A nostalgic review of the Sicilian designer’s work for the Italian brand over the course of the years following his departure from the group and his arrival at Givenchy under Sarah Burton’s creative direction.
Words by Ester Gitto
In March of this year Etro announced their creative director’s exit from the brand, bringing to a close a four-year tenure that began with his appointment in June 2022, following the departure of Kean Etro from the house’s creative leadership.
Initially, my world was rocked; foolishly, my Etro-obsessed fashion soul never thought this day would come. Despite this, I was immediately faced with the harsh reality that very few know and appreciate Marco De Vincenzo and as a result very few have connected Etro’s eccentric colours and patterns to De Vincenzo’s work.
A respected creative, during his time as head of leather goods design at Fendi, De Vincenzo became one of the principal creative forces behind the evolution of the Baguette during the Silvia Venturini Fendi era, contributing to seasonal reinterpretations of one of luxury fashion’s most enduring accessories. An IT bag that has continued to impress generations of fashion lovers and whose success is ever-evolving and frankly surprising to few. Do you remember that scene in season 4 (2024) of Emily in Paris – Rome actually (Fendi’s birthplace), where Marcello, her Italian beau for the season, brings her to Fendi’s flagship in Rome. There as she stands in front of a wall full of perfectly sparkly not-so-French baguettes, he tells her to ‘pick one’. That moment in TV culture has since been etched into my mind as what girl would deny a baguette? In 2026, with many embellished and limited-edition baguettes now retailing between approximately US$4,500 and US$6,000. My point is time and time again De Vincenzo’s work has made its way into the social imaginary and so very few of us have known the masterful Sicilian hands that lay behind it.
De Vincenzo, who is originally from Sicily’s often disregarded east coast prides himself in his seaside upbringing. On a 2024 episode of Chiara Tagliaferri’s and Maria Luisa Frisa’s podcast Sailor, he recounted how his Sicilian childhood made way for a peculiar upbringing where art and creativity were held between the cracks, those caused by the devastating 1908 earthquake (the deadliest earthquake in modern European history, registering approximately magnitude 7.1 and followed by a devastating tsunami) that wiped the harbour city away leaving Messina’s natives to rebuild. Resilience wasn’t a quality but rather a necessity to its inhabitants, a force that is present in the nature of De Vincenzo’s work at Etro.
He left Sicily at the age of eighteen to go study fashion in Rome, at a time when the city was booming in fashion culture and remained the operational heart of several Italian luxury houses, including Fendi and Valentino, even as Milan increasingly dominated Fashion Week. Birthing some of the most revered creative directors of today, the likes of Alessandro Michele, Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, the city was a compromise of art and fashion as one. Post-grad he was quickly engulfed in the Fendi universe becoming head of accessories for the fashion house in 2009.
In 2009 he also launched his eponymous label, widely recognized for its sculptural textiles and bright colour combos. His Instagram page became a living moodboard, of shared moments, travels and infinite details, sartorial or pictorial ones, those of who has an eye for fashion and a hand for sketching. In 2022 came his appointment as creative director of Etro, which saw him becoming the first creative director outside the Etro family in the house’s fifty-four-year history. Since then he’s breathed a Mediterranean mist of colours and visual elements into the brand meeting every stylistic code set by the family’s strong visual universe. Etro’s iconic paisley motif, a house signature since the late 1960s, inspired by Persian boteh patterns, was presented in new and exciting ways. I for once could not believe my eyes nor the way my heart leapt every single time they released a campaign, full of sun, sparkles and endless fringes.
Was I truly entering fashion school and witnessing this brand grow so rapidly, re-presenting their archives in such originally chic ways. Etro with De Vincenzo’s arrival in 2022 became synonymous with a whole new kind of elegance, bold and yet somehow simultaneously quite loose and laid back. It became even more eclectic and could embody both a retro and extremely contemporary aesthetic at once. I think that is what De Vincenzo brought to Etro, he brought youth and deconstructed sartorial limits while staying true to both his and the brand’s style. His creative direction of the house brought forth shows with ingenious settings, simple layouts that preferred to be bold in colour rather than in shape. On numerous occasions De Vincenzo collaborated with the Roman collective Numero Cromatico, a creative powerhouse of young graphic designers. On any given day in fashion school, I would be caught asking my closest friends, who sat through lectures given by some of Numero Cromatico’s members, if they’d heard anything new. Had anyone name-dropped Etro, could I come and eavesdrop myself just to make sure?
Perhaps the most sincere truth is that few brands have mattered this much to me, few realities and aesthetics have embedded themselves into my own visual universe this much. I was overrun by everything it offered, immediately head over heels I followed. Etro was perhaps the first one to influence me deeply in my use of colours, my love for prints and textures. Bold colour contrasts, vibrant tones and embroideries, endless fringes. The flowiness only a gown of theirs provides. Whether it be, sea-set photoshoots or elusive moonlit fashion videos their hold on me was gradual or so I like to think, but maybe I would be wiser to admit, it was immediate, one day in and I was immediately captivated.
This captivity grasped its hold on me and after so many years I am still unable to go back, trace back the steps, no the stars, or the amount of paisley patterns I saw before I realized I was hooked. Around me I found no companions, only the faint appreciation of some who could see the genius, but not quite appreciate it that grandly. ‘It’s just a tad kitsch’ was the response I heard from a classmate once, after I carried on for 25 minutes raving about their latest pre-fall collection. How could I not, have you looked at their pre-fall 2023, one of De Vincenzo’s first collections for the house.
Quickly, I found amusement in liking the unexpected. I was overjoyed to have found a sense of representation of sorts, through their colours and textures, patterns and cuts. I vividly remember being at the library for my Fashion Design 1 course and picking up the only viable option in my regard, an exquisite editorial recollection of the Etro family and their work, the brand itself, and its well-respected history. I flipped through each page promptly, knowing the next page would stun me even more, feeling this urgency to discover more of its colours, uncover all of the brand’s secrets. What is that if not the best description of fashion’s captivating nature. The reason its relevance is everlasting and ever evolving.
At the time, wildly enough I was still completely unaware that Marco De Vincenzo, a creative self-built powerhouse if there ever was one, was their creative director and had been since his appointment in 2022. I don’t remember exactly when I first discovered him, but I remember that ever since I did, each interaction breathed a sort of freshness into my very own, very personal, fashion system. The universe even had it, that in the most unexpected, or maybe completely unavoidable, way and place we met. That interaction feeding a sort of force in my professional pursuit, that of a doubt-filled fashion student, a common struggle of those who wish to enter this complex industry.
It was the warmest, sunniest Sicilian day, the very last Sunday of August and at last I was returning home. In the midst of the shaky railway as I made my way across Italy, I had made sure my mother, who has an eye for people-spotting, was well briefed on the two fashion encounters I coveted and so foolishly wished for myself on this Sicilian visit. Foolishly or not I could not help but reflect on how different this coming home could be. A fashion future ahead of me, one filled with so many uncertainties and yet completely unfazed, I watched over the harbour, Messina’s coast outstretched behind it. I took in the familiar sea breeze, breathing in any hopes the shore held and letting out any doubt stored in my trembling hands. The past weeks, maybe even several months had me on such a couture high. The adrenaline rush was so real and pressing, it came with no instruction manual, no step by step guide.
The adrenaline was astute. She fooled me and laughed at me, watching from a distance, waiting for me to fall while she watched me ride this rising wave. I didn’t even stop to think for just a second about the endless ways a fashion future might go wrong. In this era, in this economy, in this political climate. I smiled and I twirled in my patterned skirts, because in the glory days of fashion it sort of feels that way, like the whole world is smiling back at you. No cost, nor consequence, is enough to scare you away, and so I stood there unbothered. I watched the ferry dock and swing softly over the water as tourists busied themselves into the vacant train station, only a few of us passengers left. I noticed a Fendi shopping bag first. Quickly, in only the way a fashion lover might, I connected the sartorial thoughts inside my head. I noticed his Etro tote perched onto his suitcase. I looked up to find a shy smile, a humble figure stepping towards the station rapidly. I sped up through this sort of crowd-cue situation that had created itself, one that could not stand between myself and this moment. I ran up to him for the quickest, shyest hello in the history of introductions, expressed my admiration, my gratitude for his creative work, and we both carried on with our lives, filled with other infinite encounters. My mind forever stuck on this very one, this sunny day, where I wasn’t sure if the asphalt had melted all around me or maybe it was me, fixated on the ground, star-struck for the very first time.
Life went on as it surprisingly does. I graduated, became a Doctor of Fashion and on March 12th 2026, the media was hit by a striking update of the cyclical creative director game of musical chairs and only this time I didn’t like the player. Fancifully I hoped he would stay at Etro forever, never in my life had I been so certain about something, about a collaboration so successful, the likes of which we were never to see again, not in the bohemian family-run-brand minuscule portion of this industry anyway. De Vincenzo’s exit was announced followed by his appointment as head of leather goods chez Givenchy. The latter an obvious upgrade for the designer, to a top-tier fashion house, extremely international and on the brink of great changes brought on by Sarah Burton’s new creative direction since her appointment at Givenchy in September 2024.
A true fan, fashion lover or connaisseur, name me whatever you’d like, would be happy. I tell myself, she would be happy he’s moved onto bigger, greater things and yet I choose to be nostalgic, to sit quietly replaying it all in my head, the shows, the campaigns, the Italianness of it all. The day the music died. A phenomenon accelerated over the past decade as luxury conglomerates increasingly reshuffle creative directors in pursuit of commercial growth and renewed cultural relevance. I look forward to seeing De Vincenzo’s work and the undoubted success he’ll bring to the brand, leaving me to wonder if maybe the greatest luxury was never the work itself, but knowing exactly whose hands imagined it first. Perhaps that is all fashion ever really leaves us with: not the clothes themselves, but the people who quietly changed the way we learned to see them.
References:
https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-features/marco-de-vincenzo-exits-etro-fashion-brand1238672118/
https://storielibere.fm/sailorep-6-marco-de-vincenzo/
https://www.businessoffashion.com/people/marco-di-vincenzo/
https://marcodevincenzo.com/pages/about
https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/pre-fall-2023/etro
