Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1438629
9 0 P E R S P E C T I V E | J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 2 The name Gucci is synonymous with everything elegant and glamorous about Italian design in the 20th century. Always an iconic status symbol to the rich and famous, in some ways designing the House of Gucci was relatively straightforward, as it was filmed eclusiely in taly, but creating the ew York world of Gucci during the period 1975 to 1995 in Italy was the bigger challenge. Fortunately, I was quite familiar with both of these worlds. As a student of architecture and design, Italian traditions were without a doubt the most inuential for me personally and were to be the foundation of my work as a Production Designer. As a student of art and architecture, I began with the formal study of ancient Rome and its classic monuments, but at the same time was also being eposed to the ery progressive ideas of international modernism in art, fashion and industrial design, which all had found their way across the Atlantic to my hometown— ew ork ity. ew ork had always been a gateway to America for international movements in the arts. This was certainly the case in the 1960s, when talian inuence on the merican lifestyle was ery strong. The inu of talian cars, neorealist films, talian pop art and of course fashion was pervasive, and America was becoming more and more absorbed by Italian culture. Our First Lady, acueline ennedy, wore leg assini, and carried a Gucci bag named after her. America was copying her style choices. Italian cinema had a great impact on piquing the Americans interest in the Dolce Vita European lifestyle. I'd also become fully immersed in things Italian. I personally had an Atala bicycle, a oe olumbo lamp, a agistretti chair, a black Armani suit and a girlfriend named Elizabetta. t was fortuitous that my ery first ob as a Production Designer was in Italy, and even more so, that it was in ilan. ith my first paycheck, in old Italian lira at the time, I bought a new Prada suit…sorry Gucci. By the time I came to House of Gucci, had done many proects in taly, both T commercials and feature films, including prepping parts of Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven, and shooting All the Money in the World. As a result of all this work in Italy, I know quite a few very talented Italians in the Art Department by now, and especially in ome, the center of the talian film industry. The Gucci story, however, was largely set in north of taly, in ilan, in Tuscany and ake omo where the actual settings for the Gucci story took place, and was a ery different style architecturally from Rome, at least on the face of things. Rome is an ancient city with layers and layers of history and with many colliding architectural styles evolved over millennia, and consequently, much more inconsistent. ilan, on the other hand, has a much more uniform character, with mostly renaissance and art deco style buildings mied with a few very modern era ones, a generally much more homogenous look. ilan does not hae a ery deep crew base for feature films, work being more focused on fashion and T commercial production. The more practical solution was generally thought to try to make the film in ome for financial reasons and crew aailability, while it was thought, at first, that most of the settings would be more easily found in ilan. t was also considered that this was a mostly location film with no big set builds, perhaps only one or two small sets might be needed such as a bathroom or a prison cell to make walls more easily moveable. As it turned out, the production did much more set construction than originally planned, mostly on location, and of all those, the ones which were set in ew ork were the most dicult and, in the end, the most enoyable. i n d i n g e w o r k i n t a l y D E S I G N I N G H O U S E O F G U C C I B Y A R T H U R M A X , P R O D U C T I O N D E S I G N E R A. STORE LOCATION PRIOR TO CONSTRUCTION. B. STORE PILASTER DETAILS. C. STORE LOCATION AFTER CONSTRUCTION. D. GUCCI FIFTH AVE.—NY STORE INTERIOR CONCEPT ILLUSTRATION.