Since arriving at Gucci, Alessandro Michele has turned us on to his magically surreal vision of fashion. For all the flights of fancy, though, he’s Alessandro Michele is designing for today’s world.
Alessandro Michele’s office at the Gucci Hub in Milan resembles one of the many iterations of Auntie Mame’s Beekman Place drawing room. It’s a stylish retreat decorated in his signature neo-Romantic style, with Napoleon III chairs and lacquered furniture dotted over flowering rugs and terracotta tomette tiles, all of it embowered in a Chinese paper of flowers and the exotic birds that the designer—in an echo of his hippie father—calls his spirit animals.
“For me, it’s quite empty,” Michele notes drily. “Milan is more of a working place.”
The idiosyncratic sitting room nestles in a LEED Gold-certified complex carved from the workshops of the 1915 Caproni aeronautical factory into a 35,000sqm behemoth that is a testament not only to the brand’s strength and ambitions—Gucci enjoyed 45 percent sales growth in 2017, with US$7.1 billion in annual sales, and has doubled its revenue during the past four years— but to its creative director’s singularly potent aesthetic. The staff canteen looks like a Belle Epoque café, with its ebonized mahogany bar, crimson sofas, and tall damask-and-toile-covered screens, just as Gucci fragrance counters around the world resemble 19thcentury apothecary shops. The Hub’s cavernous reception areas, meanwhile, are decorated with tufted velvet bones and more of Michele’s beloved antique Aubusson rugs, which also manage to lend the brand’s international outposts the quirky look of the Roman antiquarian shops that the designer likes to scour for jewels and objects of curiosity to fill his portfolio of properties.
Denne historien er fra June 2019-utgaven av VOGUE India.
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Denne historien er fra June 2019-utgaven av VOGUE India.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Breathe In, Breathe Out
A powerful tool to help you master your nervous system or another biohacking buzzword? SIMONE DHONDY explores the inhalations and exhalations of breathwork
Red Pill, Blue Pill
India's nutraceutical industry is booming thanks to advanced technology, distrust of the medical system and rising vanity. With multivitamins becoming purer and more effective, NIDHI GUPTA finds out if supplements have become the new serum
Sign of the times
No longer do you need to have an answer to, \"What is the significance of this?\" when people point to your new tattoo. ARMAN KHAN discovers that everything is on the table when you get inked temporarily
Return to form
Watching the world's most elite athletes deliver the best performances of their careers rekindled SONAKSHI SHARMA's own love for sports
Dimple, All Day
YOU MAY HAVE WATCHED HER ON THE BIG SCREEN FOR OVER FIVE DECADES, BUT DON'T MAKE THE MISTAKE OF ASSUMING THAT YOU KNOW DIMPLE KAPADIA.
MUSIC, TAKE CONTROL
As someone who had always sought safety in numbers, ALIZA FATMA often wondered what her own company would feel like. The answer arrived unexpectedly when she attended her first-ever music festival, one of the largest in the world, all alone
Let it grow
When we think of hardworking farmers toiling in India's scorching heat, we often think of men, the sweat on their brow, the sinews in their arms. JYOTI KUMARI speaks to four women who are championing the invisible female labour that keeps these fields running
YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE
When armless archer Sheetal Devi set her sights on the Paralympic Games this year, she knew she had a tough journey ahead of her. Luckily, her mother was with her every step of the way.
Beauty and the feast
The appeal of Indian weddings has always been in a sprawling spread. For additional bragging rights, Aditi Dugar recommends going beyond designer tablecloths and monogrammed napkins.
Sweet serendipity
From a scavenger hunt-inspired proposal to a Moroccan-themed baraat, Malvika Raj and Armaan Rai's love story prioritised playfulness throughout their blended celebrations.