Elizabeth (Lizzie) Osterkamp, a young student from California and a fashion, travel and photography enthusiast, is fulfilling one of her dreams during her studies in Strategic Communication (University of Colorado, USA): to get to know – and be able to tell about – her experience in one of the world’s fashion cities, discovering her favourite fashion brands. Here she tells us about the world of Gucci, between fashion and art.
“The Gucci store on Via Montenapoleone is their flagship store and the biggest one in Europe. The main floor of the location includes handbags, accessories, makeup, perfume and sunglasses. The bottom floor houses more of their couture pieces, shoes for both men and women as well as tableware and décor. The second floor offers an array of kid’s clothing, and there is even a VIP room on the third floor. Their couture section was breathtaking. They only had one of each article of clothing hung up on the rack, and the clothes included all sorts of different colors and designs. I also discovered when looking around that they do not carry any of their older collections at their flagship store. They try to stock the store with all their current collections. However, some of their older pieces can be found at the Gucci store in the Galleria. One special feature at their flagship store on Via Montenapoleone is a “Do it yourself” or DIY option. This is not a common feature to have in their stores and allows customers to personalize most items within the store with embroidery resembling a bee or snake, letters and more.
The other Gucci store in Milan is located within the heart of the Galleria.
This location is two floors and is small compared to the location I visited on the street of Via Montenapoleone. However, this location does have a variety of products including handbags, jewelry, belts and shoes.
While walking around Milan, I came across a promotion created by Gucci that looked different than anything I have ever seen before. It wasn’t a traditional advertisement that uses a photograph. The promotion is a painting that was painted directly onto the wall. The use of this wall for promotion began in 2017, and there are five different locations around the world with one of them located in Milan. The Gucci Art Wall, or Murale Artistico di Gucci, is located at 111 Corso Garibaldi. The side of the building changes and has included art to promote their Bloom fragrance, Gucci’s collaboration with North Face and many more things.
It currently has a painting to promote the new collaboration between Gucci and Adidas. The painting includes the Adidas and Gucci logos, two people wearing clothes in the collection and a QR code that can be scanned that leads you to the website to purchase items that are part of the collection. This collection is currently available for purchase and available in select stores with one of them being at the Gucci location on Via Montenapoleone.”