This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the spring and fall fashion weeks. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.
On Friday in Milan, about ten minutes before Gucci’s Spring-Summer 2024 women’s show, Jannik Sinner measured the vibe in the room. “Now, obviously, it’s going to be a little different, for sure,” said the Italian tennis star, who has been carrying a Gucci duffle on court since Wimbledon. “But I think we all are very excited to watch the show.”
The difference Sinner was alluding to is the house’s tectonic creative shakeup. In January, Sabato De Sarno, a Prada and Valentino alum, was tapped to succeed Alessandro Michele, the romantic Roman designer who turned Gucci into a maximalist fashion powerhouse during his seven-year tenure. De Sarno’s job wasn’t to fill those big loafers, necessarily, but to implement a wholesale creative reset, to deliver timeless and sellable wardrobe pieces following a period of slowing growth. Which is exciting whether you’re a tennis star or a casual fashion consumer. Anytime Gucci pivots, as it famously did under Tom Ford in the ’90s and when Michele stepped up in 2015, the rest of the industry tends to follow.
As the models hit the runway, De Sarno’s reboot was immediately apparent. His Gucci is understated, even minimalist. The clothes have not been imported from an imaginative aesthetic universe full of whimsy and wonder (as Michele’s were), but rather have been pulled off of chic young characters and luxxed up in the Gucci atelier. (To bring this street style to life, the show was originally meant to be shown in the alleys of the bustling Brera neighborhood, but had to be moved at the eleventh hour to the Gucci headquarters due to rain.)
De Sarno won’t present his first men’s collection until January, but the debut provided several tantalizing hints about what it might look like. Here are a few informed predictions about what Sinner and the other Gucci guys will be wearing at the top of next year. Whether the industry follows once more? We’ll have to wait and see.
You’ll See Sick Coats…
De Sarno is obsessed with coats—he has a collection of around 200 of them. “Outerwear is my passion,” he told WWD last week. The first look out at the hangar-like Gucci HQ auditorium, fittingly, was a sophisticated tailored overcoat, slightly large on the model’s slight frame, with Gucci’s signature grosgrain lining the back vents. I would put money on his men’s show opening with the same design. His passion was also evident in a few structured, cropped pea coats, and a couple thigh-skimming leather jackets looked ready to fly off shelves. It’s easy to picture all of the above on the men’s side of Gucci boutiques.
…Some Suits…
Overcoats aside, it’s not clear that De Sarno is excited by tailored clothing. Besides a handful of micro-short suits—most looks featured leggy, meaning very tiny, shorts—the collection skewed casual: tank tops, lacy slip dresses, and smart overshirts of the kinds that fill the city’s trendier aperitivo spots. But Gucci has a large men’s tailoring business, so De Sarno will probably cut more suits for his January show, distinguished by their precise proportions rather than embellishment.
…And Sparse Eveningwear
But don’t expect to see any tuxedos or dinner jackets. Michele’s Gucci shows included extensive and elaborate swathes of formalwear, and his baroque black tie looks dominated red carpets. But De Sarno told WWD that for his debut he “didn’t want to show eveningwear. Gucci to me is more daywear.” Gone are the days, clearly, of Pope-like Met Gala robes and Jared Leto prosthetic heads.
You’ll Get To Know “Rosso Ancora”
As many fresh CDs do, De Sarno has selected a new house color. Meet “Rosso Ancora,” a deep maroon that was inescapable all around Milan this week, wrapped around trams, covering newsstands, and even painted on a building above my favorite local restaurant, Rovello 18. According to a press release, the rich hue originates in the staff elevator of The Savoy hotel in London, where house founder Guccio Gucci worked as a porter in the late-1800s. The color was painted through the collection, too, covering leather shorts, monogram chore coats, and handbags. You’ll see it everywhere soon enough, in global advertising campaigns and wherever there’s a Gucci store—the brand’s shopping bags are switching over to glossy maroon.
And Learn Some Italian
And in case you’re wondering, ancora means “again.” As in: “Gucci is the opportunity to fall in love with fashion, ancora,” per the collection notes. It’s the name of the collection, the theme of De Sarno’s overhaul, and the focal point of his first marketing campaign. “I want people to fall in love with Gucci again. That’s why I use the word ‘ancora’ for my show,” De Sarno told Vogue. (He has an ancora tattoo on his left arm.) So when you walk past a billboard and your friend asks you what “Gucci Ancora” means, you can now impress them with your Italiano.
There Will Be More Jackies and Lots of Loafers
Ok, but what about the accessories? The classic Jackie bag is sticking around, in a softer leather and with some updated hardware. Expect a few bigger versions, and perhaps some re-worked duffle bags for Sinner, in the mix in January. There will be loafers, too, but presumably with a lower profile than the vertiginous platform horsebits De Sarno unveiled on Friday. One major hint that De Sarno is set to re-embrace the loafer, Gucci’s most iconic menswear grail? They were all over the star-studded front row, which included Bad Bunny, Julia Roberts, Paul Mescal, Ryan Gosling, Troye Sivan, Wizkid, and Jessica Chastain, among many others.
Not To Mention Enormous Jeans
From a menswear perspective, a few more pieces stood out on the runway. The first was a slouchy gray hoodie with a debossed Gucci logo across the chest. Even Michele’s hoodies felt like they were plucked from a fantasyworld garden; this version was as strictly and almost funnily real-life as it gets. And then there were a series of massive jeans that picked up where the Gucci design studio, who created two men’s collections in between Michele and De Sarno, left off. Recall Fall-Winter 2023, which included several epically voluminous jeans, like JNCOs made by a master Italian tailor. It seems likely that De Sarno will continue to evolve the language of huge pants in his men’s line.
Anything Else?
Over Mark Robson’s DJ set at the late-night afterparty (Gucci, ancora), the curator and writer Antwaun Sargent explained that his chocolate brown set, a roomy shirt paired with shorts, with subtle racing stripes down the side seams, was custom made for him by De Sarno. Was this a quiet preview of his Gucci menswear? Elsewhere on the front row, Sivan wore a sartorial mechanic suit, Mescal a muscle-baring henley, Bad Bunny a large white button-down, and Sinner a tan monogram suit. These fits were apparently edits from the SS24 collection. Heavy edits, it appears, because they didn’t much like that in-house-designed collection at all. They all looked casual but cool, like natural counterparts to the Gucci girls on the runway. Safe to say De Sarno took the opportunity to drop a few hints.
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