Kering-backed ICICLE names Sabato De Sarno creative director
ICICLE, the Shanghai label in which Kering holds a minority stake, has named Sabato De Sarno creative director, putting the designer who led Gucci from 2023 in charge of a brand built around a far quieter idea of luxury.
ICICLE has appointed Sabato De Sarno as creative director, the Shanghai-founded brand announced on 7 September. De Sarno's first collection for the label is due to show for the 2027-2028 autumn-winter season.
Kering holds a minority stake in ICICLE's parent company, ICCF Group, acquired through a strategic partnership, according to ICICLE's own site. The brand, founded in Shanghai in 1997 and now run out of dual Paris and Shanghai headquarters, operates more than 200 stores worldwide.
De Sarno began his career at Prada in 2003, moved through Dolce & Gabbana, then spent over a decade at Valentino from 2009, rising to fashion director for both menswear and womenswear, before becoming creative director at Gucci in 2023, according to ICICLE's announcement. Bénédicte Laloux remains design director for ICICLE's womenswear runway collection, now reporting into De Sarno.
ICICLE's founder and chief executive, Ye Shou-zeng, said in the announcement that pairing global creative talent with the brand's Chinese cultural foundations marked an important strategic step; De Sarno said the brand's philosophy aligned closely with his own creative approach, in particular its focus on harmony between people and nature.
Kering's stable of investments outside its own maisons has mostly stayed quiet by design: a minority stake, no headline campaign, no runway spectacle. Handing De Sarno, a designer with a very public Gucci chapter behind him, the top creative job at one of those investments is a different kind of signal — it puts a known name and a defined design point of view on a brand whose identity has so far rested on restraint rather than a face. What ICICLE looks like under him, and how loudly Kering chooses to associate itself with the result, is now the thing to watch through to that first show two years out.