Change Looks Different When It Is Seen From Afar

Gucci's maximalism is not gone; it just looks different. The Fall/Winter '24 collection comes riddled with clues that creative director Sabato De Sarno offers much more than clean aesthetics.

- Manfred Lu

Gucci has never been a minimal house. Not when the City bag — abundantly monogrammed with the GG symbol and sports several gold hardware —became its first sellout item in the 1950s after Jackie Kennedy was seen carrying it. Not even when Tom Ford famously dressed Gwyneth Paltrow in a red velvet suit from his Fall/Winter ’96 collection for the MTV Video Music Awards, which dove its name into complete pop culture frenzy. And especially not when Alessandro Michele had his models walk on the runway cradling replica heads of themselves within a set, resembling a hospital’s operation theatre before attempting to recreate the same theatrical gestures until his last collection for the house.

The same can be said of Sabato De Sarno, Gucci’s latest creative lead. While his debut for menswear seems to suggest a new Gucci trumped by approachable silhouettes and straightforward textile ideas, its effect is far from “minimalism”. His proposals are, instead, radically maximalist. Perhaps just not in the way one has witnessed before. The obvious may dispel this, especially when one compares them to the most recent memory of the house — who could forget the parade on Hollywood Boulevard and its presentation of the wildest looks to exist in luxury fashion? By accessorising his looks with a scarf hanging suggestively on the male body and the choice of deep rouge on glossy bags at play, it feels wrong to call his work “minimal” for the sake of being comprehensive.