Sandra‘s Closet

GUCCI TO PRESENT ITS NEXT CRUISE COLLECTION IN LONDON NEXT MAY
London, where everything started. The House will showcase its Cruise 2025 collection, designed by Creative Director Sabato De Sarno, in London, on May 13. The choice of location pays tribute to Gucci’s profound connection to the British capital, intrinsically linked to the brand’s heritage, and offers new opportunities to delve into the integral role the city has played in shaping the brand’s narrative throughout its storied history as a world-renowned symbol of Italian craft, visionary creativity, and innovative design.

Gucci Creative Director Sabato De Sarno

GUCCI AND LONDON
The story of Gucci began in London in 1897 when a young Guccio Gucci took a job as a luggage porter and liftboy at the city’s exclusive The Savoy hotel. Carrying guests’ luggage through its famous revolving entrance doors and operating the lift up to the rooms and suites, the teenage Guccio encountered up close the tastes and lifestyle of the international elite, absorbing – as if by creative osmosis – new ideas, broader horizons, and more worldly cultural concerns. Inspired by these experiences, and with a new-found aspiration to make his name synonymous with the art of luggage making, Guccio returned to Florence and in 1921 founded his eponymous leather-goods house, followed by the first Gucci store on the city’s Via della Vigna Nuova.

LoL, Sandra

Rodolfo and Guccio Gucci in front of their Florence store in the late 1940s.

Photos: © Gucci
DISCLOSURE: We may earn commission from links on this page, but I only recommend products I love. Promise!

The House is pleased to announce the opening of the Gucci Cosmos exhibition in London. Following its successful debut in Shanghai in April, the cutting-edge showcase of the House’s most iconic designs from its over 102-year history will take place at 180 Studios, running from October 11 to December 31, 2023.

British artist Es Devlin, who designed the original exhibition, has created a dedicated set-up for the space at 180 Studios with additional elements that pay homage to London and its pivotal role in inspiring Guccio Gucci to establish his Florentine artisanal luggage atelier in 1921. Italian curator Maria Luisa Frisa also returns, drawing new, never-before-seen items out of the Gucci Archive to display at the London stop. Gucci Cosmos spirals backwards and forwards through the decades, demonstrating how the visionary ethos at the heart of the House has continuously reflected and defined the times.

As a traveling exhibition, Gucci Cosmos transports the heritage and craftsmanship of the House around the world, opening the doors to the Archive in Florence and highlighting how storied pieces and emblems have woven their way throughout time. In 2024, Gucci Cosmos will travel to Paris and Kyoto, and feature dedicated narratives and elements that will resonate in a meaningful way with the distinctive culture of each city and its country.

LoL, Sandra

Photos: © Gucci
DISCLOSURE: We may earn commission from links on this page, but I only recommend products I love. Promise!

Gucci announces Gucci Cosmos, a major new exhibition of the House’s most iconic and timeless designs from its 102-year history. A playful voyage that spirals backwards and forwards through the decades, Gucci Cosmos consists of eight immersive ‘worlds’ devised by renowned British artist Es Devlin to create a cutting-edge audio, visual, and kinetic experience.

Curated by Italian fashion theorist and critic Maria Luisa Frisa, Gucci Cosmos showcases era-defining pieces from the Gucci Archive in Florence. Encompassing work by founder Guccio Gucci and his creative successors, up to Tom Ford, Frida Giannini, and Alessandro Michele, the exhibition demonstrates how the visionary ethos at the heart of the House has continuously reflected and defined the times.

The Gucci archive space at Palazzo Settimanni in Florence, Italy.

Gucci plans to present Gucci Cosmos at West Bund Art Center in Shanghai from April 28 to June 25 before touring the world.

LoL, Sandra

Photos: © Gucci
DISCLOSURE: We may earn commission from links on this page, but I only recommend products I love. Promise!

Origins, travel, experience. And the certainty that a suitcase is not just a container. From the culture of travel that forms the history of the brand comes the new Gucci Valigeria campaign, featuring actor, screenwriter, director, and musician Ryan Gosling.

Creative Director Alessandro Michele, through the lens of photographer Glen Luchford, upends a typical sense of narrative and sets the campaign in a dreamlike dimension that goes beyond the boundaries that separate it from reality to recount a present built on the possibilities of the imagination and of an encounter.

The Gucci Savoy collection is the narrative result of a story that takes flight from the typical splendors of travel to confer the value of memory to the origins of a brand that was created from an intuition and from the observation of potentialities, precisely thanks to travel, developing discoveries of worlds and of diverse cultural manners.

«Travel for Gucci was never purely physical. Gucci is the brand that accompanied the artists, writers, actors, and directors of Hollywood on their journeys… This is why I wanted the advertising campaign to recount a situationist dimension where the protagonist traverses a “non-place” that is first and foremost a mental place, the same as those who, in the past and present, choose Gucci because they grasp the significance of creativity used to build imaginary places. And it is for this reason that a Gucci suitcase appears as a magical suitcase,» says Creative Director Alessandro Michele.

It is precisely in travel that the heritage of Gucci finds its origins. Founded in Florence in 1921 by Guccio Gucci, who more than twenty years prior when he was just 17, emigrates to Paris and then to London. The young Florentine works first as a porter at The Savoy in London, the go-to destination for international travelers. The very young Guccio Gucci comes into contact with the magic of travel that, at the time, was synonymous with discovery, discussion, study, and a bridge between diverse cultures. It was a time in which traveling signified experience, displacing the certainties of one’s social environment, a pursuit of the unexpected, of a will to encounter and to know. The return to Florence can’t but remember that observed and studied reality, assimilated and ready to be transferred into the practice of work. Guccio Gucci will do it with his first suitcases, trunks, bags, hat boxes. All the containers required to bring with oneself, on a journey, those necessities to represent oneself and one’s culture in an unknown and often foreign place.

In a narrative inversion that fills a stretch of space-time, the same containers appear as protagonists in the campaign, which presents the Gucci Savoy collection
including trolleys, hard and soft suitcases, duffle bags, trunks, hat boxes, and beauty cases. Objects that encapsulate experiences and desires that, in the images and video of the campaign, fill the bed of a polished pick-up truck in which the new collection lives side by side with historical pieces and that, in this plausible story of possibilities, are also repositories of dreams.

And it is this reality-adjacent dream that Ryan Gosling is living. At the end of a journey studded with arrivals and departures, he is introduced to surprising places through a trunk that becomes a gateway to fantastical worlds, which will turn out to be more real than any imagination could conceive. Because it leads to that reality of discovery that has always had the ability to build unexpected worlds.

The Gucci Savoy collection, which is part of the House’s wider Gucci Valigeria travel selection, is distinguished by a combination of heritage-infused design elements including the GG monogram and/or the Web stripe, offered in both soft and hard-sided iterations. The collection comprises items for every travel need, designed to be used now and for many years to come as classic and contemporary elements come together within a timeless aesthetic.

I will be going to Florence with Gucci in the beginning of October and cannot wait to explore everything where it all had started…

LoL, Sandra

Photos: © Gucci #GucciValigeria
Creative Director: Alessandro Michele – Art Director: Christopher Simmonds – Photographer & Director: Glen Luchford – Make up: Thomas De Kluyver – Hair: Paul Hanlon / DISCLOSURE: We may earn commission from links on this page, but I only recommend products I love. Promise.

Last season, in a project looking back to the untold story of Gucci’s ‘British roots’, Globe-Trotter has produced a collection of distinctive luggage for the Italian fashion house.

In the Gucci Garden museum in Florence, there is a gallery called Cosmorama. Here visitors will find displays of luggage and travel paraphernalia going back to the founding of the House in Florence in 1921. Part of this exhibition is an exploration of a distinctive emblem that Gucci has used over time of a bellboy wearing a pillbox hat and carrying luggage.

The origins of this peculiar motif lie in the history of the House itself, when founder Guccio Gucci worked as a porter at London’s prestigious Savoy hotel. The story goes that he was so inspired by the beautiful luggage of the hotel’s distinguished guests that he moved back to his hometown to start making leather travel bags and accessories under the Gucci name.

Globe-Trotter GG carry-on

Now, almost a century later, Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele revisited the brand’s British connection. The designer has for many years travelled the world with his trusty Globe-Trotter which inspired him to create a collection of luggage in several different styles and sizes that incorporates signature Gucci motifs such as the double-G supreme pattern and the famous green-red-green web stripe as well as bold new prints in collaboration with the English luggage brand.

This must-have carry-on suitcase is expertly handcrafted from fiberboard and leather in the heritage brand’s Hertfordshire, England atelier, it’s printed with painterly blooms, dainty stars and the Italian house’s signature red and green stripes.

It has a canvas-lined interior that’s perfectly sized to stow weekend essentials. Boarding your flight will be a breeze, thanks to the 360-degree wheels.

YOU CAN SHOP THE CARRY-ON SUITCASE FROM TOMORROW HERE.

LoL, Sandra

Photos: Courtesy of Gucci

After we had visited the Gucci manufacture, we went to the Gucci Museo in the center of Florence (Piazza della Signoria, 10), which had opened its doors in September 2011.
For photos of the opening party, please click here.

Now, I would like to walk you through the museum and give you some information on the brand’s iconic looks and signature pieces. Enjoy!

Ground floor: TRAVEL

History tells how, as a teenager, Guccio Gucci worked as a lift boy at the Savoy Hotel in London where he was fascinated by the elegance of the upper class guests at the turn of the 20th century. On his return to Italy, the young Guccio opened a workshop specializing in the production of travelware and accessories. The first cases and trunks to be produced in Florence bore the inscription: G. Gucci, Articles for Travel, Florence. Defining the brand in English highlighted its founder’s international vision, which was aimed from the outset at modern travelers of the time across the globe. Impeccably high quality crafted goods, then as now.

Travel set “Leonardo” print, 1950’s

Trunk, pigskin, 1930’s

Travelling in style:

 

1st floor: PRECIOUS

A selection of jewelry and items showcasing Gucci’s creativity in finding unique ways to combine practicality and beauty. Crystal-studded minaudières, powder compacts, buckles and all sorts of jewelry pieces are all tiny but timeless treasures.

„Tiger head“ necklace and bracelet, enamelled silver, early 1970’s

Brooch, enamelled gold, 1980’s
This piece reminds me a lot of my Bague Diorette, don’t you agree?!
But Gucci was obviously first…

1st floor: FLORA WORLD

The story began in Milan in 1966, when Prince Ranier of Monaco brought his wife to the Gucci boutique. Roldolfo Gucci insisted that Princess Grace choose a gift to accompany the bamboo bag she had purchased. The Princess requested a scarf. Rodolfo felt that the House lacked one sufficiently beautiful for the royal style icon and so he commissioned illustrator Vittorio Accornero to create the most beautiful print he could imagine. Accornero returned with his painting: the “Flora”, a sumptuos, multi-hued, flowered template destined to become a design classic.

When Giannini revived Flora on printed canvas bags in summer 2005, a new generation succumbed to its charms. In 2006, it appeared re-scaled, re-coloured and abstracted onto Forties-style print dresses, jewellery and evening bags.

I was over the moon to see that my own closet has got some museum pieces.
How cool is that?!

 

1st floor: HANDBAGS

Bags are Gucci’s signature and therefore the museum dedicated one part of the exhibition to the house’s rich creative heritage of various models. Continuously evolving over the years, with creation of iconic models such as the Bamboo Bag, the Jackie and those immediately recognizable by Gucci symbols including the horsebit and green-red-green web (Web is the name for the iconic Gucci stripes).

Leather, „riding crop“, shoulder strap in horn, early 1970’s

Short handle bags in raffia, leather, pigskin, late 1950’s and early 1960’s

1st floor: EVENING

Gucci’s evening wear is designed to be worn on the red carpet and the most exclusive events on the international stage, from Cannes to Los Angeles and New York to Paris. The house’s couture label is called Gucci Première.

Here you can see some of the distinguished moments in the history of fashion and haute couture, celebrated through gowns worn by Hilary Swank and Naomi Watts.

 

2nd floor: LOGOMANIA

The GG is the most significant symbol in Gucci’s long history. The initials of founder Guccio Gucci first featured on the clasps of his bags in the early 1960’s, finding new interpretations over the years: recreated in gold and silver, on precious leather, velvet and silk.

Shirt and skirt, jersey with „horsebit“ print, suede, early 1970’s
Dress, silk with „horsebit and horseshoe print, mid 1970’s

Shoulder bags and moccasin, „horsebit print fabric“, mid 1970’s

 

2nd floor: LIFESTYLE

From fashion to items dedicated to leisure and recreational activities, Gucci’s style is reflected in every moment of daily life. From the opening of the first store in Florence in 1921, Guccio Gucci offered his distinguished clients giftware and souvenirs, a creative progress which has continued through the years, transforming his products into cult items: thermos holders and picnic sets, parlor games, table lamps, and sets of glasses and, more recently, even an electric guitar. Home or away, these are the items which complete the Gucci lifestyle.

 

2nd floor: SPORT

From horseback riding to golf, Guccio Gucci always found inspiration in the various sporting disciplines practiced by his most sophisticated clientele. Gucci logos and symbols customized technically competitive sport items which all had their own original style. Golf club bags, tennis racket bags, surfboards, flippers and masks are some of the latest items in the range, which showcase Gucci’s craftsmanship applied to products that complement the wardrobes of sports professionals and sports fans alike. More recently, Guccissima Leather has been used to cover items from bicycle seats and snow sleds to saddles and a whole host of riding accessories, reflecting the sport’s continuing influence in the House’s collections.

On display is also the outfit from Gucci’s second equestrian collection designed exclusively for Charlotte Casiraghi by Creative Director Frida Giannini that the equestrian heiress wore throughout her participation in the 2011 Global Champions Tour.

I hope that you have enjoyed your museum’s tour.

LoL, Sandra

Photos: © Sandra Bauknecht, Celebrities: Courtesy of Gucci