Where Does Gucci Go Now?
The New York Times
It’s time for the brand to take some risks.
Ancora red is out; emerald green is in. Or so it seemed during the Gucci show at the opening of Milan Fashion Week, where it was as if Sabato De Sarno, the designer who abruptly left his job earlier this month, had practically never even been there.
Fashion, it turns out, is fully capable of its own revisionist history. It’s that kind of moment.
Mr. De Sarno was not mentioned in the show notes, which instead spoke of “many owners and guardians” and “generational shifts.” His signature shade of burgundy, which he named “ancora” after the Italian word for “again” — as in, “I want it again, again,” an idea that proved more like wishful thinking than reality — was likewise gone.
At the end of the show, the design team came out en masse in matching green sweatshirts to take a bow. The runway formed two enormous interlocking Gs that were reflected in the mirrored ceiling, where the audience could also see the usual front row celebrity crew — Jessica Chastain, Dev Patel, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jannik Sinner — as well as a live orchestra playing an original score by Justin Hurwitz, the composer behind “La La Land.”
No matter who is behind the curtain, the brand lives on. Even if in a holding pattern. Even if in a mishmash of a show that seemed as unconvincing as the man whose contributions it appeared to be trying to erase.
For still on view was the style that Mr. De Sarno brought to Gucci when he was hired in 2023 and charged with cleansing the brand of Alessandro Michele’s excess and turning it into a “timeless luxury” name. Not surprisingly, perhaps, given that up until about two weeks ago, Mr. De Sarno was still designing the collection. The team simply added in a little bit of history from here, references from there.
