? Maybe not, when we consider that Gucci is already a behemoth:
When Demna joined Balenciaga in 2015, following Alexander Wang’s exit, the brand's sales were approximately $350 million. By 2022, sales had surged to around $2 billion, marking a substantial increase under his leadership. Demna won numerous awards— including, International Ready-to-Wear Designer of the Year and Accessories Designer of the Year at the Fashion Awards; International Designer of the Year and International Women’s Designer of the Year at the CFDA Fashion Awards—and was named a Leader of Change in Creativity by the British Fashion Council. He was also listed among Time 100’s Most Influential People in the World. But after all the scandals and near cancellation, the golden Balenciaga cage of the great provocateur Demna had become a brokedown palace. Can we expect Demna will return to form with a second act at Gucci? The brand’s CEO said of the upcoming designer, “Demna will lead the House toward renewed fashion authority and enduring cultural relevance.” The finance world, however, appears uncertain, with Kering’s shares trading down over 11 percent in Paris at the Bourse the morning following the group’s announcement of Demna’s promotion.
Read the entire column.
No Coherent Elite or The Atlantic’s "comfort class"
America is not just suffering from a wealth gap; America has the equivalent of a class apartheid. Our systems—of education, credentialing, hiring, housing, and electing officials—are dominated and managed by members of a “comfort class.” These are people who were born into lives of financial stability. They graduate from college with little to no debt, which enables them to advance in influential but relatively low-wage fields—academia, media, government, or policy work. Many of them rarely interact or engage in a meaningful way with people living in different socioeconomic strata than their own. And their disconnect from the lives of the majority has expanded to such a chasm that their perspective—and authority—may no longer be relevant.
Emphasis mine. When I bang on about America’s lack of a coherent elite (one that has access to social, financial, and cultural capital) this is the outcome I am pointing at: no one has authority. People certainly have financial capital. Our billionaire class is conspicuous. People certainly have cultural capital. The coastal culture industries have been diminished—but not destroyed—by the internet. Social capital is trickier though. Does anyone trust our institutions? Are the values they claim to represent broadly respected? You can debate the degree of decline, but no one disagrees that the line is trending down.
Gonzalez continues:
Here’s the broader situation: 30 percent of American households are classified by Pew as low income, and 19 percent are upper income. And yet a 2024 Gallup survey found that only 12 percent of Americans identified themselves as "lower class" and just 2 percent as "upper class." In short: No one wants to be perceived as poor, and no one rich ever feels rich enough.
This is an issue of geography as much as anything. Over the last thirty years, the U.S. economy has clustered into a handful of super-performer metropolitan areas and stagnated everywhere else. The "upper [middle] class" really does feel strained by the stratospheric cost of living in our super-performer cities. They’re some of the most expensive places in the world.
But for those whose primary economic issue isn’t the rising cost of an "[upper] middle class" lifestyle on either coast, these complaints don’t inspire solidarity. They breed resentment.
De-Extinction or dire wolves
The excitement over scientists’ ability to 'de-extinct' dire wolves makes it almost certain we will get something like a real world Jurassic Park. As in the Crichton classic, these are hybrids: grey wolves whose genes have been spliced with DNA recovered from fossils of the currently extinct dire wolf. In Jurassic Park, they mix dinosaur DNA with frogs with…errr…dire consequences.
Apologies for the pun.
Here are the pups at a Game of Thrones-themed photoshoot. Dire wolves make an appearance in the George R.R. Martin series.
