Over the last couple of weeks Sabato De Sarno’s debut Gucci collection has started shipping to stores and making its way out into the world. During a meeting at the brand’s headquarters earlier this week he reported seeing a woman at a gallery wearing the lime green coat embellished with crystal fringes from last season, the one with a 27,000 euro price tag. He said he called his press team to ask if it had been loaned to her, only to learn from them that she had bought it. “I love my collection,” he said, “but to see other people love it makes me happy.”
De Sarno laid out his short, sexy vision for his new Gucci last September, eschewing the eccentricity of its recent past for a more streamlined look, rooted in what he called “wardrobe” essentials. On the soundtrack today, Did Virgo and Morgan K sang about a “reset,” but if that suggested he was going to change tack, De Sarno set the record straight. “It’s just a song I like, I used to dance to it.”
At that preview, he said he set himself a sort of challenge this time: to combine “what I hate with what I love to make something new.” So his opening coats were stitched from waist to hem with dégradé paillettes (he dislikes embroidery), and both a narrow bustier dress and a hip-grazing tunic were cut from double-face wool cashmere in a shade of green his studio team translated as “rotten” (a color not quite as agreeable as rosso ancora). The 1970s-ish vaguely Prada-esque graphic printed on slip dresses and woven as a jacquard on a caban was a heron, if you looked closely enough.
In the end, the “subversive gestures” that the press notes promised were not in too much evidence. This was a building collection, working off the framework established in round one. The opening look was a shorts suit, the jacket neatly tailored and buttoned to the neck, with a thin belt punctuating the waist, and over-the-knee riding boots rising nearly to the shorts’ hems—minimal in the same general vein as De Sarno’s debut. Last season’s mini slips were refashioned in midi-lengths, worn with high-rise double-G briefs underneath. An exquisite long-sleeved dress in black lace had the same willowy profile. And the slingback platforms were modelled on the loafers that are popular items from De Sarno’s launch collection.
“I don’t have a theme—ever,” he said. “My theme is the clothes.” There’s a lingering question: Is that enough at a brand as big as Gucci? De Sarno is a fine technician. The mustard peacoat at the end of the show had a covered placket in back, which could be buttoned all the way up to the collar, “to embrace your body.” But moving forward, his job will be to think bigger, in all senses. It could start simple. I’m curious, for instance, about what his Gucci pants look like.
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