The fashion beast never sleeps and, as 2024 kicks off, we’re heading still slightly bleary-eyed into the AW24 menswear season. Jumpstarting in Florence with S.S. Daley’s big guest debut at Pitti Uomo – where it was revealed the brand is set to grow with investment from none other than Harry Styles – today sees the crowd descend on Milano for shows from Italian behemoths like Prada, DSquared2, and Fendi, plus rising stars including JordanLuca and Andersson Bell. First up though is the small matter of Sabato De Sarno’s first ever Gucci menswear show, and the follow-up to his Ancora women’s outing back in September. Ticket lost in the mail? We’ve got you covered. Here’s everything you need to know from one of the most anticipated moments of the coming season.

SABATO DREW IN A STELLAR CROWD

@dazed Elliot Page arriving at the @Gucci AW24 Men’s show at Milan Fashion Week 💫 #DazedFashionTV #TikTokFashion #MilanFashionWeek #Runway #Gucci #ElliotPage #AW24Mens ♬ original sound - dazed

De Sarno really drew in a crowd last season, with Julia Roberts, Ryan Gosling, Halle Bailey, and a then-loved up Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny all squashing onto the front row to cheer the Italian designer on. This time was no different, as Elliot Page and Kaytranada showed up in full Gucci looks, alongside Mustafa The Poet, George Mackay, Jay Park, and IU.

SURPRISE! IT WASN’T AT THE GUCCI HUB

For god knows how long, Gucci has been staging its shows at the Gucci Hub – a massive complex where the house’s magic comes to life across design, PR, communications, and more. This time, however, De Sarno had cut loose from the hub to take over a stark, empty warehouse space – which last season caught the eye of Bottega Veneta. All poured concrete floors and industrial pillars, just the runway was lit with brilliant beams of white light.

SABATO PAINTED THE TOWN RED IN AN ODE TO THE ART WORLD

Never one to scrimp on pre-show theatrics, the brand revealed a day out from the catwalk that it’d commissioned artist Valerio Eliogabalo Torrisi to create ‘Gucci Art Walls’ in cities across the world. Starting at home, Torrisi’s first creation plastered the phrase “Ogni tanto, lo so, sogni anche tu, e sogni di noi” in huge scarlet letters on a Milanese apartamento, the phrase translating to “Every now and then, I know, you dream too, and you dream of us” in English. He then took the same poetic declaration to walls in Shanghai, New York, then onto the grey skies of London, where Brick Lane’s Old Truman Brewery got the Gucci treatment. Before the show, the company described its collaboration with Torrisi as “furthering the dialogue between fashion and art as part of Creative Director Sabato De Sarno’s vision for the House.”

THE COLLECTION’S SUBTEXT WAS A STRUGGLE AGAINST TRADITIONAL MASCULINITY

Aesthetically, the collection was a continuation of what we’d seen at last September’s women’s show, but this time presented through the fraught lens of masculinity. Though the soundtrack was also the same as SS24, the singular addition of Lucky Day’s “Masculinity” (“do I walk like a boy?”, “do I stand like a boy?”, “may I fuck all the boys?”) signalled what this collection might be about. When the first models trotted onto the runway they came in sharply tailored suits in black and sand, as well as rigid leather jackets that swamped their frames.

After the structure that dominated the first half of the collection came flashes of fragility: bejewelled trouser legs and sparkly tote bags hinted at a feminity bursting to be set free. The sailor reference popped up again, this time in the form of an oversized fisherman jumper and carpenter jeans – the most obviously workwear-coded look of the collection – but poking out from the shawl neckline were a set of sparkling jewels. We’d actually seen the same look before in the women’s show, but things were given new meaning when presented in a menswear context. And while bejewelled vests tops you’d find at the gay club were first shown under huge black overcoats, by the end of the show they’d broken free, shown by themselves on nothing but the models’ bare skin.

TIES BIG FOR AW24?

Ahead of De Sarno’s SS24 women’s show, many speculated that we’d see a return to the red hot horniness of Tom Ford-era Gucci. While that didn’t materialise, and the girls’ offering ended up being a lot more chic and chaste than anticipated, when it came to the menswear there was a hint of sex in the silky ties that wound round many of the models’ necks. Ties are of course a token of the traditional man’s closet, but here, the pull-to-go-tighter chain detailing almost choked the models. Toying with the idea of putting your partner on a leash next season? Sabato has high fashion fans sorted.