Gucci’s Alessandro Michele Era Is Officially Over

Gucci is officially getting a change of guard. The storied Italian fashion house announced on Wednesday, November 23 that its longtime Creative Director Alessandro Michele is stepping down from the role. Michele has led Gucci through one of its flashiest, most ornate, sequin-heavy, and financially lucrative chapters — including iconic celebrity endorsements from Lana Del Rey to Billie Eilish to Harry Styles and an ungodly amount of Jared Leto — since taking creative control at the top of 2015.

“I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to meet Alessandro at the end of 2014, since then we have had the pleasure to work closely together as Gucci has charted its successful path over these last eight years,” said Marco Bizzarri, President and CEO of Gucci. “I would like to thank him for his 20 years of commitment to Gucci and for his vision, devotion, and unconditional love for this unique House during his tenure as Creative Director.”

Gucci’s design office will take charge of creative direction until Michele’s successor is appointed. (Could former Gucci designer Tom Ford, whose eponymous brand recently sold to Estée Lauder for a whopping $2.8 billion, carry the torch once again? All will be revealed soon enough...) Until then, Michele ended his tenure with a heartfelt goodbye to Gucci and his near-decade of creative pursuits with the house:

“There are times when paths part ways because of the different perspectives each one of us may have. Today an extraordinary journey ends for me, lasting more than twenty years, within a company to which I have tirelessly dedicated all my love and creative passion. During this long period Gucci has been my home, my adopted family. To this extended family, to all the individuals who have looked after and supported it, I send my most sincere thanks, my biggest and most heartfelt embrace. Together with them I have wished, dreamed, imagined. Without them, none of what I have built would have been possible. To them goes my most sincerest wish: may you continue to cultivate your dreams, the subtle and intangible matter that makes life worth living. May you continue to nourish yourselves with poetic and inclusive imagery, remaining faithful to your values. May you always live by your passions, propelled by the wind of freedom.”