Gucci has opened its new Gucci Garden in Florence. Designed by Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele, Gucci Garden blends the old and the new by showcasing recent work and contemporary art with pieces from collections dating back to the House’s Florentine origins in 1921. The name Gucci Garden was chosen to symbolically show metaphorical and literal references to the natural world of plants, flowers, and animals.

The Gucci Garden is set out over two floors and features clothing, accessories, video installations, artworks, documents, and artifacts all organized by separate themes. Contemporary pieces are juxtaposed with vintage items and artists Jayde Fish, Trevor Andrew, and Coco Capitán have been invited to decorate walls. Their work sits alongside Gucci fabric wallpaper and a nineteenth-century equestrian oil portrait by Domenico Induno.

Alessandro Michele worked with curator Maria Luisa Frisa to organize the Gucci Garden Galleria. All Gucci designers past and present are represented through the Gucci Garden as a way to show the history of the brand.

Courtesy of Gucci

The ground floor of Gucci Garden is given over to the restaurant and a bazaar-like retail space organised across two large rooms. Here products exclusively designed for the Gucci Garden and not on sale in any other Gucci stores are available. These include shoes and bags in special materials, brocade skirts and coats, and several one-of-a-kind creations, such as silk bomber jackets that feature the Gucci Garden Gothic script. We see the emergence of a dedicated Gucci Garden logo and new symbols entering the lexicon of the House’s motifs, such as a bat, which appears on leather goods and custom jewellery, and a new eye design that decorates small leather goods and gifts.