The fitting room on Via della Spiga smells of steam and bergamot

The fitting room on Via della Spiga smells of steam and bergamot. Sabato De Sarno stands to one side, arms crossed, watching a model turn in a tobacco-brown leather coat that falls just past the knee. He says nothing for twenty seconds. Then, quietly: "The sleeve. Two centimetres shorter." The atelier head nods, pins already in hand.

This is the rhythm now — measured, methodical, almost monastic. De Sarno has been Gucci's creative director since January 2023, and if his tenure has puzzled some observers, it's because he refuses the obvious moves. No archive plunder. No immediate reinvention. Instead, a kind of patient recalibration, rooted in craft and a belief that luxury should feel, above all, wearable.

He arrived at the maison after sixteen years at Prada and Miu Miu, where he led ready-to-wear design under Miuccia Prada — a post that taught him precision, restraint, and the value of a well-cut trouser. Before that, Polimoda in Florence, then a brief stint at Costume National. The CV is solid but not flashy. No wunderkind narrative, no meteoric rise. Just decades of fittings, fabric mills, and the slow accumulation of know-how.

The Prada Years

De Sarno joined Prada in 2007, when the house was deep into its intellectual phase — those collections that felt like footnotes to a philosophy seminar, all irony and dissonance. He worked under Miuccia on womenswear, then moved to Miu Miu, where he eventually oversaw ready-to-wear entirely. It was an education in how to balance concept and commerce, how to make a sleeve both strange and sellable.

One suspects he absorbed more than technique. Miuccia's approach — rigorous, unsentimental, allergic to easy charm — left its mark. De Sarno doesn't court adoration. He builds wardrobes. When he speaks about design, which he does sparingly, the language is functional. "I want women to feel like themselves," he told Vogue Italia last spring. Not transformed. Not elevated. Themselves.

That philosophy has shaped his first collections at Gucci, which have been met with something between curiosity and confusion. Gone are the maximalist flourishes of the previous regime — the logomania, the surrealist mash-ups, the ironic winks. In their place: clean leather separates, cashmere knits in camel and grey, loafers with a discreet horsebit. The work is accomplished. It is also, by design, quiet.

The Pivot

Gucci appointed De Sarno in the wake of Alessandro Michele's departure, a move that ended seven years of exuberant, highly referential design. Michele had turned the house into a cultural engine — his collections were events, his shows were Instagram gold, and revenue climbed accordingly. But by 2022, fatigue had set in. The market wanted something else. Kering, Gucci's parent, wanted something else.

Enter De Sarno, whose first show — Ancora, presented in September 2023 — felt like a deliberate palate cleanser. Models walked through a red-lit space in fluid trousers, leather blazers, and silk shirts that grazed the body without clinging. The palette was earthy: rust, chocolate, olive, cream. The silhouette was elongated, almost languid. There was no irony, no pastiche, no obvious hook.

The reaction was mixed. Some critics praised the clarity, the return to craft. Others found it too safe, too derivative of the mid-century Italian elegance that Gucci mined decades ago under Tom Ford. The commercial response has been cautious. Sales dipped in the first quarters under De Sarno's leadership, though that reflects broader market headwinds as much as creative direction.

What's undeniable is the coherence. De Sarno has a point of view, even if it's not loud. He wants Gucci to feel like a wardrobe again, not a parade of statement pieces. He wants the leather goods — still the house's revenue engine — to integrate with the ready-to-wear, not overshadow it. And he wants, one suspects, to prove that desirability doesn't require spectacle.

The Signature

If there's a through line in De Sarno's work so far, it's texture. He gravitates toward materials that age well — soft leathers, heavyweight silks, brushed cashmere. The Ancora collection featured a leather coat in a burnished cognac that looked as though it had already lived a life. The trousers, cut wide and high-waisted, were made from a wool-silk blend that caught the light without sheen. Even the knitwear felt considered, with ribbing that suggested structure without stiffness.

This is not, strictly speaking, innovation. It's refinement. De Sarno is working within a narrow bandwidth — mid-century Italian tailoring, 1970s ease, a touch of Milanese sophistication — and betting that execution will distinguish the work. The saddle-stitched leather goods, the hand-finished hems, the incremental adjustments to proportion: these are the details that matter to him.

Whether they matter to the customer is another question. Gucci's audience has been conditioned, over the past decade, to expect more noise. De Sarno is offering something quieter, more expensive to produce, and harder to photograph. It's a gamble.

What Comes Next

De Sarno's second collection, shown in February 2024, doubled down on the same principles. More leather, more fluidity, more earth tones. The accessories — a new top-handle bag in supple calfskin, loafers with a chunkier sole — felt like natural extensions of the ready-to-wear. The casting skewed older, the styling more restrained. It was, in many ways, the opposite of a relaunch.

And yet there were signs of evolution. A few pieces played with volume in unexpected ways — a trench coat with exaggerated lapels, a skirt that ballooned at the hem before tapering sharply. The colour palette expanded slightly, adding a deep plum and a mossy green. The show notes mentioned sprezzatura, that untranslatable Italian term for studied nonchalance. One could see De Sarno reaching for it.

The challenge, as ever, is time. Kering has given him room to build, but patience in the luxury sector is finite. Gucci remains the conglomerate's largest brand, and its performance affects everything downstream. If De Sarno's vision doesn't translate to sales within the next year or two, adjustments will follow. They always do.

For now, he continues. The fittings, the fabric selections, the two-centimetre adjustments. He has said, more than once, that he isn't interested in fashion as theatre. He wants to make clothes that last, that improve with wear, that feel like a second skin. Whether that's enough — whether the market will reward restraint over spectacle — remains to be seen.

The model turns again in the tobacco coat. De Sarno steps forward, tugs gently at the hem, steps back. "Yes," he says. "That's it." The fitting ends. The work continues.