Antonio Mancinelli’s piece, with which I certainly agree. It finally puts a finger on an open wound in fashion, describing the distance between the strategies of the big groups and the reasons why someone should still want what they produce. When he writes that price “divorces from the reasons to pay it” and that the logo becomes “a collector of nostalgia”, he finds the words to describe a crisis that the balance sheets alone do not explain.
In October 2025, in an article of mine, I asked whether the industrial logic applied to luxury, with faster timelines, rationalised creativity and a growing reliance on data, risked pushing it closer to fast fashion. A fashion that chases the market instead of stirring desire. A year on, those questions remain open, and my concerns about Gucci have only grown stronger.
Kering and Gucci are an emblematic case, but they are not the only one. Designers are changed at a pace that leaves little time to build a vision, and executives from very different sectors are brought in to run brands, without enough thought given to whether they know the product, the craft and the people they are speaking to. A logo cannot fix a cash-flow problem, and neither can a designer called in to undo, in a few seasons, choices that were wrong to begin with. That does not excuse whoever made the choice: in my view, the latest creative appointment was a major mistake.
Even those who can spend without looking at the price choose elsewhere if they cannot find clothes they actually want to wear. Faced with certain collections, it is tempting to think the same effect could be achieved just by opening your mother’s or grandmother’s wardrobe.
Designers can change, and sooner or later they do. What should stay firm is the style: that recognisable vision a brand has built over the years, which whoever arrives has a duty to understand, respect and carry forward. If that is lost too, what is left, besides the name?
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Alessandro Sicuro
Brand Strategist | Photographer | Art Director | Project Manager
Alessandro Sicuro Comunication
