If luxury wants China's money, it must invest in China Sabato De Sarno, Kering's bet on Icicle and the new trajectory of investments

Last April, as part of its new expansion strategy in the Chinese market, Kering acquired a minority stake in Icicle, a ready-to-wear brand founded in Shanghai in 1997 that falls under ICCF Group alongside the French maison Carven. This is Kering's most recent investment in China, following another in the jewellery brand Borland at the end of 2025 and the acquisition of another jewellery brand, Qeelin, which took place back in 2013.

Five months after the investment in Icicle, ICCF Group appointed Sabato De Sarno — who served as creative director of Gucci from January 2023 to February 2025 — as the brand's new creative director, with his first collection expected for autumn 2027. Incidentally, this luxury brand that has existed for thirty years and has owned a design studio in Paris for over a decade only made its runway debut in March 2025. A decision that, with hindsight, should have signalled that something was in motion.

Icicle has always moved with great caution in Europe: its first European store opened in Paris in 2019, six years after establishing a studio there; it was followed by three more locations in the city and a store in Dublin over the course of seven years. Now, more than a decade after the brand's arrival on this side of the world, it has a creative director: not only is he high-profile and relatively "new" among luxury brand designers, but he also comes from the luxury group that invested in the brand just a few months earlier. It is impossible not to see a strategy in this choice. But which one?