“I don’t need the invitees to my runways to say, Wow, wow, after which neglect about it the subsequent day,” he says. He needs individuals to understand the standard and the hidden element of his designs; he needs them to dream about it—after which to enter the shops in 4 months “and purchase it and put on it.”

It’s almost midday and De Sarno, often on the workplace by 9, has to get to work. On the road, he’s clad in a black Gucci overcoat and carries a black leather-based Gucci bag with a metallic tag studying My 1st LACMA. The inexperienced and pink stripes on the tongues of his white Gucci sneakers match Luce’s leash, a present from his staff for the Ancora runway present. “She loves Gucci greater than I do,” he says, revealing that Luce is the inspiration for the brand new “bassotto,” an elongated, wiener canine model of a clutch.

De Sarno factors out the locations the place he goes (the Fellini‑​esque hang-out on the Piazza Farnese, the place there are “totally different individuals, not only one sort”) and the locations he doesn’t (a wine bar the place “everybody goes, and so—no”). Avoiding the Pantheon and streets clogged with vacationers, he mourns the loss, in central Rome, of artisans and, with them, sure Italian traditions of expertise, good style, and high quality that he needs to reinject into Gucci. “Italian-ness is know-how,” he explains. “All the French manufacturers—they do manufacturing in Italy. Already that is an evidence: There’s Dior, Chanel—however it’s we Italians who make these items, we who contact these merchandise and make them turn out to be one thing. It’s our grandparents, our aunts and uncles and kin.”

However he additionally needs to deliver a way of “an Italian who lives on the earth. I’m an Italian, however I don’t dwell the dolce vita. I’m going to Brussels, to New York—however I’m going as an Italian. For me, Italian-ness means bringing our qualities into the world.” In De Sarno’s Gucci, he envisions the garments—and the shops—as envoys for his tradition and heritage.

As we stroll, De Sarno sidesteps the rubbish and damaged glass of Rome—a metropolis, he says, “I’ve by no means fallen in love with.” (In comparison with Milan, he says, Rome is “by no means a free metropolis.”) He crosses the Through del Corso, says “Andiamo, Luce” with a mild yank of the leash, and enters Gucci headquarters—the place, for now not less than, he’s free to do no matter he likes.

Till January 2023, few individuals exterior style’s tightest circles had heard of De Sarno. When Michele cut up with Gucci, the lists circulating of potential successors included the home’s studio design director, Remo Macco, or longtime Gucci designer Davide Renne.

As Pinault tells it, although, the interior candidates weren’t fairly seasoned sufficient, and so, in a rigorous recruitment course of, he appeared exterior—breaking with an extended Gucci custom of selling from inside however protecting with the Kering observe of discovering prime expertise from behind the scenes. That’s the place De Sarno got here in.

“The large is Gucci—I’m Sabato,” De Sarno tells me over a lunch of risotto beneath frescoes in his august workplace. “I’m not a singer who turned a artistic director or an actor who turned a artistic director,” he says. “I used to be a designer for 20 years. I’ve touched the garments, I modified and modified them, I invented them. They’ve chosen somebody who is aware of how to do that job—for those who prefer it or not, that’s one other story—however I absolutely know the way to do that.”

Pinault tells me he’s stunned by De Sarno’s vitality, which he noticed firsthand at LACMA, but in addition together with his maturity and endurance: Quite than making an attempt to do every thing directly, De Sarno appears to be slowly however absolutely constructing on his work in successive collections.

Nonetheless, regardless of all of the market analysis and promoting budgets of a serious model like Gucci, style success stays an alchemy, not a science. When Michele requested to be put ahead in 2014 for the highest job, Pinault didn’t even know who he was, although his maiden—and, for a lot of, mad—present ended up being the primary unorthodox step in a wildly profitable, and profitable, journey. De Sarno could be hitting all of Kering’s buttons—luxurious, sophistication, sexiness, and wearability—but hitting the zeitgeist is one other matter.