Was Gucci's problem really Sabato De Sarno?
Neither management nor the brand's sales team is without fault
February 6th, 2025
Lorenzo Salamone
Gucci is without a creative director, again. This morning, with a very brief press release, Kering announced the end of its collaboration with
Sabato De Sarno, who was thanked for his «
loyalty and professionalism» and his «
passion and dedication» by the brand's CEO,
Stefano Cantino, and Kering's deputy CEO in charge of Brand Development,
Francesca Bellettini. The brand also announced that the next co-ed show at Milan Fashion Week will be designed by the brand's design studio—implying, given the collection's production timeline, that the separation between the two actually occurred
several months ago, as hinted by clues scattered across Instagram stories from his collaborators. Little is known about the behind-the-scenes of this separation, although industry rumors suggest that the now-former creative director was subjected to
increasing pressure from the brand's top management to improve commercial performance. These efforts, despite valid but uninspiring creative and communication decisions and a global luxury crisis affecting even the biggest brands, instead declined into
a dramatic downward spiral. But what exactly went wrong?
One could argue that De Sarno's creative direction did not start under the best auspices: his first collection for the brand did not generate significant enthusiasm in the press and was further penalized by
a last-minute location change that deprived the show of its essential context, originally intended as
a massive takeover of almost all of Brera. Had it not rained that day, the first show might have been judged differently—even though, at the same time, a flaw in the project emerged from the collection itself. While it reflected the idea of aesthetic cleansing for the brand, it failed to steer this minimalism toward
a precise aesthetic direction. The sense of wonder and novelty, the lifeblood of fashion, was missing, and the brand went from content overdose to complete absence.
The brand's strategy may have had three potential flaws. The first involved a
premature and forced celebration of De Sarno as the new fashion messiah, when the creative director's charm lay in his normalcy and practicality. These qualities were publicized, on the one hand, with facile sentimentality and, on the other, with artificial enthusiasm, putting the cart before the horse and paving the way for skepticism and disappointment. The second (and most serious) was
Kering's lack of confidence in steering Gucci's aesthetic towards a new direction. On the communication side, they clung to intellectual minimalism, while commercially relying on
outdated logomania, creating a dissonance between in-store and runway products. Due to the extremely high price points, this contradiction led to a sales collapse.
The same inconsistency was evident in product design: minimalist yet adorned with invasive branding or unnecessary superficial updates that were neither minimalist nor truly maximalist. The third flaw was a
communication strategy executed by all the standards of a major relaunch but undermined by a series of ill-advised and counter-intuitive choices:
the Christmas tree in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele IIinexplicably transformed into a white plastic mountain; the
second menswear show identical to the first womenswear show, killing any sense of novelty; the eveningwear collection presented during the Art+Film Gala in Los Angeles, which could have been the highlight of the first Milan show; the
film-hagiography about De Sarno, which was meant to introduce the designer but turned into an overblown self-celebration of a lukewarm debut; “experiences” on the Apple Vision Pro that nobody asked for; David Sims' bloodless campaigns on white backgrounds; Chinese New Year and Christmas collections where imaginative effort was nonexistent. How did Gucci manage to avoid making us say “
wow” even once in two years?
Another crucial point was that Kering failed to
protect De Sarno's correct insights. After his show, not only did the song *Ancora* by Mina resurface in the collective consciousness and gain traction, but
burgundy red, launched by Gucci as “Rosso Ancora,” saw a 365% increase in Google searches within a year, becoming the color of the season without translating into sales for the brand that had launched it. It's hard to pinpoint why this phenomenon occurred, but perhaps this speaks to
broader issues affecting today's fashion brands: surely more targeted products should have been developed around that color, but it also involved a disconnect between runway and store products; and an
overly high price point, causing confusion between elevated and entry-level products. Emphasis on the product turned into an absence of content and, pardon the term, worldbuilding at the shows, which became “live lookbooks.”
The real issue, however, is that De Sarno
became the public face of a commercial debacle caused by others: primarily managers and then the visual merchandising and commercial teams. These figures, shielded from public scrutiny, enacted a strategy revealing that those directing and controlling the brand seemed unaware of its history (with its ups and downs) or its appeal to the public. Gucci is a Hollywood-esque, in a sense
hedonistic, brand that draws strength from the allure of the jet-set, the life of wealth and pleasure it promises. As with all brands, clothes must be wearable, but that doesn’t mean they should be forgettable.
Gucci perhaps suffers from its
problematic position as Kering's “top student”. Not only are expectations for the brand extremely high, but excessive concern and care during a difficult period for the brand led managers to worsen the illness by multiplying remedies, when what was needed was, pardon the metaphor, a period of rest and healthy dieting. But the
stakes were too high. It's deeply regrettable because De Sarno ultimately became the sacrificial lamb to atone for the sins of executives; because he was a sound choice for a brand that was beginning to collapse under the weight of Alessandro Michele's extravagance; and because this marked the beginning of a return to
product-focused concreteness, which could have been leveraged with a more focused strategy and a genuine rethink of the business model. Instead, the brand got lost trying to imitate other entities that operate according to their own rules and rhythms.
In short, everything seems to boil down to Kering’s
insecurity, impatience, and lack of trust in its creative directors. If the brief is quiet luxury, why does logomania persist? Why are only two of the 15 coats seen in the first menswear show available in-store? Do managers fear that the work of their chosen designer won’t resonate? And, even more concerning, are they aware of which products could sell and what they’re bringing to market? A brand’s desirability always starts with
a precise and bold vision, but also an authentic one, which has nothing to do with the rationale of an analyst convinced that inserting a red and green stripe in the least necessary places will miraculously boost sales.
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