Demna Revisits Palazzo Gucci

FLORENCE — Palazzo Gucci officially opens Monday, revisited through the lens of artistic director Demna and defining a new chapter for the storied building.

Located within the historic Palazzo della Mercanzia, it is a landmark dating back to 1337 in Florence’s Piazza della Signoria, a few steps away from the Uffizi Gallery. The palazzo serves as the luxury house’s cultural destination, with the new Gucci Storia project unfolding across the building’s first and second floors. The ground floor hosts a dedicated boutique, alongside Gucci Osteria da Massimo Bottura, with Gucci Giardino — the all-day café and cocktail bar — nearby in the square.

“Palazzo Gucci, to me, embodies the importance of this house in Italian culture,” said Demna, who joined Gucci from Balenciaga in July last year. “It’s where I first understood this when I went to visit the Uffizi Museum. It was the first thing I saw after leaving, as I stepped onto Piazza della Signoria.”

Underscoring the relevance of Palazzo Gucci, a cocktail for analysts, investors and the press was held there the evening before Kering’s key Capital Markets Day earlier this month, hosted by the group’s chief executive officer Luca de Meo and Gucci’s president and CEO Francesca Bellettini.

The venue has been transformed over the years, staging several exhibitions, first opening in 2011 under then-creative director Frida Giannini and then overhauled by her successor Alessandro Michele in 2018 as Gucci Garden.

Palazzo Gucci, said Demna, “represents the role of Gucci as a cultural icon, and the new rooms we’ve created express all of this as you go from one room to another.”

Dubbed “The Thread of Time,” the first room is one of the most surprising. Lining the walls of this space, elaborate tapestries, historically a craft associated with Florence, form a visual and symbolic chronicle of the house’s 105-year history. Each tapestry reproduces a defining moment, from founder Guccio Gucci’s early years in London at The Savoy hotel, to depicting the brand’s creative eras. Tom Ford is not physically reproduced but is represented by Madonna wearing the designer’s light blue silk blouse and black pants at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards. Giannini’s long blond hair and delicate features fit perfectly with the Botticelli-like visuals that take cues from Renaissance art; Michele is portrayed on a horse; the Rosso Ancora red stands out on a tapestry dedicated to Sabato De Sarno, and Demna is seen at work, kneeling as he fits a model, a modern gaming armchair behind him.

“Choosing the moments that got represented in the tapestries was about picking the defining moments in the story of Gucci,” Demna said. “Of course, we couldn’t fit everything, but I really wanted to have this visual composition that takes you through its history like you’re looking at a Renaissance painting that’s filled with symbolism.”

In his first exhibition during Milan Design Week, Demna had the tapestries displayed at the 16th century Chiostri di San Simpliciano for the “Gucci Memoria” event, which closed Sunday.

At Palazzo Gucci, visitors then walk into La Galleria, designed as a traditional portrait gallery, with textile-upholstered walls framing visuals from La Famiglia, Demna’s first collection unveiled last September, and photographed by Catherine Opie. 

While the official, sprawling and surprising Archive stands nearby in the 15th century Palazzo Settimanni, Demna, who has admitted being impressed by that venue from his first visit, recreated a portion of the archive in a room here. Within a system of drawers, Gucci’s most unusual objects, including tennis bags, shaving kits and a fondue set, are displayed near other singular pieces such as a black furry dog kennel and swim fins embellished with the GG logo — both by Ford. The archive is purposefully nonlinear, tracing the breadth of Gucci’s designs. 

The Cinema room expresses Demna’s vision for Gucci through a rotation of videos and films in a monochromatic space, encircled by a monumental velvet curtain.

Generation Gucci is an immersive room displaying campaign images shot by Demna through large-scale photographic compositions.

“La Manifattura” room focuses on Gucci’s time-honed manufacturing and craftsmanship, juxtaposed with today’s state-of-the-art technology. This room unfolds in two distinct environments, the first rooted in Gucci’s storied Florence workshops in Palazzo Settimanni. Signature bags such as the Bamboo 1947, the Jackie 1961 and the Horsebit 1953 loafer, along with their sketches and prototypes, are arranged within recessed niches, while an original worktable is strewn with archival Gucci tools recalling the house’s earliest masters of craft. The second part of the room appears as a laboratory, with robotic arms testing material resilience, capturing the innovation that defines Gucci’s ArtLab in Florence. One test showed how a bag would not slide from a mannequin’s shoulder that was repeatedly shaken.

On the second floor, room seven, dubbed “La Materia,” or the material, narrates the history of Gucci’s ready-to-wear through a series of floating mannequins wearing designs that range from a flower dress dating back to the 1970s to a body-hugging python-skin skirt suit by Giannini.

“La Stanza della Verità,” or the Room of Truth, is designed as an office, inspired by the Galleria Gucci, above the New York store. The legendary tale is that in the 1980s, select guests received golden keys by post, granting them access to this hidden sanctuary. Visitors are invited to engage with the objects in the space, such as picking up a vintage telephone that rings, or to flip through clips of old newspapers with articles on the family. The idea is to explore the gossip and anecdotes surrounding Gucci.

“As you know, there’s a lot that’s said about Gucci’s past that we don’t always talk about. It’s quite dramatic, quite spicy,” Demna said. “People have made movies, books. Sometimes fact and fiction have become one. We made this kind of office space that’s filled with clues that tie back to some of those crazy moments that may or may not have happened, but each person might reach a different conclusion based on their interpretation, and that’s the beauty of it.”

The final room, dubbed “L’Oracolo [The Oracle]” adds a sci-fi vibe — and a touch of playfulness — in a blinding white monochromatic alcove. There, a mysterious column takes on the role of an oracle, with an interactive interface that allows visitors to explore responses from three broad classifications, including “Off the Record,” for example. This reporter received a note stating that “the first Gucci store devoted to clothing did not open until 1972.”

“L’Oracolo is meant to be a moment of surprise. You can either leave with a fun message or a new piece of information that’s randomized,” Demna said. “There’s something quite fun about not knowing what you’ll get.”

Asked about the potential future paths Palazzo Gucci might take, the designer responded coyly: “You’ll just have to wait and see what we come up with.”