Inside Florence’s Palazzo Gucci because it enters a brand new chapter underneath Demna

Previous to Demna’s first runway present for Gucci, held in Milan in February of final yr, the Georgian designer posted a letter to Instagram outlining his imaginative and prescient for the Italian home. It documented the seek for what he known as the ‘Gucciness of Gucci’, a visit that took him to its native Florence (the home was based within the Tuscan metropolis in 1921) and to the vaunted galleries of the Uffizi Museum, the place viewing Botticelli’s The Beginning of Venus in individual for the primary time led to a revelation.

‘Standing in entrance of it, I felt overwhelmed,’ he wrote. ‘The sweetness in it was unconditional; it was absolute. It made me realise how deeply the Italian Renaissance formed every thing I perceive about artwork, about proportion, about need, and about magnificence. After I left the museum and stepped into Piazza della Signoria, the very first thing I noticed was Palazzo Gucci. In that second, I understood the place Gucci holds inside Italian tradition.’

The significance of the deal with to the home (although it’s not the place Gucci was based, it’s typically seen as its religious dwelling) has made it a precedence for the early a part of Demna’s tenure, seeing it reopen this month as Palazzo Gucci with its inaugural exhibition titled ‘Gucci Storia’. Just like the set for his first runway present, which was a marble-clad simulacrum of a historic artwork gallery, full with hand-crafted recreations of classical statuary, Demna says that the show relies on the ‘thought of a museum of museums, a sequence of areas through which distinctive worlds converge’.

On the coronary heart of this can be a sequence of tapestries, first proven as a part of Fuorisalone in Milan earlier this yr, which depict the home’s 105-year historical past – from founder Guccio Gucci’s time at London’s Savoy Resort as a bellboy to the following tenures of Tom Ford, Frida Giannini, Alessandro Michele, and even Demna himself. ‘Gucci’s historical past within the 105 years because it was based is stuffed with ups and downs. It has such a vibrant previous with lot of tales to inform,’ Demna instructed Wallpaper* on the time. ‘You see all of the totally different eras of Gucci represented in these scenes, both actually or symbolically. The nice instances, the unhealthy instances, the drama; and the scenes are tremendous elaborate; there are many symbolic particulars that tie again to Gucci’s codes.’

Different rooms embrace a gallery-like show of Catherine Opie photographs from his debut La Famiglia assortment (he confirmed the S/S 2026 assortment through lookbook the season earlier than his runway debut); the ‘Archivio’, which shows objects from Gucci’s historical past as one would possibly discover curiosities in a ‘pure historical past museum’; a cinema, exhibiting numerous quick movies from his tenure up to now; alongside areas devoted images, manufacturing, and extra playful immersive scenes, like a digital ‘oracle’, promising to inform visitors ‘as a lot about the home as themselves’.

Alongside Gucci Storia, the Gucci Osteria restaurant enters a brand new period: nonetheless overseen by Massimo Bottura, former government chef Karime López has departed to pursue her personal tasks, and her former co-executive chef, Takahiko Kondo, has taken over. Born in Japan, Kondo’s menu is impressed by ‘private reminiscences, travels, and shared creativity’ (he spent 17 years at Bottura’s three-Michelin-star Osteria Francescana in Modena earlier than taking the Gucci Osteria function). Count on riffs on Italian classics in creative model: these embrace Bottura’s well-known Journey to Modena, a veal and pork tortellini in 24-month aged Parmigiano Reggiano sauce.