Sabato De Sarno debuted his distilled and concise vision for Gucci today at Milan Fashion Week, and with it came a new It color in the making. Introducing: Gucci Rosso.
Luxury labels across the board are currently hard at work claiming their own tones. There’s Valentino’s PP Pink, unveiled at Pierpaolo Piccioli’s fall 2022 show and catapulted into the mainstream alongside Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. (Funnily enough, Piccioli told Vogue’s Sarah Mower at the time of his show that he’d selected the distinct shade of pink to “subvert” its association with girlishness, among other things.) There was also Daniel Lee’s Parakeet Green at Bottega Veneta (currently being subtly fazed out of the brand’s verbiage), which the designer introduced early on in his tenure and made the inarguable It color of 2021—some even called it the new millennial pink. Now manning the ship at Burberry, Lee has moved on from green in favor of a particular hue of blue—Knight Blue is what the label has christened this Yves Klein–esque tone, though the jury’s still out on whether the designer can recreate his own phenomenon. And who could forget Hermès’s unflinching orange, the OG of brand It colors, and even Valentino’s deep red that for a while gave name to its now discontinued sub-brand, Red Valentino.
But here to give everyone a run for their money—and to put our color-theory knowledge to the test—is Sabato De Sarno’s Gucci Rosso, which is currently splayed across billboards, buses, Instagram posts, and, of course, the designer’s debut collection. Gucci Rosso is a deep and rich shade of oxblood, just a few shades darker than the middle stripe in Gucci’s signature tri-stripe motif and not unlike a very ladylike burgundy rouge. There’s a subtle modernity and freshness to the shade, hinging on how unlike it is to other It colors in the market: It’s not bright and saturated, like PP Pink or Knight Blue. It’s also not uncommon and new, like Parakeet Green. Gucci Rosso is familiar in its retro sophistication. It’s a color we know—and one Gucci has used before, as confirmed by a quick Google search—and it could even feel dated if not for De Sarno’s application of it on glossy monogram leathers and jacquard fabrics, lush wool suitings, and rugged but sleek skins. Gucci Rosso also has a clear, mature, and elegant Italianity—a word De Sarno is using to describe his take on Gucci, deeply tied to its Italian heritage. One could even picture a chic Roman or Milanese woman applying Gucci Rosso to her lips while looking at a handheld mirror.
De Sarno’s first luxury purchase, as he recently told Vogue Runway’s Nicole Phelps in an interview, was a deep red velvet jacket by Tom Ford for Gucci. While Mr. Ford’s red velvet was not as deep as Gucci Rosso, De Sarno has a personal history with this hue and with the brand. Now its creative director, he chose the Italian word ancora to title his debut. “Ancora means a lot of things,” he said to Phelps. “It means again, but it’s also more personal—it’s not something you lost, it’s something that you still have but you want more of it because it makes you happy.” Ancora, Gucci Rosso.
