Unveiling the Clues to a New Gucci Look

By CATHY HORYN

THE fashion world, at least those willing to venture out in the heat, got its first look on Tuesday at Frida Giannini's new women's collection for Gucci. She was showing resort clothes, at the Gagosian Gallery on West 24th Street, which had been outfitted with a polished wood floor and white deck cushions to help transport editors and buyers to a yacht off the Amalfi coast. The breeze was supplied by the air-conditioning system.

Given the seven-year plan of Robert Polet, the chief executive of Gucci Group, to more than double the brand's revenues to $4 billion, much is expected of Ms. Giannini, a 32-year-old Roman with a confident, if not tough, demeanor. A year ago, when Tom Ford and Domenico De Sole left Gucci, the job of women's design went to Alessandra Facchinetti, while Ms. Giannini was put in charge of handbags and shoes, and John Ray continued as men's designer. In March, Ms. Giannini replaced Ms. Facchinetti, whose two collections seemed to pay homage to Mr. Ford's last years at Gucci.

With accessories and women's fashion now in Ms. Giannini's control and a staff of nearly 40 assistants to supervise, she is responsible for 95 percent of Gucci's revenues. Her handbags, especially the oversize snaffle-bit style, have been popular with consumers, but a challenge is how to restore growth to women's fashion, which Gucci executives and store chiefs say has slowed from the peak years of the late 1990's.

In 2000 Mr. Ford split his interest between Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, and evening looks seemed to dominate at Gucci. It's easy to forget that in the mid-90's he created sexy day suits and embellished jeans, which later became bread and butter for companies like Roberto Cavalli and Dolce & Gabbana.

"Sometimes we went too fast, sometimes we invented a lot of things, and then we kind of left them for the competition because we had moved on to other things," said Mark Lee, the president of Gucci. "In ready-to-wear, you need a certain through line."

Ms. Giannini will present a complete spring collection in September, but Tuesday's show gave a clue that she favors day clothes with a tailored sportiness: crisp white miniskirts and gold-buttoned jackets, silk shirts in archive-inspired prints with jeans, and bikinis with an up-to-date play on Gucci motifs like the horse bit and striped canvas webbing. The number of casual separates was a plus. For evening she proposed caftanlike dresses in hippie-deluxe patterns, which she generally showed with flat sandals.

At first glance the clothes seemed to lack the sophistication of Stefano Pilati's Saint Laurent resort collection (also shown in New York this week), but given time to develop her ideas she will likely sharpen her eye. And Mr. Pilati is 10 years older, with that much more experience. Certainly Ms. Giannini is sure of herself.

"The most important thing I learned from Tom is to be very confident in my ideas," she said. "I remember the first time I was editing a collection with him. I was showing him the prototype for the horse-bit bag, and I was really scared, waiting outside the door. But he was totally happy with it." That fear seems to have dissolved.