The renowned concept store in Via Roma also owes its fame to its window displays. The best-known ones from the 1990s bear the signature of Lorenzo Gemma. They are real visual manifestos that have given the boutique worldwide recognition for its visionary and unconventional approach.
Architect and multifaceted talent, Gemma is the protagonist of this editorial interview in which we retrace the most significant moments of his professional career and his experience as our collaborator.
Upon his graduation in Architecture in Florence in 1989, Gemma took the first steps in teaching as the assistant of Professor Gianni Pettena and Professor Remo Buti – protagonists of the Radical scene – to complete his research doctorate at the Politecnico di Milano University. Following these academic experiences, architecture, interior design, and design continue to be at the center of his studies and projects.
Over the years, Gemma has designed and reinvented most of the discos in the Tuscan capital – among the best known, Yab and Meccanò. He also created designs for well-known companies such as Bertocci, Pampaloni, and UnoAerre, as well as installations for Roberto Cavalli, Trussardi and Lanificio Bartolini Sestilio.
He won many competitions and participated in international exhibitions. His works are exhibited at the Biennale di Venezia, the Triennale di Milano, the Castromediano Museum in Lecce and the Museo del 900 in Florence and many are featured in numerous specialized publications and in the catalogs of the exhibitions and competitions in which he participates. Since the beginning of his career, the architect has received numerous awards for his work.
In the ‘90s, he begins to explore the fashion industry, designing important installations for LuisaViaRoma’s historic shop in Florence, just a stone’s throw from the Duomo and for Roberto Cavalli in Milan.
Below are some of his most emblematic creations and an interview with the architect.
During those years in Florence, there was a wonderful, even if not very structured, I would say artisanal, ferment linked to many personalities and many small venues that were becoming places in which to experiment, stage, and try out innovative ideas.
Why did you decide to study architecture and design?
By vocation. After high school, I understood the inevitable attraction to change or at least to try to improve the world, if not from a political and social point of view, at least by contributing to the aesthetics of things, convinced that “only beauty will save the world.”
Can you tell us more about the Florentine creative scene of the ‘90s?
During those years, Florence had an incredible atmosphere, even though not very structured, I would call it artisanal, linked to various personalities and small venues that were becoming places to experiment, stage, and try out innovative ideas.
How did your collaboration with LVR come about?
I met Andrea Panconesi of Luisa Via Roma in Florence in 1990. Nayana, a mutual friend, insisted that I introduce myself because she considered my talent valuable for the continued success of the shop (already known for its window displays at the time).
At the meeting, I showed up in a floral shirt I had made myself by pulling down the living room curtain in my apartment. I had just graduated from architecture, and I had nothing fashionable to wear. I was, therefore, forced to be original… but I was aware of the shop’s importance and the opportunity that presented itself.
Andrea dismissed me very quickly; perhaps he didn’t want to talk, but he asked me to come back with something to show him, some ideas for setting up window displays for his shop since then there was an opportunity for creativity and possible collaboration. I returned after two days with some sketches I’d made on paper with a pencil and about ten ideas. The first, casually, centered on a small Christmas tree and gift packages placed on the ground in a row. He immediately stopped me by telling me that LVR was a very important boutique and that the Christmas window display had to be more impressive and always refer to the world of luxury and fashion: it had to excite.
He had yet to read the two lines written below. That drawing was a proposal for the mid-August window, not for Christmas. When I explained it to him, he was impressed. He said he didn’t want to see much else, so he wouldn’t spoil the surprise. He became friendly and warmer. He bid me farewell, thanking and congratulating me and asking me to stay in touch.
Months later, we met on a night out at Maramao, and he scolded me because I hadn’t gone to see him. The following day, while in his boutique in Via Roma, he asked me how much time I needed to organize and set up my first window display. I said that I was ready. So the following Wednesday, I installed my first display, entirely designed and built by myself.
It was a monochrome background, blue with a single mannequin wearing an opulent evening dress – in the same blue as the walls – and an exaggeratedly styled blonde wig. An Edra armchair completed the scene with two golden ceramic piggy banks; it was my personal interpretation of Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Andrea waited until two in the morning for the work to be almost completed; he called me out to the sidewalk in front of the window and complimented me. We made a toast, and he asked me if, from that moment on, I could commit to producing one installation a month.
What inspired you for the showcases you created for LVR?
Generally, inspiration is a strange mix between something that falls from above and something you have inside. Close your eyes to focus on an inner vision, then put your hands in motion to build the best version of that vision.
Every subject and every project is the offspring of a question we feel we need to answer, an occasion to reflect on. It could be displaying a collection in the most suitable way, highlighting a news story, perhaps by adding a pinch of satire to it. Or, again, to transform a news story into a single frozen image, a photo that can invite reflection and draw attention to something.
Placing the mannequins in the set-up space and adjusting their positions was often an operation similar to ‘directing’, of constructing behavioral proxemics and of communicating an emotion.
How did you translate your ideas into tangible projects?
By hand, assembling and building props, and certainly, with the help of trusted collaborators: make-up and wigs by Claudio Barbetti (Domina). Claudio was informed of the theme and the vision I was looking for, and he always worked with great enthusiasm and creativity based upon the requisites that I conveyed to him.
Equally and even more so, Archimede Spadaccino and Mario Soldato, then architecture students, assisted me in most of the installations. Almost every Tuesday or Wednesday evening, they waited around for the shop to close to start dismantling the previous window displays, putting the clothing back in the shop, and then giving the walls a coat of white paint to erase the previous intervention and prepare the surfaces and space for the new project.
Generally, the background color was already chosen and purchased, along with objects that were to be used in the new display. During the downtime, while the first coat was drying, the mannequins were dressed, and the accessories were built to complete the look (very often, simple flat shoes were painted the exact same color as the walls and/or the floor). Then we began assembling everything in front of passers-by, spectators who had not paid for the performance, friends, and onlookers who stared at us as if we were in an aquarium. Placing the mannequins in the display space and adjusting their positions was often a directing operation: constructing behavioral proxemics and communicating emotions.
Can you tell us some stories about creating your most memorable LuisaViaRoma window displays?
On pages 126 – 127 – 128, and 129 of the LuisaViaRoma Book “Window to a future Fashion World,” are two displays that cover one unique project: “Under Glass.” In those years, I shared a house with Francesca Sorace, a friend, and contemporary art enthusiast who had begun collaborating with “Sergio Tossi Arte Contemporanea,” a new Art Gallery in Prato. I had often used the work of painter friends in creating the window displays, but on that occasion, I thought it would be better to focus on my natural love for contemporary art. I asked Francesca to involve Sergio Tossi, who collaborated with enthusiasm. Five artists were selected, all young and promising, from all over Italy.
I organized a series of displays and a Collective that invaded every part of the shop. Every Friday, one was inaugurated dedicated to one of the Collective’s artists by placing their work in the window – therefore, “Sotto Vetro” – was introduced without mannequins or other merchandise. It was inaugurated every week with the presence of the artist and a cocktail offered by the shop. It wasn’t until the next day that I would assemble the mannequins with the exhibited work.
I still have the press release and the invitation from “Sotto Vetro,” I made them using a mosaic detail in glass and gold that decorated a panel at the entrance to the shop. “Sotto Vetro” went from November 9th to December 13th, 1994: with five artists, and five inaugurations in five weeks.
Most of those artists have kept their promise, and today they are quoted and recognized internationally. The display also remains part of their curricula, and from that moment, the shop gained the attention of the contemporary art world.
For the Tuscan architect, the shop window of LuisaViaRoma is “a window onto the world and the city […] an opportunity for broader and more complex communication, a form of reflection and expression far from the frivolity of fashion.” From 1991 to 1996, Gemma designed more than one hundred shop displays, as well as overseeing the staging that took place inside the shop and presenting the collections designed for LVR – many of which he curated during the Christmas season.
LuisaViaRoma display is a window onto the world and the city, an opportunity for broader and more complex communication, a form of reflection and expression far from the frivolity of fashion.
