Gucci Celebrates Love for NYC with Largest Ever Store, Overdesigned Handbags

Tomorrow will mark the opening of the world's largest Gucci store, occupying three glass-enclosed floors of Trump Tower on New York's Fifth Avenue. The company calls the new, 46,000-square-foot flagship designed by James Carpenter in collaboration with Gucci creative director Frida Giannini "its grandest architectural endeavor to date." To celebrate, Gucci has created a series of limited-edition "Gucci Loves New York" handbags. The good news: all proceeds from the bags, which go on sale tomorrow, will benefit the Central Park Conservancy. The bad news: the bags look to have been designed by committee, combining Gucci's old-school script logo (one of a handful of logos the brand has been switching among lately) and the house's signature GG-monogrammed canvas with a nod to Milton Glaser's I [heart] NY design. Topping it off is a blue-red-blue racer stripe that evokes Goyard and Dior more than Gucci, with its green-red-green signature that derived from the company's distinctive saddlery webbing. OK, we'll admit it. We think that Gucci has lost its aesthetic way in the years since the departure of Tom Ford and Domenico de Sole. The pair executed a brilliant brand renovation that managed to leverage Gucci's heritage, impart a cool, streamlined aesthetic, and make us forget any design hiccups in the house's scandal-soaked past, all the while building up a robust portfolio of blue-chip brands (including Bottega Veneta, Alexander McQueen, and Balenciaga). In the just over four years that have passed since Ford and de Sole decamped, the Gucci brand has continued its relentless expansion (comparable revenues were up 11% last year) but lost much of its distinctive aesthetic. Like Ford, designer Giannini is fond of dipping into the Gucci archives for ideas and prints, but contrary to the Ford era, those design elements are rarely fully explored or carried through as signatures from season to season. So in the space of a few collections, Gucci has meandered from vintage flower prints to bold geometrics and folkloric paisleys to Tyrolean-inspired coats and a spring collection awash in oversized horse bit motifs. The new "Gucci Loves New York" bags are symptomatic of the house's current case of multiple personality disorder. Good thing Bellevue is only a few blocks away.

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Gucci Celebrates Love for NYC with Largest Ever Store, Overdesigned Handbags

Stephanie Murg

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Stephanie Murg