Gucci’s Fall/Winter 2024 collection does not have a theme. Nor do the other collections by creative director Sabato De Sarno, who says that he simply focuses on making clothes—“real clothes”, as he puts it. Clothes that are rooted in the everyday and not in some fantasy or any of the narratives that were spun during his predecessors’ times at the Italian fashion brand.
Still, De Sarno’s clothes tell us a lot, and there are some running threads between his second womenswear collection and his first. The most obvious one being that the designer has again reinforced super-high hemlines: His Gucci woman does not care for pants, and instead pairs her jackets with itty-bitty shorts and miniskirts.
There was a time when the miniskirt symbolised women’s liberation, and protests erupted when Christian Dior only presented long skirts at one of his fashion shows. That was in the 1960s, a decade whose influence was apparent in De Sarno’s Gucci debut. Today, the miniskirt, along with the glaring absence of pants, have earned the Gucci designer some criticism from the fashion industry.
Regardless, there are women who can get behind De Sarno’s pants-free take on power dressing. At Gucci’s Fall/Winter 2024 show in Milan, Emma Chamberlain, Alexa Chung, Davika Hoorne and even Princess Olympia of Greece made the case for it on the front row. Or rather, they made the case for Gucci’s jackets and coats, which are what De Sarno’s collections really revolve around.
For Fall/Winter 2024, the designer introduced form-fitting blazers to complete the Gucci woman’s suit. He layered streamlined long coats over lace slip dresses, and buttery leather versions over unbuttoned shirts and shorts. But it is clear that De Sarno prefers an oversize silhouette: He offers even more of the boxy jackets and coats we had seen in his debut collection, trading the ’60s-chic, A-line cut that he used last season for a straighter silhouette that is decidedly more androgynous.
De Sarno’s attention to cut is hardly surprising. The 41-year-old started his fashion career as an assistant pattern-maker at Prada, and during his early years at Valentino, he focused on designing men’s coats. His love of coats was sparked at the latter and the designer revealed in an interview with GQ that he has amassed more than 200 coats in his personal collection. “The coat is more intimate than other things because it hugs [you],” said De Sarno in that interview. Similarly, he designed this season’s Gucci jackets and coats to feel like an embrace: The pieces feature hidden buttons on the back, which allow them to better fit the wearer’s body.
It is clear that De Sarno’s obsessions figure into his second Gucci collection, but so do the opposite. As he shares, he challenged himself to combine “what I hate with what I love to make something new”, mirroring an approach that is often taken by his senior Miuccia Prada, whose influence can be seen in his use of embellishments. Turning away from his minimalist sensibilities, De Sarno lavished sequins upon slip dresses and coats, and added unexpected strands of crystal fringe to cardigans. He also designed a shimmering jacquard with a geometric motif that loosely resembles a heron, which was used on some of the dresses.
Such details will delight Gucci customers who loved the crystal-fringe coat that De Sarno presented last season. That coat had come in neon green, an anomaly in the palette of black, white and Rosso Ancora red that De Sarno had used. For Fall/Winter 2024, De Sarno incorporated even more of the “wrong” and “ugly” colours—according to Gucci’s show notes—such as pale yellows, dowdy browns and a green that De Sarno’s design team described as “rotten”.
Given fashion’s propensity for the new, Gucci’s colours may grow on the fashion crowd eventually. If not, there are also straightforward, desirable pieces to be found in the collection, such as the dark slip dresses meticulously constructed from panels of lace and velvet, and the sheer ribbon chokers, embellished with metal charms that spell “GUCCI”, they were styled with at the show. These pieces, along with the furry black coats, imbue the collection with good old Gucci glamour, as previously defined by Tom Ford.
But De Sarno is also interested in other Gucci codes. This season’s leather riding boots, offered in knee-high and over-the-knee versions, nod to the Italian brand’s equestrian ties. So do the Horsebit platform loafers that De Sarno introduced in his debut collection, which have proved popular enough to make their return in fresh colours.
Elsewhere in the collection, a jacket crafted entirely from a patchwork of sleek snakeskin leathers reminds us that before De Sarno, Alessandro Michele, Ford and all the rest, Gucci was a leather goods company first. And what is a Gucci collection without great bags? De Sarno has proposed a few new silhouettes: a striking, half-moon bag with a top handle; a mini leather tote bag with a bamboo handle; and the GG Milano, a puffy handbag made from nappa leather, with some styles embossed with the “GG” monogram.
In the end, De Sarno’s lack of a theme may be his collection’s strongest point. There is no strict aesthetic for Gucci customers to adhere to. Nor are there any stories for them to tell through their Gucci clothes, except their own—and that is De Sarno’s true vision for Gucci. “My dreams, as with my fashion, always converse with reality,” says the designer. “Because I am not searching for another world to live in, but rather, of ways to live in this world.”
Shop the Gucci Fall/Winter 2024 collection, now in stores and on gucci.com
This story originally appeared in the August 2024 issue of GRAZIA Singapore.
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