A storm rolled over Milan as Sabato de Sarno’s big debut for Gucci took place, thwarting plans to use the city’s streets to present his new vision to the world. Last September’s event was the most hotly anticipated of the year after the designer was plucked from near obscurity by French luxury group Kering to reimagine its struggling flagship following the departure of former star designer Alessandro Michele. The stakes were high, the prospect of being judged harshly even higher.
“The climax does not come right away, it is sometimes the second or third shows that are the most important,” Kering’s billionaire chief executive François-Henri Pinault told reporters as Julia Roberts took her seat in the front row behind him.
“I mean I would be, like, shitting myself,” Mark Ronson, the award-winning music producer and De Sarno collaborator, said in a recent Gucci-sponsored documentary on the designer.
Barely six months later, the pressure on the public face of Gucci’s turnaround has only increased. This week Kering, which also owns Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta and Balenciaga, issued a rare profit warning for the luxury sector. Shares plummeted, bringing declines over the past year to more than 35 per cent. As ever at Kering, Gucci — which, with €10bn in revenue last year, accounted for half of group sales and two-thirds of profits — is at the centre of the problem. The parent company said it expected Gucci sales to have fallen about 20 per cent in the first three months of the year driven by declines in China, its most important market.
De Sarno, 40, bears little responsibility for this: product from his first collection only started arriving in stores in the second half of February. But Kering’s recent deteriorating performance in recent years while competitors such as LVMH, Hermes and Richemont had record growth shows how crucial it is that Gucci starts working again. “Kering is Gucci, and Gucci is Kering . . . The problem is there is a very big dependence and perhaps over-dependence on Gucci,” said a person close to the group.
Pinault has said that he thinks Gucci can grow to be a brand with €15bn in annual sales in the medium term, even as he acknowledged it was underperforming peers. But it raises questions about why it took Kering so long to act after it became clear that Michele’s maximalist, bohemian vision was no longer working.
De Sarno’s rise has been so precipitous that the Gucci documentary is entitled Who is Sabato de Sarno?. Growing up in Cicciano, outside Naples, his interest in fashion led him to study design at Milan’s Istituto Secoli — a school he selected for its emphasis on technical skills as well as creative process, according to people who know him. He then worked his way up the ranks at Prada and Dolce & Gabbana before spending 14 years at Valentino, where he rose to become outgoing creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli’s right hand.
In November 2022, before Michele’s exit had been made public, De Sarno was brought into Kering to interview for an unspecified position. His appointment was announced in January 2023. At his leaving party, the Valentino team wore shirts emblazoned with “I [heart] SDS”. “I was not born a creative director. I was an assistant director. Assistant. Assistant’s assistant’s assistant. I know the process,” De Sarno has said.
The decision to pick an unknown surprised many, but it has precedent. Michele was not a big name before he took the reins in 2015. A lower-profile designer may also fit with Kering’s desire to present a sleeker, more pared back Gucci. “It’s pretty clear he was put in that role to execute Kering’s plan . . . and he has executed it. His pieces speak to a broader range of luxury consumers, older women too,” said an industry insider in Milan. “But it’s not an exciting product.”
Described by those who know him as a workaholic who likes to get involved in the details, De Sarno has also demonstrated a canniness for building on a theme. He dubbed his first collection Ancora, which in Italian can mean “still”, “more” and “again”, alluding to the desire to renew Gucci. “I loved the passion behind this word,” he said, so much so that he got it tattooed on his arm.
His collections have been threaded through with a shade of carmine red which De Sarno found in the lining of one of the house’s classic “Jackie” bags. Shoes, bags and clothing have been produced to match, as have magazine pages and billboards. He also had the hall outside his office painted “Ancora” red.
And while De Sarno can speak in the diaphanous language of design (“My show is about shape, volume, fabric, right choice, right colour”), he also shows a shrewd understanding of the business. “Sabato started from a very simple thing: rather than build a collection and then put accessories on it, I want to build the collection around accessories,” creative director Riccardo Zanola, who worked on his first collection, says in the documentary.
Accessories are the backbone of most luxury businesses, and Gucci is no exception: more than two-thirds of its revenues last year came from leather goods and shoes. And while critical reception has been mixed, the small amount of De Sarno’s work that has hit stores has been well received. “Our top customers liked the product and asked for it,” said Micheal Kliger, chief executive of luxury ecommerce retailer MyTheresa.
But whether it is enough to pull Gucci, and Kering, out of the doldrums remains to be seen. “He can do a great job, he just needs to be given time . . . you won’t see the effect on sales for a while,” said Domenico de Sole, Gucci’s former chief executive.
Backstage at his debut, producers shouted final instructions as the lights faded to black. “OK, finally,” De Sarno intoned, as his show began.
Additional reporting by Kati Chitrakorn