This is Connecting the Dots, a series in which writer José Criales-Unzueta looks at how fashion, pop culture, the internet and society are all interconnected.
“Who is Sabato De Sarno?” poses a documentary short that Gucci released mid last month. The 20-minute featurette, directed by Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost, peels back the curtains of the designer’s debut show last September.
The doc is funny, pithy and charmingly narrated by Gucci’s freshly minted hunky house ambassador Paul Mescal. It shows us sides to De Sarno that hadn’t come across in written interviews, like his quirky sense of humour. What the film also does is air out a strategic move by Gucci to put the spotlight on De Sarno, presumably to generate some buzz and excitement around the previously unknown designer.
.jpg)
The pressure is on to recreate the success of De Sarno’s predecessor, the prolific Alessandro Michele, who remade Gucci in his image and sent sales soaring. The tides have since turned: Gucci parent Kering warned in March that the brand’s sales are expected to slip 20 per cent in Q1. A turnaround will in part ride on De Sarno to fill the shoes of Michele, who was not only a successful designer but one with star power in his own right. His associations with celebrities like Harry Styles made way for impactful marketing and collaborations. It should come as no surprise that Gucci wants to bring De Sarno up to speed quickly, even if it feels like fast-forwarding what tends to happen naturally.
Whether or not Gucci can create a cult personality out of De Sarno depends on numerous factors as well as one key question: are star designers born or made?
Manufacturing cult status
De Sarno joins other designers-turned-documentary subjects, like Dries Van Noten, Valentino Garavani and Raf Simons in 2014’s Dior and I. While Who is Sabato De Sarno? is not a full-length feature, these sorts of projects tend to come after audiences have developed a curiosity and a fanaticism, not before. Designer stardom takes time, and is fuelled by fanaticism for the fashion itself. Think of Marc Jacobs, Tom Ford, or Karl Lagerfeld, who all became pop cultural icons and celebrities through their work and their subsequent celebrity associations.
But this isn’t the ’90s, and the internet has fragmented culture into a myriad of tiny little pieces. In today’s world, any kind of celebrity is born and made online (think TikTok music hits or influencers like Sofia Richie Grainge). This has altered the way in which cult status occurs organically: the more you post, the more visible you are, the more known you become. Fashion is now looking to make stars rather than wait for them to rise, and the right kind of content can create the right kind of cult. (See: Simon Porte Jacquemus and his masterful use of social media.)
Yet ‘internet famous’ doesn’t equal stardom. In the same way we often ponder if we’ll ever have another Madonna, or whether Beyoncé and Taylor Swift are the last huge music stars, we have to wonder if the era of the star designer as we know it, in the shape of folks like Lagerfeld and Thierry Mugler, has come and gone.
It’s also worth noting that the recent streak of hires are number twos who have to work harder to break through into the mainstream. De Sarno, McQueen’s Seán McGirr, Chloé’s Chemena Kamali, Moschino’s Adrian Appiolaza, Alaïa’s Pieter Mulier and Bottega Veneta’s Matthieu Blazy all worked under top creative directors prior to their current roles. These names, including Michele, were relatively unknown when they were plucked for massive roles. The takeaway seemed to be that designers weren’t stars anymore, but brands. Yet Gucci is bringing De Sarno into our households.
These designers now represent a clean slate for brands, and an opportunity to create new stars, but for brands to get bigger fast, designers need to get famous even faster.
Stars among us
Before fashion stardom was subjected to the whims of the algorithm, stars were given more time to rise — even if they never reached household-name status. Hedi Slimane and Phoebe Philo both developed cults around their work over the past two decades. Your mum probably knows who Tom Ford is, but has she heard of Slimane?
Jonathan Anderson debuted at Loewe 10 years ago this upcoming June. His was a slow burn. It wasn’t until last year that Anderson started to creep into the mainstream when he dressed Rihanna for her Super Bowl performance and delivered a handful of viral hits at Loewe. His association with director Luca Guadagnino gave him another boost; he is the costume designer for the Zendaya vehicle Challengers out this month, and is working on the director’s Queer. He was inducted into the Time 100 this week, with a write up by Guadagnino. Other designers added over the past decade include Michele (2017), the late Virgil Abloh (2018) and Balenciaga creative director Demna (2022). Coincidentally, these four are the breakout stars of the last decade, and we all waited years for them to rise.
Abloh’s ascent in fashion started when he joined Kanye West, now Ye, as an intern at Fendi in 2009. He launched his first label, Pyrex Vision, in 2012 and then founded Off-White in 2013. In 2018, he took on the menswear mantle at Louis Vuitton, becoming the first African American to become artistic director at a French luxury fashion house. We saw Abloh become a star right in front of our eyes, but this happened over a decade, little by little and then all at once. He reached a level of global, mainstream fame unusual for any fashion designer by the time he was hired — and given a major boost — at Vuitton.
It was a bet that paid off — yet every available luxury house hire since his passing has gone to an unknown name, with one key exception: his successor, Pharrell Williams. Williams is indeed a star, and while not a star designer, the difference doesn’t seem to matter. His hire speaks to the way in which the industry has evolved as fashion has become more intertwined with entertainment, but also to the lack of patience to turn a new name into a big shot.
After Abloh, LVMH had a choice — to support a new name or find one who could measure up to his. A celebrity with Williams’s robust fashion and taste-making credentials is a safe bet for as long as they can leverage his popularity, which is significantly higher than any designer, no matter how well known.
Not every brand can afford a Williams-level salary. Michele is once again returning to the race tracks at the helm of Valentino, showing that some brands are still willing to bet on a designer of his renown. Whether he can make lightning strike twice and reinvent Valentino, or pick up where he left off at Gucci and regain his existing fan base, will be telling of what a designer of his stature can achieve today.
Who gets to be a star?
If you’ve made it this far into the column, you’ve noticed a common denominator among most of these designers. They are white, and they are men. Abloh was the exception, even if the way in which his career was talked about was a constant reminder of it. He was “the first”, “the only” and his work was discussed in the context of his Blackness. Remember when the 2022 Grammys “in memoriam” labelled him a “hip-hop designer”, whatever that means?
Diversity is a crucial topic of conversation when it comes to designers leading houses — as it is about who gets to become a star. The blunt reality is that fame oftentimes equals ubiquity, and fashion of late has got into the habit of replacing the niche with the universal in order to go bigger — and designers are no exception. The pop culture definition of a fashion designer is that of an attractive white, often gay, man, after all. This is who we’re used to seeing, and who our culture excels at elevating. What will it take for fashion to look elsewhere? This question in itself is too big to tackle within this essay. Stand still for chapter two coming soon.
So are star designers born or made? They used to be born, and we used to give them time to ascend. It’s hazy whether we’ll offer any of today’s names the patience we gave the generations before them, but what’s clear is what it now takes to make a star: viral hits, celebrity associations, a buzzy side gig and the right kind of content. Maybe Gucci has the right idea by looking to build a cult around De Sarno, even if it’s too early to see what his Gucci is made of. Interest will presumably come in due time, and when it does, the history will have already been written.
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
.jpg)
