The pop-up carries the brand’s new lifestyle collection, which features leisure-related accessories.
Luxury fashion brands continue to be creative during the pandemic, with some designing objects other than clothes or accessories, and others venturing into dining and motoring.
The same is true for Italian fashion house, Gucci, which has opened a temporary store in Milan dedicated to its new lifestyle collection.
The line features leisure-related accessories such as notebooks lined in Gucci’s supreme canvas called Demetra, a plant-based material alternative, stationery sets, pencil cases, zip pouches, writing supplies, as well as satin-silk Gucci pajamas. There are tabletop games, too, including decks of cards, poker and backgammon sets, and GG-dotted dice.
All of these come in the brand’s maximalist and whimsical motif.
All of these and more are on full display at what creative director Alessandro Michele describes as “the magic of everyday life” in a “small chamber of wonders,” Gucci Cartoleria at Via Manzoni 19.
The space, which debuted during the recently-concluded Milan Design Week, is unlike any storefront. It’s an “enchanted hideaway,” inspired by the traditional Italian stationery store, an imagined world of flying Gucci notebooks, self-playing chess sets, and micro-apartments filled with furnishings.
“When I was a child, going to the stationery shop and finding pencils, pens, notebooks, games, was equivalent to making the dream enter my daily routine,” says Michele in an NSS Magazine report. “They were well-finished, well-made objects with an artisan taste that, while belonging to my everyday life, were able to give off a magical, strange, wonderful aura.”
Centennial celebration
Gucci Cartoleria is the latest among the brand’s many projects in celebration of its 100th anniversary. Much of it involves revisiting the house’s storied past.
In April, Gucci Aria made its debut on the runway. The collection was a nod to the brand’s beginnings as a travel goods and equestrian equipment provider, as well as its looks from the past such as the Fall 1996 red velvet tuxedo from the fashion house’s Tom Ford era.
Last May, Michele unveiled a new exhibition celebrating the savoir-faire and creative vision of the Italian house.
Called Gucci Garden Archetypes, the immersive multimedia experience mounted inside the house’s Florence museum features narrative spaces that show vase the brand’s inspiration sources from music, art, or pop culture in the last 15 campaigns.
Michele, who has been with Gucci for six years, calls the exhibit a “playground of emotions” and an “explicit journey into my imagery.”
