Alessandro Michele Leaves Gucci

"The departure of Alessandro Michele has big implications for the fashion industry."

In the largest creative shake-up of a fashion brand since the Covid-19 pandemic, Gucci announced on Wednesday that Alessandro Michele, its creative director, was leaving the company.

Mr. Michele, 49, a Rome-born designer who took over the top job in 2015, had been instrumental in transforming Gucci, seemingly overnight, from a fading symbol of noughties glamour into a purveyor of eccentric inclusivity that embodied the wider cultural conversation around gender, sexual identity, and race.