KATE MOSS TURNS “WICKED GAME” INTO CINEMA FOR GUCCI PRIMAVERA

Kate Moss has never needed a runway to remind the world why she endures. Put her in front of a camera, give the image enough room to breathe, and fashion can become something larger: part performance, part memory, part pop culture.

Gucci’s Primavera campaign understands that instinct perfectly. At its centre is Moss in the short film And We Shall Dance Again, directed by Johan Renck and set to Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game”. It is not presented as a conventional fashion film so much as a slowly unfolding piece of cinema, with Moss becoming the emotional axis around which the room begins to change.

AND WE SHALL DANCE AGAIN

The film opens in a dim, almost suspended interior. Strangers sit apart, watching, waiting and measuring the space between one another. Moss stands at the microphone, lip-syncing to Isaak’s unmistakable baritone as the atmosphere holds its tension.

Then, gradually, the room begins to wake up. Glances are exchanged. Bodies turn towards one another. What first feels detached becomes intimate, and what begins as observation develops into movement. One by one, the guests find their way towards the dance floor.

Tension becomes desire; desire becomes connection. By the time the room begins to move, the campaign has shifted away from simply showing clothes and towards something more emotionally charged: the idea of allowing oneself to feel again.

That is where the title gains its resonance. Primavera is Italian for spring, but Gucci uses the word less as a seasonal label than as a metaphor for renewal. The campaign is built around awakening, rebirth and the possibility that romance, intimacy and joy can return after a period of distance.

DEMNA’S GUCCI MOVES FROM RUNWAY TO IMAGE

For Demna, the concept was conceived with the rhythm of a music video rather than a traditional luxury campaign. That choice matters. Music allows the clothes to exist inside a wider emotional world, while Renck’s direction gives the film a sense of narrative without ever over-explaining what the audience should feel.

Primavera is also an important milestone for the House because it gives a major campaign identity to the collection that followed Demna’s debut Gucci show. The silhouettes, textures and materials introduced on the runway are now placed into a living environment, seen not as isolated fashion statements but on people who appear to be caught in the middle of a story.

The result is a useful indication of how Demna’s Gucci may communicate going forward. There is glamour, but it is not static. There is polish, but also strangeness, tension and a willingness to let the image linger. The clothes are important, yet the campaign does not ask them to do all the work.

A MODERN RENAISSANCE IN PORTRAIT

Alongside Renck’s film, photographer Michal Chelbin has created a portrait series with a modern Renaissance sensibility. The compositions draw on the stillness, posture and visual authority of classical painting, while the cast brings together figures from fashion, music, cinema, sport and contemporary culture.

Tom Brady, Shawn Mendes, Jin, NINGNING, Xiao Zhan, Alex Consani, Lee Young Ae, Rico Nasty, EsDeeKid and Tarzzan form part of that wider Primavera world. The casting is deliberately broad, replacing the idea of one fixed Gucci archetype with a collection of very different personalities.

Each portrait can stand alone, but together they extend the central campaign idea: identity does not have to be singular, and elegance does not have to arrive in one recognisable form.

KATE MOSS MAKES IT A CULTURAL MOMENT

Yet Moss is the person who carries the film. Her presence brings with it more than three decades of fashion history without allowing the campaign to feel nostalgic. She remains one of the rare models whose image can reference the past and still feel completely current.

That longevity comes partly from her refusal to over-perform celebrity. Moss has always understood the power of withholding something from the camera. In And We Shall Dance Again, that quality works beautifully: she is at once performer and observer, glamorous without appearing overly composed, and central to the scene without needing to dominate every frame.

There is also something fitting about “Wicked Game” as the musical spine of the film. The song carries a sense of longing, danger and romantic inevitability, qualities that sit naturally inside the campaign’s progression from restraint to release. Gucci does not need to turn that symbolism into a slogan; the mood does the work.

What emerges is less a conventional seasonal advertisement than a compact piece of fashion cinema. Primavera may introduce a new collection, but its strongest impression comes from atmosphere: a room, a song, a group of strangers and the gradual possibility of connection.

Kate Moss has appeared in countless campaigns, editorials and era-defining images. This one works because Gucci does not simply ask her to wear Primavera. It lets her give the campaign a pulse.

Some people appear in a fashion campaign. Kate Moss still has the ability to make one feel like a moment in culture.

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