It’s where sacred leather sleeps on blessed shelves, and bags whisper for moccasins to meditate on. It’s on a cobbled street, of course, because tarmac is too vulgar for fashion mysticism, and with an air of mystery before a heavy wooden porte cochere that opens like a dramatic period film, here is the candlelit concept store lining the golden catacombs of style: the Palazzo Settimanni, the chic mausoleum of Gucci’s heritage.
Once a leather goods workshop, then a hype sanctuary under Tom Ford and an exhibition space (remember: the days when a belt could make a nun blush), the place has been resurrected by Alessandro Michele, that bohemian druid with long hair and multiple rings. He said he wanted to ‘bring the objects home’. Which, in his case, mostly meant saving vintage sequined dresses and moccasins from eternal oblivion in the warehouses of Milan.
Since he left the boat in 2022, perhaps tired of having brought back too many things or perhaps a victim of too much brocade, the torch has passed to Sabato De Sarno like a shooting star, and then recently to Demna, the man who transformed jogging into a philosophical manifesto, the Gandalf of post-apocalyptic silhouettes.
And so, in 2026, we take a trip back in time to the Palazzo Settimanni, which once again becomes a catwalk. Yes, from now on we’ll be marching through the archives themselves. On 15 May, the doors won’t open to the public – let’s be serious! But for a select group of guests, chosen on the basis of mysterious criteria: level of influence, purity of Instagram, level of knowledge of Latin, botany and the ability to wear monk’s sandals with a feather coat, or to know a peasant from the Cévennes.
But also an elite group of interns, specialist journalists with at least three platinum cards, and, exceptionally, a few lucky idiots, myself included. Get your golden invitations and dark glasses ready, and above all: don’t touch anything. The relics might bite. The place is so charged with telluric energy that only a fashion critic who has survived six consecutive Fashion Weeks du Marrant will be able to get the gist of it. Be warned: the walls have eyes. And the bags have memories of knots.