A Roman Emperor’s Sanctuary of Aesthetics
Beneath the silhouette of a wide red hat and the folds of an imposing blue cape, a man strolls slowly across the lawns of an estate whose exact location remains a closely guarded secret. Seeing him like this, with his jet-black mane falling over his shoulders, one might imagine him as a magician or an aristocrat from another century, lost in the Umbrian countryside. Yet this is Alessandro Michele, the man who orchestrated the most spectacular transformation in recent fashion history. Far from the camera flashes of Milan or the parties in Miami, the Roman designer cultivates a form of resistance here: that of otium, that time of studious and contemplative leisure so dear to the ancient Romans. In these hills, where ruins stand side by side with unspoiled nature, he seeks not so much to rest as to understand the meaning of existence through the beauty of objects and landscapes.
His arrival here was no accident, but the result of a “mutual attraction.” When he purchased this estate a few years ago, the property—once the heart of an aristocratic estate—was falling into disrepair. An elderly heiress was preparing to sell the land to developers who wanted to transform it into a luxury hotel complex with a spa. By purchasing the site, Alessandro Michele didn’t just acquire some walls; he saved an atmosphere. Today, he acts as the guardian of this 360-degree horizon, fighting against the expansion of geothermal projects and intensive agriculture. The designer is alarmed to see the surrounding hills disfigured by massive hazelnut plantations intended for the spread industry—a threat that looms over the very identity of the Italian landscape. For him, beauty is a fundamental value that must be protected against the utilitarian destruction of the modern world.
The Collection as a Bulwark Against Death
Alessandro Michele’s relationship with the past is neither dusty nostalgia nor a desire to freeze time. For him, the past is fertile only if it is alive, if it engages with the present. It is this philosophy that permeates his work at Gucci, where he blends eras with an almost psychedelic boldness. In his homes—he owns five in total, between his Roman apartment and his residences in Civita di Bagnoregio—he collects “relics”. Portraits from the Tudor or Stuart eras purchased at small English auction houses, wooden hands from former glove makers, and rare books line his shelves. He readily admits to being a compulsive collector, having once owned three warehouses filled with a motley assortment of objects.
This obsession with antique objects is also a survival strategy. Michele often cites the idea that dressing in a vibrant and eccentric manner allows one to outwit death, to ensure that it does not recognize you. By surrounding himself with beauty and history, he tries to ward off mortality. This worldview clashed with a harsher reality during a recent trip to Miami. As he walked past Casa Casuarina, Gianni Versace’s former home, he was struck by the sight of a restaurant named “Gianni’s” that had opened there—precisely where the fashion designer was murdered. This way of turning tragedy into a consumer product leaves him perplexed. For Michele, Versace’s genius—just like that of Tom Ford—lay not in inventing a skirt, but in creating an entire world, a mythology where fashion meets rock ’n’ roll and cinema.
The Architecture of Creative Renewal
Nothing predestined this “boy from the Roman countryside”—the son of an aeronautical engineer who sculpted in his spare time—to become the architect of a luxury empire worth nearly ten billion euros. Hired by Tom Ford in 2002 to oversee leather goods, he worked behind the scenes for many years before being promoted to creative director in January 2015. We still remember his first bow to the audience: a shy man in a cream-colored Aran sweater and baggy jeans, who had designed his first collection in just a few days. At the time, he thought he would be fired immediately after the show. The opposite happened: an aesthetic revolution was born. By blending the styles of hippies, punks, and skinheads into a gender-fluid wardrobe, he infused a brand that had become stuck in cold luxury with warmth and eccentricity.
His working method remains deeply rooted in humanity and observation. Based in a former palace designed by Raphael in Rome, surrounded by stuffed birds and lulled by the minimalist music of Wim Mertens, he constantly seeks the input of his team. But beware: Alessandro Michele has an absolute aversion to anything “cute” or “pretty.” If a colleague describes a design as “cute,” he admits he feels like screaming. He seeks the exceptional, the fabulous, or even the terrifying—but never the lukewarm. For him, fashion is an ongoing inquiry into our presence in the world—an exploration that continues even when he opens his laptop amid the hills of Umbria to fine-tune gowns destined for the red carpets of Los Angeles or Seoul.
Between Sublimated Ruins and Bucolic Daily Life
In his country home, life revolves around a certain rediscovered simplicity. Surrounded by his two Boston terriers, Bosco and Orso, and his partner Giovanni Attili, a professor of urban planning, he envisions the future of his estate as a place for passing on knowledge. He plans to create a theater, classrooms for students, and residency studios for young creatives. “We must give young people the chance to live surrounded by beauty,” he asserts with conviction. The upper floor of his house is still in ruins—a state he actually finds magnificent. He prefers the authenticity of crumbling stone or peeling varnish to the smooth perfection of magazines.
Michele doesn’t see himself stuck forever in the hustle and bustle of the fashion world. While he has no plans to ever “retire” from “life”—which he finds far too entertaining—he readily imagines a quieter future, perhaps running a flower shop. In the meantime, he savors those Monday mornings in December when, far from the hustle and bustle of social media—a tool that now bores him—he treats himself to the luxury of taking photos with his new camera, without any professional pretensions, just for the sheer joy of it. He watches his dogs run freely, points to a path lined with old oak trees that he hopes to restore, and looks forward to a planned visit to a dealer in antique materials. There, among the salvaged fireplaces and wrought-iron grilles, he’ll continue to gather fragments of a world he strives to make, every day, a little more extraordinary.
This quest for the unexpected defines him as much as a man as it does as a designer. Whether he’s marveling at the frescoes in the Cappella Nuova of Orvieto Cathedral or finding inspiration in painters’ uniforms, Alessandro Michele rejects labels. He remains that Roman boy who, amidst the olive trees, simply seeks to capture the moment when the past becomes the present, when an object becomes a relic, and when a garment becomes armor against oblivion. In this landscape, sheltered from industrial greed, he has found much more than a home: he has built a privileged observatory on the beauty of the world, a place where creation never stops, even when the silence of the countryside reclaims its rightful place.