It started, as the best things do, with pastry. Not just any pastry—a pistachio crème sfogliatella from Princi. A fluted, flaky miracle with the structural integrity of a Baroque ceiling and the green swagger of a gelato Gucci collab. Foreshadowing. I hadn’t seen a Princi since the London outpost closed mid-pandemic, so finding one in Milan felt like a carb-shaped omen. I took it as a sign—something beautiful was coming. Spoiler: It was bamboo.
A short walk and a few buttery bites later, I arrived at the Chiostri di San Simpliciano, where Gucci’s Bamboo Encounters exhibition was unfolding with all the quiet drama of a Fellini dream sequence. Men in tuxedos were managing the queue like we were entering a gala at La Scala, not a cloister. It was sunny, surreal, and slightly ridiculous—which is to say: perfect.
Inside, Gucci had handed bamboo the mic. Curated by 2050+ and its founder, Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, the show took the humble, hollow plant and gave it center stage—not just as a material, but as a metaphor, a muse. Which, to be fair, it already was.
Bamboo has been part of Gucci’s DNA since the 1940s, when wartime shortages pushed the house to get resourceful—and visionary. What began as a pragmatic workaround became a signature: sculpted bamboo handles on handbags, most famously the Gucci Bamboo 1947, turned a fast-growing grass into an enduring symbol of craftsmanship and quiet icon status. This exhibition, then, wasn’t just about material exploration. It was a kind of homecoming.
Anton Alvarez kicked things off with a towering sculpture of stacked bamboo rings that looked like a plant trying to become a skyscraper. “If bamboo were to dictate the shape,” he told me, “the formations would pile upward, unit upon unit, reaching for the sunlight.” It felt architectural, primal, and vaguely flirtatious. The bamboo was doing exactly what it wanted.
Dima Srouji’s Hybrid Exhalations took found bamboo baskets—some joyful, some weighted with colonial subtext—and fused them with hand-blown glass, made by Palestinian artisans. “Rather than rewriting history,” she said, “I’m engaging with the rich materials and bringing out elements that are commonly invisible.” One of the baskets, she pointed out, was a WWII hat from an English gentleman’s collection. Another? An egg basket. “There’s joy and colonial legacy in the same breath,” she added. “Centering the periphery is part of the fun.”
Then, Laurids Gallée: a resin-based fever dream of bamboo scaffolding caught mid-motion. “It’s a snapshot of nature,” he said. “Like marquetry if marquetry had X-ray vision.” His pieces glowed in deep aquatic blues, like they’d been fished out of Atlantis. Function? Optional. Impact? Maximal.
Over in a quieter corner, Sisan Lee had turned aluminum into a whisper. His engraved panel reimagined bamboo through the lens of Korean minimalism, inspired by Sumukhwa ink paintings and the ghostly restraint of Joseon porcelain. “It’s about the presence of emptiness,” he told me, “not the bamboo itself.” The light played across its surface like a memory you weren’t quite sure was yours.
Nathalie Du Pasquier, in full Memphis-mindset, gave us PASSAVENTO: bamboo frames supporting silk curtains printed with giant stalks—delicate and slightly absurd. “Bamboo is a material, not only an image,” she said. “I couldn’t measure its lightness in a painting.” So she built something that moved with the breeze, like a screen with stage fright. It didn’t hide anything—it hinted.
Kite Club, meanwhile, had other plans. Their contribution was a series of kites, part tribute, part love letter, flying above the courtyard thanks to a custom-built bamboo wind machine (because Milanese air just wasn’t giving that day). “Thank you, Bamboo,” one of the kites read. It was earnest and adorable, yet slightly anarchic. Very kitecore.
And then came the glow: the back studio, a Milan-Mumbai duo who paired bamboo with cold cathode neon. Their installation wrapped light around the material like a conversation—rooted in tradition, lit for the future. “Bamboo is the material,” they told me, “but it’s also the message. We’re rethinking how materials from the past can shape the future.” Basically: rethink the stick. Make it glow.
There was no one way through the show—no official route, no grand finale. Just a tangle of ideas and materials and cultural codes, all orbiting around this one improbable, enduring plant. Bamboo wasn’t just a handle or a prop—she was the star. The original Gucci it-girl, reincarnated in resin and rave light.
By the time I stepped back into the Milanese sunshine, the queue had doubled. The sfogliatella was long gone, but the aftertaste lingered—buttery, pistachio-laced, and oddly profound. Gucci had turned bamboo into poetry. And like all good poetry, it didn’t explain—it expanded.
Naturally, I went back to Princi for a couple more pastries. Research.