With Sabato De Sarno debuting his first collection for the house in just a few weeks, Gucci’s Autumn/Winter 2023 campaign is a subtle hint to a new era while reminding us of the brand’s heritage
Gucci has mastered the delightful knack of surprising us with its campaigns. Last season’s was a surreal statement on individuality through photographs of Gucci-fied twins; prior to that, a bizarre and cinematic reimagining of Stanley Kubrick’s distinct oeuvre. Unveiled today, the Italian label lay bare a salient reminder of where they come from, with a new campaign for Autumn/Winter 2023 featuring models Vittoria Ceretti, Aboubakar Konte and Brando Erba in Milan, photographed by David Sims.
The sartorial dialect of Gucci is truly one of the most succinct in the world. More than a century old, the visual codes of the Italian label have metamorphosed with the help of its creative directors, spanning from its founder Guccio Gucci, Dawn Mello, Tom Ford, and most recently, Alessandro Michele. In November last year, Michele stepped down from his role after seven radical years, and since then, the label has been in limbo, awaiting the arrival of its new creative director Sabato De Sarno, who will debut his first collection at Milan Fashion Week in a matter of weeks.
But in the meantime, the label’s Autumn/Winter 2023 collection, presented in Milan earlier this year, picked up where its mega-talented designers left off with a season designed entirely in-house. Reinventing the codes of the label by riffing on some of its greatest hits – the micro-bras, sumptuous, slinky knits, the delicate paillette embellishments – the show was an era-spanning retrospective that gave a knowing wink to Gucci’s future. The new campaign, too, gazes into the label’s dazzling crystal ball with imagery and film set against Gucci’s signature mossy green backdrop, and a film featuring scenes in an elevator – reminiscent of the set of the women’s A/W23 show, which welcomed its models through an elevator installed in the show space. Reprising the archive of the storied label, the new campaign is further proof that the house’s multifaceted visual vocabulary is loud, gutsy, and endlessly relevant.