Gucci 'Ancora' Spring 2024 Ad Campaign

Review of Gucci ‘Ancora’ Spring 2024 Ad Campaign by Creative Director Sabato De Sarno and Photographer David Sims with models Fadia Ghaab, Jiahui Zhang, Nyajuok G, Violet Hume, Arthur Hargous, Prince Diamond, and Ana Rossolovich

Gucci ushers in the age of Ancora with its new Spring 2024 campaign. The first main seasonal campaign from Sabato De Sarno captures the creative director’s simple and luxurious look back into the house’s archives, and sees him call on the talents of renowned photographer David Sims.

Furthering the elegant simplicity of De Sarno’s debut collection and its runway show, Sims’ imagery takes a totally minimal approach, capturing the looks in a brightly lit, all-white studio space. The stripped-back approach brings the details, textures, and especially colors – which include the house’s new signature deep red tone, which juxtaposes energetically with a vivid lime green – to the fore. Bare torsos covered only by bags nod to a bit of the Tom Ford sensuality of the house’s fondly remembered 90s days, but for the most part the feeling is focused on a contemporary vision of quiet luxury.

This direct perspective also puts an emphasis on the commanding attitudes of the cast, which includes five new faces that debuted at the Ancora runway show – another nod to the new beginning that is the De Sarno era. The press released shared by the brand points to a sense of individuality embodied by these icons for a new era: “This lens sees the woman through the clothes, and not vice versa, as each portrays sensuality as an attitude of confidence, beauty, and freedom. No matter where, no matter what time of day, the Gucci Spring Summer 2024 wardrobe is an invitation for each woman to feel empowered to live exactly in her own unique way; an invitation to fall in love with that special emotion fashion inspires, ancora.”

And yet it must be said that these five new faces feel like the only thing that’s new and unique about the campaign. While Sims’ compositions make an undeniable impact through their clever group arrangements and strong use of the collection’s distinctive color palette, the approach is one that we’ve seen countless times before.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing – timeless marketing techniques are timeless because, when deployed properly, they work – but there is certainly a question to be asked of whether a new creative director should actually bring in something new, and an even broader question as to what fashion and the industry’s attitude to newness should be. For most of fashion’s modern history, excitement, freshness, and provocation were necessary ingredients, even for the major houses. Part of what has made Gucci successful is the way each creative director had a distinct perspective on cultural currents at the time, whether it was Tom Ford’s embrace of sexual freedom or Alessandro Michele’s world of gender diversity, celebration, and inclusivity. Now, we are starting to feel the full impact of the huge corporate buy-up that really took off a decade ago, with the spirit of individuality and progressiveness being drained from each brand as they become a homogenous stew of sellable imagery and products.

Thankfully, this also means we are feeling consumers push back against this lowest-common-denominator approach that wants us to believe fashion only means archival luxury. The recent success and cultural impact of more idiosyncratic and distinct brands like Miu Miu, Diesel, and Maison Margiela proves that fashion consumers aren’t satisfied with the kind of low-effort luxury that we are seeing here from Gucci, and instead resonate more with one-of-a-kind brand images and unique narratives. A short film would have been a great way for Gucci to infuse a deeper sense of narrative and personality into the imagery; it’s a strange and frustrating decision to miss this opportunity.

Nonetheless, there is still a significant population of consumers out there who are more interested in “luxury” than in “fashion.” For those dressers who are looking for an ensemble of low-effort, laid-back elegance that still screams wealth, Sabato De Sarno’s debut Gucci collection and campaign checks all the right boxes. It remains to be seen, however, whether this luxurious wiping clean of the creative slate will forge a strong new chapter in the enduring Gucci story, or pass as a forgettable detour.