Kering bets on China with Icicle stake and De Sarno hire
What's the deal? KeringDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → acquired a minority stake in IcicleDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → last April, deepening its push into the Chinese market. Icicle is a ready-to-wear brand founded in Shanghai in 1997 that sits under ICCF GroupDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → alongside the French maison CarvenDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →.
Why now? The investment is Kering's most recent bet on China, following a stake in jewellery brand BorlandDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → at the end of 2025 and the 2013 acquisition of jewellery brand QeelinDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. It signals a strategy of investing locally to capture Chinese luxury spending.
The key hire: Five months after the Icicle deal, ICCF Group appointed Sabato De Sarno as the brand's new creative director. De Sarno served as creative director of Gucci — a Kering house — from January 2023 to February 2025; his first Icicle collection is expected for autumn 2027.
What's the endgame? Icicle has moved cautiously in Europe. Its first store there opened in Paris in 2019, six years after it set up a studio in the city, followed by three more Paris locations and one in Dublin over seven years.
The brand made its runway debut only in March 2025, a signal that a shift was underway. Now, more than a decade after arriving in Europe, it has a high-profile creative director drawn from the very group that invested in it months earlier.
The signal: The pairing of capital and talent points to a clear thesis: to win China's luxury money, groups must invest in China. Kering is placing a homegrown Chinese brand on the global map while routing its own creative firepower into it.
Read more: nssmag.com
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
