Demna Gvasalia rewrites the history of Gucci in a “museum of museums”. As part of a new exhibition, the creative director of the Florentine brand tells the history of the house not as a linear chronicle, but as a multi-voiced reinterpretation between the present and memory.
With the exhibition “Gucci Storia” in the Palazzo Gucci, he is designing a “museum of museums,” Gucci announced on Wednesday. He relies on a concept that is less about archiving and more about staging. The rooms do not follow a classic dramaturgy, but resemble a sequence of curated perspectives, from a portrait gallery to a homage to Florentine textile art to a cabinet of curiosities that delves deep into the house’s archives.
The building itself becomes a metaphor. According to the statement, walking through the palazzo reflects strolling through the city and creates a dialogue between place and identity. Florence appears not only as a geographical origin, but as a living resonance space for the constantly changing DNA of the house.
Appropriately, the Palazzo della Mercanzia, in which the Palazzo Gucci is located, is considered the historical headquarters of the fashion house founded by Guccio Gucci in 1921. The Palazzo had already served as a stage for the changing creative signatures of former designers. But with “Gucci Storia” this tradition reaches a new dimension, because history no longer seems to be just on display, but rather deconstructed and reassembled as the narrative of a house that is constantly reinventing itself.
While the exhibition unfolds across the upper floors, the ground floor combines commercial and culinary experiences, from a boutique to a cocktail bar to star chef Massimo Bottura’s Gucci Osteria.