When De Sarno started at Gucci nearly seven months ago, he was tasked with a nearly impossible assignment: to steer the brand away from its former creative director’s bold, outsize, magpie aesthetic to something more relatable, more appealing. De Sarno says he cares deeply about dressing real human beings for their very real lives. “I start with people, always,” he says. He is uninterested in making clothes for people to take selfies in (though there are plenty of Instagrammable pieces in the current collection), or in pleasing a small, insular group within the industry whose opinions, ultimately, won’t have any bearing on, say, a woman in the Midwest walking into a Gucci store and falling in love with a perfectly tailored double-breasted jacket.
I tell De Sarno that my mom visited her local Gucci store in Chicago the other day, just to check out some of the changes that have been made. She loved how “sleek” it all looked, from the interiors to the window displays to the bags and the clothes themselves, I say. “To be honest, I care more about the opinion of your mother than I do some of the technical people’s opinions in the industry,” he replies with a smile. “Also, you can’t imagine how many messages I receive from young students or from everyday, normal people who don’t work in fashion, saying how much they appreciate the new collections, how real the pieces feel, and how they went to a store and tried on a coat and they fell in love with it. This, to me, is fashion.”