2023 JULY ISSUE
GUCCI COSMOS
COLLECTION EXHIBITION
IN SHANGHAI
Courtesy of: Youtube | Gucci Cosmos | by GUCCI | April 23, 2023| 1:12
InDIGEST TEAM & ANDREW SIA
Share this article!
From the Desk of the Publisher
We received the material for this piece of exhibition from InDigest and we felt that we should bring this to the attention of our readers. Gucci can be considered as the most recognized brands when we were brought up. Its horsebit, the buckle used for its loafers and the two-color webbing across the top of the shoes were its iconic design. Gucci handbags were most received by the women since then.
We started the writeup by telling the story of the Gucci family, especially after I have seen the movie “House of Gucci” which was stunning. Regret to say that there is no more family members remaining in the business. The company has been taken up by the French fashion group Kering and it is their house brand now among many other world renowned brands.
Gucci Cosmos started its debut in Shanghai, and it is currently showing in London. The show will continue in Paris and at the moment, the next stop would be Kyoto. It created a total of eight “world” to show the history of Gucci. I hope that you won’t miss it.
Introduction
Gucci was founded by Guccio Gucci who was born in March 26, 1881 in Florence, Tuscany. His father was a leather craftsman. At the age of eleven, Guccio Gucci worked at the Savoy Hotel in London and he was inspired by the hotel’s upper-class hotel guests and also by the luggage companies such as H.J. Cave & Sons for instance. Its founder Harriet Jane Cave was believed to be the first designer of the modern leather handbag, and Giccio Gucci was inspired by her. Soon he returned to Florence and started making luxury luggage and accessories.
In 1921, the House of Gucci was founded in Florence as a small family-owned leather shop. He began selling saddles, leather bags and other accessories to horsemen in the 1920s. In 1938 Gucci expanded his business to a second location in Rome at the insistence of his son Aldo. His one-man business became a family business when his sons joined the company.
In 1951, Gucci opened their store in Milan and remained as a small business. But two weeks before his death, the New York Gucci boutique was opened by his son Aldo, Rodolfo and Vasco.
Guccio Gucci died on January 2, 1953 in Milan and the business was left to his five sons. The Gucci brand expanded to open stores in international locations and the product line was expanded.
The Gucci Museum was founded in Florence centered around its founder, Guccio Gucci and its history.
But his sons, Ugo, Also, Vasco, Rodolfo, were all holding prominent roles in the company and a lot of sibling rivalry took place within the company. It became a serious issue and in 1980s it divided the company and also the family.
His eldest son, Aldo, and Aldo’s sons and grandson claimed to use an inherited, ancestral coat-of-arms after the Kingdom of Italy. His father Guccio Gucci incorporated it as the Gucci coat-of-arms and recorded it in the Archives of Florence into the Gucci company’s knight logo. It was also trademarked by the Gucci company on February 4, 1955.
Maurizio Gucci, son of Rodolfo Gucci, grandson of company’s founder Guccion Gucci was born on September 26, 1948. He moved to New York City to work for the Gucci company under his uncle Aldo Gucci. He lived lavishly in New York. In 1982, he moved back to Milan and in 1983 he launched a legal battle against his uncle, Aldo, for control over Gucci after becoming the major shareholder following his father’s death. A fraud was found and he fled to Switzerland to avoid being acquainted. He sold his remaining company stock in 1993 for $170 million to Investcorp, ending the Gucci family’s association with the company.
Earlier on, Maurizio Gucci was made chairman of the Gucci Group in 1989, but from 1991 to 1993, he was running the company to the ground and was blamed for spending extravagantly on the company’s head quarters in Florence and Milan. His life was ended by the murder in 1995 plotted by his former wife, Patrizia Reggiani, who was convicted in 1998.
A film inspired by the story, titled House of Gucci, directed by Ridley Scott, and featured Lady Gaga as Patrizia Reggiani and Adam Driver as Maurizio Gucci and was released by United Artists Releasing on November 24, 2021.
After the family’s feuds during the 1980s, the Gucci family was entirely ousted from the company by 1993. The brand was revived and in 1999 Gucci became a subsidiary of the French conglomerate Kering.
In 2019, Gucci operated 487 stores with 17,157 employees and generated €9.6 billion in sales. Marco Bizzarri is its CEO since December 2014, Alessandro Michele was its creative director from January 2015 to November 23, 2022. Currently Sabato De Sarno is its creative director.
Gucci Cosmo collection exhibition is an immersive exhibition that defines an era and this report was posted by China-Europe Fashion Institute through the Newton Business School, the business school for the fashion.
It started by telling us that Gucci has been around for 102 years, not only across the time zones, but also across those eras of the Asian fashion lovers, who gathered together in an exhibition known as Gucci Cosmos in the city of Shanghai.
It is known as the most avant-garde and is known for its representative exhibition since the brand was founded. This show will take visitors through Gucci’s most enduring design gallery in the past century.
We can find the founding spirit of Guccio Gucci and his sons, Aldo and Rodolfo, to the innovative courage and imagination of modern creative directors of Tom Ford, Frida Giannini and Alessandro Michele, from their original creations inspired by their inspiration to visionary reinterpretations. Everything that can be seen at a glance from its founding place of Florence and the local traditional craftsmanship to reflect and define of the time.
The Italian fashion scholar and critic, Marie Luisa Frisa, served as the curator, and Gucci World has also invited British contemporary artist Es Devlin to serve as the exhibition hardware designer.
Devlin said, “Gucci and its history over the past century can be mapped through the forces of evolution and by extension for our own capacity for consciousness and cognitive transformation. Just as clothes themselves can be changed and re-cut, as to shedding skin constantly renew itself.” Devlin is good at creating large-scale public art and has made stage sculptures for many celebrities.
This exhibition used the orbit of the universe as a visual metaphor, and a total eight “Worlds” were created. Not only are those precious collections from Palazzo Settimanni in Florence that have travelled across the oceans. It is a spectacular scene but also a homage to Shanghai.
Courtesy of: Youtube | Gucci Cosmos | by GUCCI | April 28, 2023 | 1:12
As the Gucci Archive travels from Florence to Shanghai, eight immersive worlds take rise in the West Bund Art Center. Renowned British contemporary artist Es Devlin, who conceived and designed the Gucci Cosmos exhibition, and eminent Italian fashion theorist, critic, and curator Maria Luisa Frisa give a glimpse into the inspirations behind the immersive experience, revealing how they have traced just one of many possible constellations connecting the ideas and inventions set in motion by the House’s designers and artisans over the past 102 years.
First World - Portals
The first stop of the collection exhibition transported us all the way back to the starting point of the career of brand founder Guccio Gucci. The eight revolving doors pay tribute to the entrance of the Savoy, a high-end hotel in London, where Guccio Gucci worked as a bellman when he was young. It was where he observed the dressing preferences and needs of many celebrities and nobles.
The theme of this exhibition room was all about travel, whether it was international travel or time travel. In additional to take a look at Gucci’s most classic and unique designs, including one of the earliest styles from the 1920s and the 2020 Epilogue luggage series in Disney print. You can also see the “figures” of cultural icons from past generations who love to travel, such as Jack Dame Quilene Kennedy, Princess Diana and contemporary brand ambassadors to name a few.
Second World - Zeotrope
Third World - Eden Garden
In a circular space filled with lights and mirrors, a large installation of flowers and insects attracts all attention and it brought out the third exhibition room that explored Gucci’s creative energy inspired by the beauty of nature. The most elegant pattern, the totem of the brand for its silk scarf that Rodolfo Gucci commissioned the Italian painter Vittorio Accomero de Testa was designed specifically for Princess Grace Kelly of Monaco.
Later, it not only became Gucci’s 1981 scarf in the Sala Bianca Hall of Palazzo Pitti in Florence as the theme of the fashion series on display, but it continued to inspire every creative director in the future and are constantly being reused, reproduced and mixed.
Fourth World - Two
Do we still remember Alessandro Michele’s last show at Gucci, the “Twinsburg” for the spring and summer of 2023? There were 68 pairs of twins joined hands on the runway to pay tribute to the twin mother who raised the designer as a child. The concepts of twins, opposition and coexistence were presented in the fourth exhibition room. A pair of ten-meter-high white giant statues stood there with images of various men’s, women’s and unisex clothing projected on them, symbolizing the brand’s presence in the center. Pioneer development and continuous cultivation in the field of unisex fashion.
Fifth World - Archivio
This exhibition room is bound to make bag lovers linger. Created like an endless labyrinth corridor, the drawers and cabinets on both sides of the aisle are closed and opened, displaying the brand’s most significant bag designs over the past century, including the bamboo bag Bamboo 1947, which is familiar to fashion fans. Jackie 1961 bag, Horsebit 155 bag, Gucci Diana bag and Dionysus bag, etc., were displayed. It not only displayed the evolution of bags from the past to the present, but also allowed everyone to have a glimpse of the sketch manuscripts, technical drawings, retro advertisements and fabric details behind these works, and analyze their charm one by one.
Sixth World - Cabinet of Wonders
A 1950s black velvet clutch, a Tom Ford-era leather corset and electric guitar, an Alessandro Michele-era black ostrich feather fan and a punk-style ball bag with metal spikes. Various clothing accessories that are as exquisite as antique collections and even a little weird have become a highlight every time Gucci launches a clothing series in recent years. In the exhibition room of the “House of Curiosities”, a rotating cabinet of curiosities will show us these unexpected objects one by one.
Seventh World - Inspiration Gallery Carousel
How spectacular would it be if there were a venue that combined Gucci’s fashion shows from all over the years? The Inspiration Gallery is a booth designed for this fantasy. 32 complete sets of show passed by on the conveyor belt one by one, including the G cube totem suit from the 1970s, the golden streamlined evening dress designed by Frida Giannini, and the unisex suit created by the signature Tom Ford style. Audiences were separated by the paintings created by local Chinese artists symbolizing the creative dialogue and connection between the two places.
Eighth World - Duomo, Palace of Heaven
The exhibition finally came to the final exhibition room. However, this is not the “exhibition room” that you and I usually know. The “Temple of the Sky” replicated two domes of the Santa Maria del Fiore Basilica of Florence Cathedral. One was suspended and the other was inverted. From one to the mysterious observation deck, it can only accommodate one person at a time. But when you walked into the observation deck, what you appreciate was not the scenery outside, but the kaleidoscope-like spectacle of omni-directional light and shadow projected on the inner wall of the dome, which brings an end to this Gucci-style aesthetic journey.
Gucci Cosmos in London
Courtesy of: Youtube | Gucci in London | by GUCCI | Oct 13, 2023 | 1:06
The archival exhibition traces the history of Gucci through immersive experiences envisioned by Es Devlin and a special curation by Maria Luisa Frisa that spans the House’s earliest designs to the most recent Spring Summer 2024 collection by Creative Director Sabato De Sarno. For the London stop, Gucci Cosmos taps into the origin story of the House, spotlighting the city’s pivotal role in inspiring the dream of a young Florentine named Guccio Gucci working as a porter at The Savoy hotel.
This piece is from the courtesy of the Newton Business School and China-Europe Institute of Fashion. Gucci Cosmos is currently showing in London at the 180 Studios from October 11 to December 31, 2023.
It will continue in Paris and Kyoto.
Please visit the website of gucci.com for more details.
