Gucci Freefall!

There was a time (The Alessandro Michele Era) when Gucci was the crown jewel of Kering, the overachieving child everyone bragged about at corporate dinner parties. Today? Gucci feels less like a luxury maison and more like a case study in executive dysfunction. Between leadership meltdowns, collapsing sales, and internal competition cannibalizing whatever oxygen is left in the room, the brand is spiraling into an identity crisis.  

Starting with the boardroom’s favorite sport: high-stakes executive musical chairs. CEOs rotate in and out, each new one arriving with an “urgent transformation plan” that fizzles out faster than a fashion trend. Creative directors are swapped like seasonal candles. Merchandising heads, strategy chiefs, and “innovation leaders” come and go, each whispering the same delusional tagline: This time, we’ll fix Gucci. It hasn’t happened.

Meanwhile, sales are swan-diving. Repeated double-digit declines have turned Gucci from Kering’s money-printing machine into its most awkward child. But the real comedy, if you enjoy corporate tragedies, is how Gucci now competes not with Prada or Louis Vuitton, but with its own siblings inside Kering. While Gucci flails, Saint Laurent is thriving, sleek, sexy, and stealing the spotlight with the quiet confidence of a brand that knows what it wants to be. Bottega Veneta keeps ascending, turning out minimalist leather fantasies that consumers can’t stop throwing money at. Even Balenciaga, despite its scandals, somehow maintains more cultural gravity than Gucci’s current lineup of “would anyone wear this?” runway experiments.

Internally, insiders describe a culture that borders on farce: strategy whiplash, contradictory mandates, teams unsure which competing vision to follow because every new executive contradicts the last one. Merchandising doesn’t know what story they’re supposed to tell. Retail teams are told to “push newness,” except no one can define what “newness” is. The result is a brand aesthetic that feels like it was created in committee by people who forgot Gucci’s DNA

Consumers, unsurprisingly, have moved on. They’ll happily buy Saint Laurent’s razor-sharp tailoring or Bottega’s understated leather masterpieces because those brands feel stable… something Gucci hasn’t felt in years. Luxury clients don’t mind “weird.” They mind “directionless.” Gucci has been the latter for years now. That’s the tragic punchline: Gucci has everything it needs to be great, heritage, artisans and name recognition, but no leadership with a coherent vision or the staying power to execute it. Until someone stops rearranging executives like chess pieces and starts steering the ship, Gucci will continue its spectacular slide, overshadowed not just by its competitors, but by the very brands sitting next to it at the Kering family table. Mamma Mia!