Sabato De Sarno - Designer, Creative Director of Gucci

[FashionPower]

Omg that’s the first time I’ve seen a Jackie look good

The Celine Triomphe lookalike bag with the Jackie clasp from Frida's Fall Winter 2014 was very good, it would be definitely a good seller nowadays considering how well squared bag like the Triomphe are received. The whole Gucci Jackie bag line conceived by Frida was indeed very ingenious.
Fun fact: that Gucci bag was designed by Alessandro Michele who just came up with a similar Triomphe-esque bag at Valentino

 

[PDFSD]

The Celine Triomphe lookalike bag with the Jackie clasp from Frida's Fall Winter 2014 was very good, it would be definitely a good seller nowadays considering how well squared bag like the Triomphe are received. The whole Gucci Jackie bag line conceived by Frida was indeed very ingenious.
Fun fact: that Gucci bag was designed by Alessandro Michele who just came up with a similar Triomphe-esque bag at Valentino

View attachment 1324014

This Frida creation is just a lame postman bag version of the much more graceful original gucci horsebit bag from 1955 or Celine horse carriage bag.

No grazie !!!

this minimal commercial bags don't work well now its not distinctive enough as a Gucci bag also the Gucci brand did not harnes a clientele that values minimal luxury bags.

 

[PDFSD]

I would actually love to hear Tom Ford and Domenico De Sole opinion on what happened at Gucci and the then-Guccu Group post their departure.
They decided to sign with Pinault instead of Arnault. They created the group with a very defined vision and structure for each house.

Pinault never followed their strategy and never had a strategy to start with.

So I wonder, even if the Tom Ford brand made them richer than before, if they thinks Arnault would have done a better job.

agree 1000000000%

With all the bad sides of LVMH they are way more professional than Kering and they rebrand brands in a much more long term vision than Kering ever will be able to do.

the fact alone that even Marc years they had the concept of LV is The House and Marc Jacobs is the house guest, the LV brand comes first & that's above all.
Even Chanel i feel has a similar version even if allot was build also around KL´s ideas for the house but its always about coco as a brand and HC house

Hermes is the winner nobody cares who is there :-) its all just Hermes the idea of it.

 

[reese06]

The Celine Triomphe lookalike bag with the Jackie clasp from Frida's Fall Winter 2014 was very good, it would be definitely a good seller nowadays considering how well squared bag like the Triomphe are received. The whole Gucci Jackie bag line conceived by Frida was indeed very ingenious.
Fun fact: that Gucci bag was designed by Alessandro Michele who just came up with a similar Triomphe-esque bag at Valentino

View attachment 1324014

Those bags did not sell, at least at the Gucci boutique I worked at during the time. The leather was gorgeous but Frida at the time was trying to transition a bit out of the guccissima and monogram, so they started trying to release these and also the bright color diamante luggage which also didn’t do well as it was not recognizable enough for Gucci even if they try to say diamanté is the original monogram.

Gucci needs to lean into being a fashion house as they will never be an Hermes or bottega. I always thought of Gucci as a top brand and leader but now they are following and not exactly sure what they are following but they surely are not leading the space

 

[Monsieur Cristobal]

If you want to see hooooow different Kering and LVMH are, you can have a look to Stella McCartney, who has been under both.

In my view, everything is the same.
It is conglomerate fashion.

At LVMH they might be more professional... but with more than twice houses than Kering, in the last ten years they gave us very few fashion moments: many Loewe shows, a couple LV, Celine fw19 and ss25... am I missing something?

They are both responsible for the fact that, with very few exceptions, the houses that are in their portfolios are slowly being destroyed.

 

[yslforever]

I would actually love to hear Tom Ford and Domenico De Sole opinion on what happened at Gucci and the then-Guccu Group post their departure.
They decided to sign with Pinault instead of Arnault. They created the group with a very defined vision and structure for each house.

Pinault never followed their strategy and never had a strategy to start with.

So I wonder, even if the Tom Ford brand made them richer than before, if they thinks Arnault would have done a better job.

There wasn't a strategy, vision or structure, if I recall properly, it was all done in a hurry, Gucci group was a quoted company in Amsterdam, which owned only Gucci, and to make a long story short:
- in January 1999 Arnault started to buy some shares, in a sneaky way (just like he did at Hermès), going up to 34% of the capital.
- Ford and Del Sole discover the plot and call Pinault as a "white knight" in March 99. Pinault had no luxury or fashion brands then but billions on hands, and Pinault starts buying more stocks (up to 40%), Pinault and Arnault start a bidding war on the remaining stocks.
- In the meantime, Pinault agrees that Gucci provide Ford and Del Sole with generous stock-options plan, so that they can keep a majority (50%) within the 3 of them.
- Obviously Arnault sue this stock option plan.
- To stop Arnault from buying more, Ford, Del Sole and Pinault decide that Gucci group needs to grow immediately.
- So Pinault buys himself YSL RTW and beauty (in a hurry and without any due diligence), and resells it immediately in Nov 99 to Gucci group in exchange of newly created Gucci group stocks, diluting immediately Arnault percentage (from 34% to 20%).
- They continue their buying spree in 2000: Boucheron, BV, Balenciaga etc in order to force LVMH to raise their offers every time.
- Finally Arnault gives up the bidding, but he sues Pinault and force his group to a binding public tender to buy 100% of the shares (including the LVMH ones), on Sept 10th 2001 (the date is important), at this date stock price plus a 25% premium.
- obviously on Sept 11, 2001, the Gucci stock price crashes but Pinault is legally bound to pay his very high tender and premium.
- now Pinault/Gucci owes an extravagant amount to Arnault (and the other shareholders) but can't finance it with banks because the stock crashed, and they are short on cash, so they sell YSL Beauty to L'Oréal before the closing date of the legal tender.
- Pinault ends up with 100% of Gucci group which has grown dramatically during the bidding war and Arnault ends up with a very substantial capital gain.

So there was not a group building strategy, it was more "let's buy everything we can so Arnault won't be able to buy us if we become too big". But in the end, Ford and De Sole got their massive stock-options as agreed with Pinaut (and left as soon as they cashed out, 2 and a half years later) and Arnault made a billion in capital gain, at the expense of Pinault.

So I can't really see how Ford and De Sole structured the group, it was only opportunistic acquisitions of everything that was on sale in 99 and 2000. And honestly Kering has made very little changes and acquisitions in 20 years from what their inherited of the Gucci Group. I think the most notable one being their attempt at taking over Valentino.

 

[PDFSD]

There wasn't a strategy, vision or structure, if I recall properly, it was all done in a hurry, Gucci group was a quoted company in Amsterdam, which owned only Gucci, and to make a long story short:
- in January 1999 Arnault started to buy some shares, in a sneaky way (just like he did at Hermès), going up to 34% of the capital.
- Ford and Del Sole discover the plot and call Pinault as a "white knight" in March 99. Pinault had no luxury or fashion brands then but billions on hands, and Pinault starts buying more stocks (up to 40%), Pinault and Arnault start a bidding war on the remaining stocks.
- In the meantime, Pinault agrees that Gucci provide Ford and Del Sole with generous stock-options plan, so that they can keep a majority (50%) within the 3 of them.
- Obviously Arnault sue this stock option plan.
- To stop Arnault from buying more, Ford, Del Sole and Pinault decide that Gucci group needs to grow immediately.
- So Pinault buys himself YSL RTW and beauty (in a hurry and without any due diligence), and resells it immediately in Nov 99 to Gucci group in exchange of newly created Gucci group stocks, diluting immediately Arnault percentage (from 34% to 20%).
- They continue their buying spree in 2000: Boucheron, BV, Balenciaga etc in order to force LVMH to raise their offers every time.
- Finally Arnault gives up the bidding, but he sues Pinault and force his group to a binding public tender to buy 100% of the shares (including the LVMH ones), on Sept 10th 2001 (the date is important), at this date stock price plus a 25% premium.
- obviously on Sept 11, 2001, the Gucci stock price crashes but Pinault is legally bound to pay his very high tender and premium.
- now Pinault/Gucci owes an extravagant amount to Arnault (and the other shareholders) but can't finance it with banks because the stock crashed, and they are short on cash, so they sell YSL Beauty to L'Oréal before the closing date of the legal tender.
- Pinault ends up with 100% of Gucci group which has grown dramatically during the bidding war and Arnault ends up with a very substantial capital gain.

So there was not a group building strategy, it was more "let's buy everything we can so Arnault won't be able to buy us if we become too big". But in the end, Ford and De Sole got their massive stock-options as agreed with Pinaut (and left as soon as they cashed out, 2 and a half years later) and Arnault made a billion in capital gain, at the expense of Pinault.

So I can't really see how Ford and De Sole structured the group, it was only opportunistic acquisitions of everything that was on sale in 99 and 2000. And honestly Kering has made very little changes and acquisitions in 20 years from what their inherited of the Gucci Group. I think the most notable one being their attempt at taking over Valentino.

i am reliving my youth what all these memories /drama of that time but was fun fight lol

 

[jeanclaude]

I´d love to read a scan of this:

squarespace-cdn.com

 

[PDFSD]

If you want to see hooooow different Kering and LVMH are, you can have a look to Stella McCartney, who has been under both.

In my view, everything is the same.
It is conglomerate fashion.

At LVMH they might be more professional... but with more than twice houses than Kering, in the last ten years they gave us very few fashion moments: many Loewe shows, a couple LV, Celine fw19 and ss25... am I missing something?

They are both responsible for the fact that, with very few exceptions, the houses that are in their portfolios are slowly being destroyed.

stella problem is a stella issue as the brand has weak foundations stylistically she went all over the place

very few fashion moments at LVMH might be the case , not so sure i agree because depends also what one likes more over the other.

at LVMH most of their brands you at least still have a sense of luxury presence/consistency left, more than Kering brands.... just store design already the formula at LV is focused on lux and longevity at Gucci its whoever is in the creative director seat gets to do a copy of his/her living room as the gucci store design concept .

Kering feels like its run by my aunts and uncles that all do their own quirky little thing , LVMH is more a conglomerate yes

 

[MulletProof]

I´d love to read a scan of this:

squarespace-cdn.com

@justaguy is your guy!

 

[Lola701]

There wasn't a strategy, vision or structure, if I recall properly, it was all done in a hurry, Gucci group was a quoted company in Amsterdam, which owned only Gucci, and to make a long story short:
- in January 1999 Arnault started to buy some shares, in a sneaky way (just like he did at Hermès), going up to 34% of the capital.
- Ford and Del Sole discover the plot and call Pinault as a "white knight" in March 99. Pinault had no luxury or fashion brands then but billions on hands, and Pinault starts buying more stocks (up to 40%), Pinault and Arnault start a bidding war on the remaining stocks.
- In the meantime, Pinault agrees that Gucci provide Ford and Del Sole with generous stock-options plan, so that they can keep a majority (50%) within the 3 of them.
- Obviously Arnault sue this stock option plan.
- To stop Arnault from buying more, Ford, Del Sole and Pinault decide that Gucci group needs to grow immediately.
- So Pinault buys himself YSL RTW and beauty (in a hurry and without any due diligence), and resells it immediately in Nov 99 to Gucci group in exchange of newly created Gucci group stocks, diluting immediately Arnault percentage (from 34% to 20%).
- They continue their buying spree in 2000: Boucheron, BV, Balenciaga etc in order to force LVMH to raise their offers every time.
- Finally Arnault gives up the bidding, but he sues Pinault and force his group to a binding public tender to buy 100% of the shares (including the LVMH ones), on Sept 10th 2001 (the date is important), at this date stock price plus a 25% premium.
- obviously on Sept 11, 2001, the Gucci stock price crashes but Pinault is legally bound to pay his very high tender and premium.
- now Pinault/Gucci owes an extravagant amount to Arnault (and the other shareholders) but can't finance it with banks because the stock crashed, and they are short on cash, so they sell YSL Beauty to L'Oréal before the closing date of the legal tender.
- Pinault ends up with 100% of Gucci group which has grown dramatically during the bidding war and Arnault ends up with a very substantial capital gain.

So there was not a group building strategy, it was more "let's buy everything we can so Arnault won't be able to buy us if we become too big". But in the end, Ford and De Sole got their massive stock-options as agreed with Pinaut (and left as soon as they cashed out, 2 and a half years later) and Arnault made a billion in capital gain, at the expense of Pinault.

So I can't really see how Ford and De Sole structured the group, it was only opportunistic acquisitions of everything that was on sale in 99 and 2000. And honestly Kering has made very little changes and acquisitions in 20 years from what their inherited of the Gucci Group. I think the most notable one being their attempt at taking over Valentino.

It’s maybe my interpretation but when they bought all those brands, there was a distinctive positioning for all those brands and each brand was supposed to « compete » with the big fishes…Bottega was Hermes (they took Maier from Hermes), Gucci was Vuitton/Prada, YSL was Chanel…
The rest were seen as niche even though I never really got the impression that they saw how potential huge they could have become. And that’s probably why they struggled to find a real commerciality for McQueen.

 

[Lola701]

Those bags did not sell, at least at the Gucci boutique I worked at during the time. The leather was gorgeous but Frida at the time was trying to transition a bit out of the guccissima and monogram, so they started trying to release these and also the bright color diamante luggage which also didn’t do well as it was not recognizable enough for Gucci even if they try to say diamanté is the original monogram.

Yes it wasn’t a big success but I bought the whole collection. The soft Jackie was also a great bag.
But it was a time where brands were kind of forced to have a leather, more minimalistic proposition in response to the market.
Vuitton was pushing their Capucines too and it wasn’t a success at all.

I think the collection after, they had a more 70’s feel with the bags in suede, the return of the GG logo but in a more streamlined way.
I really enjoyed that line Michele designed under Frida…

Of course, everything ended up on outlets within the 2 seasons after Michele took over and had a hit with the Dyonisus, which is another great bag and maybe IMO, Gucci’s last great bag.

 

[sunnysideup]

The moment he talks and says one thing and then deliver the exact opposite...maybe he has a vision in his mind but he needs to figure it out how to do it visually...because so far...it's going down....

He sure does. I distinctly remember SDS throwing not-so-thinly veiled jabs at AM. Paraphrasing: Sabato said Gucci is more of a day brand and that to him it isn't about evening.

He was intimating that AM had too much of a focus on formal/evening but then he turns around and does this.

SDS is all over the place and rudderless. The sooner they remove him and some of their management the better.

 

[Monsieur Cristobal]

It’s maybe my interpretation but when they bought all those brands, there was a distinctive positioning for all those brands and each brand was supposed to « compete » with the big fishes…Bottega was Hermes (they took Maier from Hermes), Gucci was Vuitton/Prada, YSL was Chanel…
The rest were seen as niche even though I never really got the impression that they saw how potential huge they could have become. And that’s probably why they struggled to find a real commerciality for McQueen.

The timelapse done by yslforever is incredible 🤩

I thought like you, Lola, there was a strategy behind.
If I remember correctly, Nicolas explained in the Balenciaga-gate interview for System magazine, that Tom Ford and Domenico de Sole wanted to create a strong group of young designers.
Hence the purchase of Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, Christopher Kane and Balenciaga.
I don't have the magazine at hand, but I'm pretty sure it's there.

 

[Xone]

Oops..italian media on if the designers respect the codes of the house where they are at or the other way around…check the whole gallery

 

[Lola701]

The timelapse done by yslforever is incredible 🤩

I thought like you, Lola, there was a strategy behind.
If I remember correctly, Nicolas explained in the Balenciaga-gate interview for System magazine, that Tom Ford and Domenico de Sole wanted to create a strong group of young designers.
Hence the purchase of Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, Christopher Kane and Balenciaga.
I don't have the magazine at hand, but I'm pretty sure it's there.

It may have been a bit of both because ultimately, Ford/De Sole didn’t want a take over of Arnault because they had concerns over control. They did went to Pinault and did built a group in a hurry but the selection of the brands and talents had somewhat of a strategy behind it. And I remember, Boucheron was supposed to be like Cartier and all, they even had Sergio Rossi in the group at that time. The portfolio of brands was interesting.
They ended up buying Balenciaga but Tom at first suggested to Nicolas to create his own brand. He wanted to stay at Balenciaga so they bought Balenciaga and Nicolas had 10% of the brand in the process, while I think Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney were owned in half by the founders.

So we can’t really say that they throw a group together like that and had to deal with the repercussions while everything was done.

It was a crazy time anyway because if I remember well, it was at that time that there were talks for Fendi between LVMH/PRADA. I remember reading that Fendi was kinda over valued.

Pinault bought parts of Christopher Kane in 2013 but they never developed it. I think he got rid of it at the same time as Stella.

 

[PDFSD]

Oops..italian media on if the designers respect the codes of the house where they are at or the other way around…check the whole gallery

Chanel stayed the most Chanel :-) love KL love VV for ever !!!

 

[Lola701]

Oops..italian media on if the designers respect the codes of the house where they are at or the other way around…check the whole gallery

Is it the right question though? Or are those the best examples?
Because a brand can have totally different POV and still have CD following the codes of the house.

It’s a tricky question.
For me Valentino looked and felt more Valentino under PPP than it did under him and MGC. At the same time, in 2 collections, Michele did a raid in the archives that no one else ever did. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look or feel Valentino.

Burberry is an interesting case because theorically, everybody has respected the codes. However the critic for Tisci was that I didn’t felt British enough. Lee does look British but apparently not the kind of British people expect.

So, what’s the angle really?

 

[Monsieur Cristobal]

Exactly.
Since when the codes of a heritage house are set by the precedent designer?

 

[yslforever]

It may have been a bit of both because ultimately, Ford/De Sole didn’t want a take over of Arnault because they had concerns over control. They did went to Pinault and did built a group in a hurry but the selection of the brands and talents had somewhat of a strategy behind it. And I remember, Boucheron was supposed to be like Cartier and all, they even had Sergio Rossi in the group at that time. The portfolio of brands was interesting.
They ended up buying Balenciaga but Tom at first suggested to Nicolas to create his own brand. He wanted to stay at Balenciaga so they bought Balenciaga and Nicolas had 10% of the brand in the process, while I think Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney were owned in half by the founders.

So we can’t really say that they throw a group together like that and had to deal with the repercussions while everything was done.

It was a crazy time anyway because if I remember well, it was at that time that there were talks for Fendi between LVMH/PRADA. I remember reading that Fendi was kinda over valued.

Pinault bought parts of Christopher Kane in 2013 but they never developed it. I think he got rid of it at the same time as Stella.

You are partially right: they tried to build a portfolio, it was a quoted company and they had to justify their acquisitions to investors and analysts, but tbh they just bought everything on sale between fall 1999 and end of 2000, without due diligence and at the sellers's conditions.
The end goal was to prop up the assets of Gucci Group and force LVMH to continuously raise their offer.
((plus Tom Ford and De Sole negotiated with Pinault 5 millions together as stock options, so the bigger the company, the bigger the cash-out))
I really doubt Ford et De Sole had a conglomerate structure or anything long-term in mind. But it wasn't pure luck either, they knew what there were buying and that those brands had potential.
If I recall correctly, because of the prices Gucci or Pinault were paying, M&A bankers came every week with companies to buy - even brands like JOOP, Escada, Hugo Boss approached Gucci Group..