The great gamble

At the Gucci Ancora showcase in Singapore, Vogue India got within a hair’s breadth of Sabato De Sarno’s debut collection. ROCHELLE PINTO reports on the new direction

It's fitting that Sabato De Sarno's debut collection kicked off its international tour in a former chapel. The air at Claudine, Singapore's trendiest new French bistro, is redolent with the aroma of butter being generously ladled over the evening's sustenance as accents from every corner of Asia-Pacific reverberate across the room. My fellow guests are acolytes of the Church of Gucci. And the new head priest is in modernization mode.

This evening, we've gathered to raise a toast to De Sarno's exacting vision. I presume it's a happy coincidence, but Claudine's scarlet ceiling is close to the intoxicating Rosso Ancora that the creative director threaded together from the archives and rebirthed on the Milan spring/summer 2024 runway.

And his rebrand doesn't stop with a fresh coat of paint.

De Sarno offers a textbook example of what Coco Chanel meant when she said, "Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off." Where his predecessor Alessandro Michele fuelled sales of nearly 10 billion euros a year on the back of an everything-andthe-kitchen-sink aesthetic, the new head priest of the Church of Gucci likes to peel back the shiny layers and leave only what is essential.