Sabato de Sarno said he began the new Gucci Pre-Fall collection by looking at the house’s history in the 1970s. Via text provided by the company, the designer said: “It was an immersion in the casual elegance that we now recognize as part of Gucci’s DNA: an everyday elegance, simple but deeply Italian, designed to wear. Made of beautiful things done, never ordinary. For this collection, I wanted to reimagine and reinterpret all of those elements in a way that felt fresh and relevant without being nostalgic.
Reinforcing the code without leaning too retro is a tricky balance for heritage brands because, almost by definition, the objects of today’s nostalgia were once totems of yesterday’s modernity. A key De Sarno strategy of circumventing this consensus is his constant experiments with “false colors”: combining Gucci pieces that you would never imagine seeing in editions (even if not shooting them in black and white. ) that inspired these reinterpretations . Notable examples here include the ribbed wool ‘Tromp Twinset’ (single integrated garment) in a sequin-edged combination of lilac and lemon. The showroom also featured cotton candy faux furs in similar saccharine shades, while other dresses featured more variations of their central off-olive and berry-burgundy conversation. Sharply tailored patch pocket suits for both genders were cut in a more off-kilter, vaguely mesmerizing micro-gingham color-combo.
Another De Sarno trick to bring his starting point back to the future was to put the obviously contemporary (boxy indigo denim) against the obviously historical (a cropped jacket in herringbone black and gray). Similarly the floral scarf patterns from the Florence collection were reconfigured on cotton/wool jacquard work jackets as well as silk dresses. Variations on the broadly proportioned and powerfully colored Militaria in women’s clothing and the tonally harmonic Ivy League in men’s clothing were considered. De Sarno in particular broke the 1970s spell of bell-bottom pants by introducing a split running several inches above the seam from their front hem: even better for shining suede runners and two-tone horsebit loafers. .
Sweaters with loppessa patterns were adorned with sequins and cropped shearling was brightly colored to reflect the same Icelandic source material. A raglan sleeve overcoat in Prince of Wales check, with burgundy flashing below the collar, was cut with De Sarno’s favorite box pleat at the back and two lateral side-splits: retro but also beyond. Much of this collection was about painstakingly considered details in silhouettes and visual textures to deliver innovation. Indications were also made towards fatto e mano and crafts in macrame flowers and richly crafted leather dresses.
De Sarno is a highly technical and obsessively precise designer who has made Gucci everything, everywhere, all at once, well beyond its previous iterations. Yet as Karl Lagerfeld once said: “Fashion is about two things: evolution and contrast.” Sometimes De Sarno might play with the idea of throwing in a few more oppositional jolts – whether in silhouette, storytelling, or something else entirely – against which to set the highly distinctive subtleties of the Gucci evolution that he continues to shape. Keep.
