The cruisers of San Simpliciano, which were built between the 15th and 17th centuries, are peaceful, meditative rooms in the heart of Milan, with the remains of the frescoes decorating the arches along the colonnades in the smaller of the two and a formal Italian garden in the larger garden. From April 8th to 13th, “Gucci | Bambus encounters” will be accompanied, an exhibition intended by the fashion brand and compiled and designed by the architect Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, the installations, furniture and objects inspired by Bamboo, which are now inspired in the history of the company.
But first: why bamboo?
In 1947 Gucci began to produce handbags with bamboo handles and created an immediate IT bag. As the story says, the son of founder Guccio Gucci was known for his bamboo walk. At that time, leather was scarce because of the Second World War and he realized that Gucci could use bamboo as a replacement. The craftsmen of the fashion store began to experiment with the material – which is extremely light, strong and flexible – and finally created from them by gently bending the stems with fire and then applying a lot of paint coats. The design was a success. Celebrities such as Elizabeth Taylor, Ingrid Bergman and Jackie Kennedy wore the bamboo bag in their early years and they continued to appeal to stylish, refined people like Princess Diana and recently Beyoncé and Harry Styles.
While handbags are the most famous of Guccis designs for bamboo, the fashion house also made shoes, sticks, umbrellas, plates, forks and even pens out of the grass. “Over time, Bamboo became a code within the brand,” says Laparelli ADVERTISEMENT. “It's a binding thread.” After Laparelli Guccis Archives had gone through, he was fascinated by all the possibilities of how creative directors of the company used the material, such as Tom Ford, formulated the bamboo to create a metal chain for a handbag he designed, and the domestic objects that the brand produced in the 1970s. These explorations became the basis for “Bamboo: Decoding a Icon”, an exhibition Gucci and Laparelli, which were also staged in Shanghai until April 20.
For the Milan Design Week, Gucci and Laparelli wanted to continue to examine bamboo, as the architect in Guccio Guccis saw initial interest in the material – as a possible replacement for a resource that was no longer so easy – was a very contemporary way of approaching. Nowadays, designers may not have confronted with scarcity due to the war rationing, but there are a number of other problems that challenge the way they do things, from sustainability to ethical production and beyond. The same properties that Bambus made interesting for Gucci in 1947 remain appealing and full of exploration options today.
“Practice to design the 21st century is not just about designing objects, but about examining materials, supply chains, stories and stories,” says Laparelli. “It's not really about the exits itself, it's about the process.”