We are at Piazza Della Signoria, 10, Firenze Italia. I am contemplating with some dismay yet another sculpture. It is our third day in Florence and while my husband has gamely photographed everything in sight, including cobbled streets, stone-benches, waterspouts, in case they be something historical (they invariably are), my brain has stopped processing information. I have overdosed on Bernini, Botticelli, Caravaggio, they are everywhere and my feet are killing me.
Then, I see it. Gucci Museo. I understand enough Italian to know what that is. Where are the drum rolls and the neon lights? Besides I am now intimidated. My friend back home had warned me about Italy. “No matter how well we dress, we still look like we are mopping the floors.” We shuffle in, paying €10 each. We do not mind as 50 per cent goes towards preserving Florence’s magnificent monuments.
I am slightly reassured as I read that Gucci was born in Florence and started out as a lift boy in London’s Savoy Hotel. Guccio Gucci began his company and first store in Florence in 1921. This museum is more recent and is housed within Palazzo Mercanzia that dates back to 1337 when the building was a centre for Florentian art and craftsmanship.
The museum has three floors. To our left is a café and a book shop, but we go right where I catch my first glimpse of Gucci Luggage from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. As a liftboy, it is said, Gucci was fascinated with the vanity cases and portmanteaux of the rich and famous. Baggage, some with the Cunard-White Star Logo, gleams from behind glass enclosures. (Incidentally, the Titanic belonged to the White Star shipping company that later merged with Cunard). I can’t but help fantasise about the people who owned these trunks, hat boxes, duffel bags (some of Gucci’s earliest collections).
The first floor has the fascinating Contemporary Art Space. Gucci has collaborated with Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation and has funded the restoration of landmark films for posterity. There is a compact auditorium, where we sink into comfortable seats and watch a short film called Hand Made . Five women of different ages, from various parts of the world, sit together in front of famous monuments, knitting, crocheting, and embroidering. There is no conversation, just the visual of them working in harmony. We also get to see the work of the Portuguese contemporary artist, Joana Vasconcelos.
Gucci’s love for the cinema is obvious in the museum. The walls are covered with huge images of Dustin Hoffman in Kramer vs Kramer, Vanessa Redgrave in Blow-Up , Sophia Loren in La Moglie Del Prete , Francis Ford Coppola in his director’s chair, Audrey Hepburn, Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, and other stars at work and in film sequences. They all sport a Gucci product — a handbag, a pair of loafers, an evening gown, a sweater, a suitcase. In fact there are beautiful black-and-white photographs of cinema royalty everywhere. Of Kim Novak, Tony Curtis, Ursula Andress, David Niven and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.
And the evening gowns! Salma Hayek’s dreamy grey organza affair embellished with crystals and feathers that she wore when she won the Gucci Award for Women in Cinema at Venice; Cameron Diaz’s ivory Gucci gown for the Academy Awards in 2012, and the gold and nude Gucci with a long train that Jessica Chastain wore at Cannes 2012. This is the closest I will ever get to the red carpet.
After all that stardust, the rest of the museum is a blur. They are celebrating 60 years of the loafers. A section is devoted to the most iconic Gucci footwear ever, which was introduced in 1953 with equestrian motifs. There are table lamps, picnic baskets complete with champagne glasses and thermos, handbags and the beautiful Flora Line inspired by Grace Kelley. When she visited the Gucci store in Milan with her husband Prince Rainier in 1966, Gucci commissioned illustrator Vittorio Accornero to create an original motif for the princess. He did using nine bouquets of flowers from the four seasons, berries, butterflies and dragonflies. This motif appears on a variety of Gucci products including bags, jewellery and crockery and also inspired Flora, one of the house’s most famous perfumes.
We emerge after a quick tour of the souvenir store. I just have to buy a teeny-weeny Gucci. My husbands asks how much a wallet costs and then tells me that if I buy it, we will have to swim back home. I pick up a small folder with pictures of the various Gucci products. It is free; so I pick up one more.
