Gucci has announced that star Italian designer Alessandro Michele has stepped down as the brand’s creative director.
Michele took on the post in 2015, having worked his way up at the company, and helped the Italian fashion house register a huge increase in sales.
“There are times when paths part ways because of the different perspectives each one of us may have,” Michele said in a statement released by Gucci’s French parent group Kering.
“Today an extraordinary journey ends for me, one that lasted 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.
“I offer them my most sincere 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.”
Gucci said its design office would take over from Michele until a new organizational structure is presented.
