Milan Fashion Week 2025 saw a shake-up this season, not with a runway, but with a film. Gucci’s new creative director Demna unveiled his debut collection inside a theatre where The Tiger—directed by Spike Jonze and Halina Reijn—served as both spectacle and set.
Among those cast into this unconventional stage was Bollywood star Alia Bhatt, Gucci’s global ambassador, who arrived cloaked in fur and controversy.
Rather than sending models down a catwalk, Demna chose to present his first Gucci collection as cinema. The film blurred the line between performance and fashion, transforming garments into characters and the audience into participants. It was an audacious format shift, and one that gave Bhatt’s appearance the weight of a starring role.
Alia Bhatt’s look was heavy with Gucci codes and cinematic flair.
She wore a long, shaggy black fur coat from the “La Famiglia” collection, cinched at the waist with a gold chain tipped in the brand’s double-G charm. Beneath, a satin slip in pale gold peeked through—lace-trimmed, body-skimming, the kind of lingerie-inspired silhouette the house has long used to blur private and public dress.
Monogram tights, sharp black pumps, and the archival Bamboo 1947 bag tethered the drama to Gucci’s lineage, while her beauty styling—center-parted hair pressed straight, lids smoked in copper, lips muted—kept the focus firmly on the coat’s oversized presence.
It was an outfit that embodied Demna’s thesis for Gucci’s new chapter: clothes as characters, drama as narrative. After five years of couture experiments at Balenciaga, he arrived in Milan intent on turning fashion into theatre. Bhatt’s appearance was scripted into that staging, her fur-draped silhouette designed to command attention as much as any screen projection.
Attention, however, does not always mean applause.
Online, the reaction split swiftly. Some netizens praised her for anchoring an Indian presence within one of the season’s most daring fashion experiments, while others found the proportions overwhelming.
Fashion critics on social media claimed the look lacked originality, with unflattering comparisons to other global stars, including Deepika Padukone. For every admirer calling her ensemble bold, another called it borrowed.
Yet beyond the noise, Bhatt’s Milan turn matters. As the first Indian to hold Gucci’s ambassador title, her presence at a debut as seismic as Demna’s sends a signal about the brand’s evolving global strategy. Luxury fashion is no longer only about Paris and Milan. It is also about Mumbai, Delhi, and the audiences watching from afar.
Whether loved or lambasted, Alia Bhatt’s role in Milan highlighted the point: Demna’s Gucci is not tiptoeing onto the stage. It is demanding the spotlight, and Alia Bhatt, fur coat trailing, was part of that opening act.
Do you think Alia Bhatt nailed Demna’s Gucci debut, or was the look too heavy-handed? Join the conversation on X and Instagram, and visit Lyrical Muse for more fashion x culture stories.
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