The final visit during our Johnson & Wales University Study Abroad program I will be talking about here is Gucci Garden. Gucci Garden is a museum and gallery in Florence that showcases Gucci pieces from the beginning in the company’s founding in 1921, in between merchandise, and others made today.

Bags!

Some of the bags in Gucci Garden’s collection include ones such as one with a bamboo handle. Items made during the time period in this bag’s production were composed of different materials as the scarcity of typically used ones was at a high. Other bags include the Mickey Mouse bag from Gucci’s Disney collaboration, antique travel luggage, as well as today’s bag the Marmont with Gucci’s commonly seen double G closure.

Paintings

Gucci Garden has many paintings throughout the gallery. One of these has animals that Gucci incorporates into their products. Our tour guide talked about what each animal represented for the company. The bee, represents teamwork. Bees are known to help each other as a team and treating the queen in the hive. The other paintings I absolutely loved! These paintings were completed from a private outside artist who painted nude people to that represent the idea of quality. There are paintings of transgender, disabled, LGBTQ couples, and straight couples all throughout the room. The same painting is displayed in two different rooms with different color ways. Each color creates a different effect. The black and red set made the painting feel deep, and had me thinking deeply. The green and white painting was more open and happy, and almost put a smile on my face.

Overall, my takeaway is that Gucci Garden is in fact, not a museum, but a museum and gallery. The combination of paintings that are revamped every 6 months with merchandise since 1921 until today, really sets a new level to a company’s showcasing methodology. I enjoyed Gucci Garden more than Salvatore Ferragamo for some reasons, but vice versa. SF’s focus on sustainability was a new experience for me that Gucci did not detail, however the merchandise that Gucci showed pertained more the brand itself.