Sabato De Sarno does not love having people over to his home.
Colleagues arent invited for dinner; his husband lives in Brusselseven his parents dont get to spend the night.
Where I disconnect from work.
PROFONDO ROSSODe Sarno in his Rome apartment, which showcases his signature color, Ancora (also the name of his debut runway collection).
There are prints of Italian icons, including one of the writer and director Pier Paolo Pasolini.
That is his ambition for Gucci, too, he tells me: to imbue it with passion.
I want Gucci to touch peoples hearts, he says.
De Sarno and husband Daniele Calisti.
He says I dont work, De Sarno says with a half smile.
Family is central to De Sarno.
De Sarno and husband Daniele Calisti.
HOUSE AND HOMEDe Sarno (seated) overseeing a fitting in Gucci’s Rome headquarters before the move to Milan.
The only family photo is a childhood image of De Sarno himself.
Lets not overdo it, he says with a laugh.
For nearly the last decade, Gucci turned overdoing it into both an ethos and a business plan.
I didnt want a ruptureI wanted an evolution, Kerings chairman and CEO, Francois-Henri Pinault, tells me.
To reach them, he turned to De Sarno, then Valentinos fashion director of mens and womens ready-to-wear.
(If De Sarnos Gucci takes off, people are going to look a lot taller this year.)
The colors were mostly mutedblacks and blues and whites, a lacy pink lingerie dress under a beige overcoat.
My overcoat has a shape that is the result of a curating process.
We tested it, we chose for wearability.
At the end, you see a gray coat, but its a little more than a gray coat.
Its nearly noon and De Sarno, usually at the office by 9, has to get to work.
Italian-ness is know-how, he explains.
All of the French brandsthey do production in Italy.
Its our grandparents, our aunts and uncles and relatives.
But he also wants to bring a sense of an Italian who lives in the world.
Im an Italian, but I dont live the dolce vita.
I go to Brussels, to New Yorkbut I go as an Italian.
For me, Italian-ness means bringing our qualities into the world.
In De Sarnos Gucci, he envisions the clothesand the storesas envoys for his culture and heritage.
(Compared to Milan, he says, Rome is not at all a free city.)
Until January 2023, few people outside fashions tightest circles had heard of De Sarno.
Thats where De Sarno came in.
I was a designer for 20 years.
I have touched the clothes, I changed and modified them, I invented them.
Pinault, for his part, remains confident.
But so far, so good.
HOUSE AND HOMEDe Sarno (seated) overseeing a fitting in Guccis Rome headquarters before the move to Milan.
His mother, who learned how to embroider with her six sisters, had him at age 17.
His father had followed his own father, whom Sabato is named after, into the construction business.
De Sarno endured taunting over his name, which means Saturday (Is your brother named Wednesday, Thursday?
), and, as he got older, more vicious teasing about his emerging sexuality.
Around the age of 13, he began to see Gianni Versace as a role model.
When that passed, he ran with a crowd he describes as beautiful people who liked fashion.
During a high school trip to Rome, he scored a red velvet Tom Ford jacket.
While no one around him knew it was Gucci, I did, he says.
Over summers, he worked odd jobswaiter, data entry at a provincial office, salesman at Diesel.
The piece won the schools Golden Needle prize.
In that moment, my dream wasnt only a dream, he says.
It was starting to become real.
Milan was like Disneyland, he says.
He left the Golden Needle award in his exs place and, at age 26, moved to Rome.
De Sarnos rise to the throne was both sudden and unexpected.
He soon began the interview processfor just what job he wasnt sure.
(Four days, De Sarno clarified, holding his finger in the air.
Between Christmas and New Years.)
The final two candidates met with Pinault in Paris.
I was shaking, De Sarno recalled, adding that even talking about it hiked his blood pressure.
The meetingbetween two friends who had worked side by side and gotten to know each others familieswas emotional.
It was two people who have shared a journey and who will continue to share it in another way.
When he returned to Cicciano for his 40th birthday, banners proclaimed him the pride of the town.
At Gucci, no one dropped by his officeor even came to his floor.
Far from being a recluse in the VIP section, he was found mostly out on the dance floor.
Its fresh, its pureits an inextinguishable fire for life.
He soon started building his own team.
Crucially, though, he also stays grounded.
I loved the way he toned it down, she says.
It makes the brand look even more sophisticated than it already isits so simple.
Backstage, Hanni watched as De Sarno excused himself from taking pictures with celebrities to embrace his family.
Your father, the barista there confided to him, only talks about you.)
Brutal, he said.
I didnt know him as GucciI knew him as Davide.)
I would like children.
For now, he is the paterfamilias of an Italian empire.
Super nice, he says, in English, when he likes something a lot.
Another outfit is amended to make it a little more bourgeois, another more lady.
He kneels on the mosaic face of Mercury to tie a strap to another models brown sandal.
I want, he says, to do only this.
