"Gucci is the opportunity to fall in love with fashion, ancora. Ancora means a lot of things. It means again, but it’s also more personal; it’s not something you lost, it’s something that you still have, but you want more of it because it makes you happy."
On September 22nd 2023, during Milan Fashion Week, Gucci kicked off officially its brand-new era, presenting its Spring/Summer 2024, the first one by Sabato De Sarno, its new creative director.
Named at the helm of one of the most historical Italian brands by Kering only last May, Sabato De Sarno's debut was possibly the most anticipated moment of the season.
Everyone, including me, was much curious to see his new vision for Gucci.
Instagram teasers, including a campaign featuring Daria Werbowy and pieces of the Marina Chain jewellery collection, gave us a vague idea of what's to come, hinting at an essential image for Gucci, prior to the show.
Nobody was possibly prepared for the collection, though. Fashion critics dissected the career of De Sarno, looking for clues, instead the freshly appointed creative director presented what he called a map: it’s personal, it is about my designs, my sensibilities, my passions. These are the items I want to explore further at Gucci.
De Sarno's first collection is a breath of fresh air, it's the beginning of new codes and it appears as the first step of a whole new world that's waiting only to go further.
It actually made me think about a quote by photographer Kati Horna, that's constantly floating in my mind lately whenever I start a new piece: "You have to strip away the excess in order to reach the essential in the image as you recall it". I wonder if something similar was the starting point of this collection. Anyway, it was for me when I started to illustrate some elements of this show.
I picked my favourite looks, those lines and colours I was attracted to and started creating. It was a labour of love, interspersed by moments of stress or light dissatisfaction whenever I wasn't happy with the result. Whenever I felt like the image in my mind, what I recalled, wasn't matching the strokes in my paper. It's a learning curve, it's always like that for me. It's baby steps towards new ways of expression. It's my creative process.
"It’s a story of everything, again, but this time expressed through joy."