While rumors swirl about Sabato De Sarno’s next commitment, today, as part of the presentation of the new initiatives set to enliven the upcoming Milan Design Week, the former creative director of Gucci has once again taken center stage.
Within the Milan’s Porta Venezia Design District area event, which will take place from April 20 to 26, 2026, Sabato De Sarno has curated a project in collaboration with Vanity Fair, Levi’s, Banca Ifis, and Buccellati.
The event in this neighborhood of the city will host approximately 60 events and 350 designers, as well as attract at least 80,000 people, as was the case in 2025.
In particular, the Piscina Cozzi, a large building hosting a public swimming pool built in the 1930s, will host the first in a series of events organized by Vanity Fair—Archivio Italia—which for this edition will be curated by Sabato De Sarno.
“We wanted to create an event that speaks to origins and that, even though today we talk about a great technological revolution and artificial intelligence, it is important to value memory and, for this reason, use archives as new starting points,” said Simone Marchetti, European editorial director at Vanity Fair.
The project’s curator of this first event is Sabato De Sarmo. “For Milan Design Week, I didn’t want to create an exhibition about objects; I wanted to tell the stories of the people behind them. That’s why I visited many Italian companies and embarked on this wonderful journey. I traveled across almost all of the country, visited these places, and realized just how many beautiful steps lie behind a single object,” said the designer.
The journey involved 12 companies—Amini, Artieri 1895, Bonacina, Bottega Vazzoler, De Castelli, Fratelli Levaggi, Fornace Brioni, Glas Italia, Henraux, Rubelli, Solimene, and Venini—working with six different materials, from wood to textiles to glass, to name a few.
“When I walked into Venini, for example—a company specializing in handcrafted glass objects—I saw these people communicating with each other through glances and gestures. A hand movement meant ‘stop,’ and a tap of the foot meant ‘blow.’ All of this really struck me. It was exactly what I wanted to convey with the exhibition. I wanted to tell the story of everything that happens before an object is created,” says De Sarno.
“So I wanted to talk about the mistakes; I wanted to talk about the choices that sometimes make you change your mind, make you take different paths. I wanted to talk about Italian know-how, to talk about Italian craftsmanship. That is the heart of the project. It’s an exhibition—obviously there will be objects—but it’s an exhibition about people,” he concludes highlighting that the artisans he met are young and senior, Italian and from the rest of the world hyping that everyone can contribute keeping such high-excellence industry alive.
He also revealed that starting April 14, during MiArt—an exhibition taking place before Design Week—the faces of all the artisans involved in the project will be printed onto the façade of the Cozzi Pool.
De Sarno spoke with these artisans about their expertise and the unique techniques they employ to best convey the human touch of their work.
“For me, it was a wonderful experience. I come from the fashion world, but the process is what I like best. What interests me is how a beautiful object is created, what lies behind it. And behind it, when I visited these companies, I discovered some beautiful stories that we’ll share with you in the exhibition,” he continued.
De Sarno has always demonstrated a passion for color. For this exhibition, he chose yellow as the signature hue.
“Yellow wasn’t just an aesthetic choice; I chose it because it’s the color of light. What I wanted to do with this exhibition was to highlight and bring to the forefront Italian craftsmanship,” he said.
For De Sarno, after working at Gucci, he realized further that Italian craftsmanship has recently come under significant attack, but this represents only a small percentage. “Although there are some companies that operate illegally, underpaying and exploiting workers, in reality this is a tiny fraction, because 98% of the sector remains a model of excellence that continues to go unnoticed.”