Sabato De Sarno of Gucci opened the latest Milan menswear runway week on Friday afternoon with his first menswear collection for the house, tinted in burgundy.
Like his debut women’s wear collection in September, this menswear collection was entitled Gucci Ancora – meaning again in Italian – referencing the designer’s embrace of the brand’s DNA and his own personal obsession with Eighties Italy.
Again, Sabato chose to unveil his new ideas in a large, renovated factory space – one of scores available in Milan. In this case, the Fonderia Carlo Macchi, a disused ironworks in north Milan, where the cast marched around in a rectangular path of light, to upbeat dance pop. This season a looped version of Late Night Prelude by Mark Ronson, who sat front row at the show.
An audience that included a gaggle of K-Pop singers was led by Idris Elba, who marched around in a great monogram purple satin coat.
As it turned out there was relatively little burgundy in this collection, a somber, inventively tailored, skillfully voluminous sea of clothes that looked commercially astute.
“It’s a story of objects – shiny, tactile and cold to the touch but warm to the heart and soul, these are desirable to collect, not for a museum but to enrich life,” argued Sabato in a program note, entitled Ancora Manifesto.
De Sarno opened with a defining look – an ankle-licking great coat in gray metal wool anchored by studded brothel creepers. Using gabardine, silk or fine wool, he cut a series of great wrap-around suits and tuxedos, with the central buttons displaced to one side where the hip was cleverly rouched. While for next fall, Sabato wants guys in big collar single-breasted trenches; workerist leather jackets and lots of bold all-monogram looks in beige or burgundy.
For evening, his shimmering smocks and jade sequined rockstar coats will be brilliant in editorial shoots. Between the foam-soled shoes, over the shoulder bags and new chunky gold necklaces there was plenty of merch and mode, though not that much magic.
De Sarno clearly knows how to construct a collection and define a silhouette. But the actual show never took off, lacking that soupcon of unexpected that is essential for a great runway show.
Before Christmas, Sabato sent a handsomely bound and printed book to the same friends and editors. The two categories are not mutually exclusive. Contained in a box in his signature burgundy, it featured all manner of 80s creatives – from slash painter Lucio Fontana to the noted critics and writers that congregated around Bar Jamaican to Giorgio Strehler. That founder of Italy’s most important modern stage – Il Piccolo Teatro – was perhaps most famous for a video he shot of himself as Christ nailed to the cross attempting to drive in the final nail in a hammer swung from his teeth.
In short – thousands of miles from the revivalist American glamour of Tom Ford, or the daffy Contessa living in Brooklyn aesthetic of Sabato’s immediate predecessor Alessandro Michele.
In a word, Sabato De Sarno is very much his own man.
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