The pull of fashion mythology — the current obsession with Dior-era John Galliano or the Apple TV+ mini-series “The New Look” — suggests we are at peak nostalgia. It makes one wonder why someone hasn’t done a book or a documentary on Romeo Gigli. His story has all the ingredients of a blockbuster mini-series.
His star ascended in the early 1990s, when Mr. Gigli’s romantic yet rigorous designs provided an antidote to the high-octane excess of the ’80s. But it all too quickly imploded in a haze of legal acrimony, the cautionary tale of unbounded creativity vanquished by brute commerce. More than 25 years have passed since he was the toast of fashion week. So where is Romeo Gigli these days?
The Magic of Gigli
Mr. Gigli, 74, cuts a distinctive figure in clothes of his own design. When I spotted him in Marrakesh’s labyrinthine pink medina, where tourists shop for rugs, silver and pottery amid languid cats and scooting motorbikes, he was wearing an exquisitely fitted navy jacket over a waistcoat and his reinterpretation of traditional Moroccan harem pants, the proportions rejigged and made up in fine Italian wool. Those garments will form part of the collection he’ll create for a shop at Riad Romeo, the boutique hotel and creative space he is to open here in March.
Visitors to Riad Romeo will be struck by Mr. Gigli’s flair for drawing on divergent influences to create something familiar yet new. A childhood steeped in reading his father’s antiquarian books and travels to places like Pompeii is an enduring influence. When his parents died months apart when he was just 18, he traveled “to forget,” he said. “I traveled for a long time.”
Collecting textiles on visits to India and Morocco, he developed a personal style that led to studying fashion. In 1985, Browns in London and Joyce in Hong Kong bought his first 25-piece collection. His spring 1990 debut in Paris memorably included the model Kirsten Owen in a skirt formed from hundreds of clinking Venetian glass drops.
Mr. Gigli’s clothes offered an alternative point of view to 1980s power suits and shoulder pads. He was concerned with “perfecting the shape,” wrapped tops balanced by voluminous draped skirts or carrot pants — roomy shapes that retained a sensual sense of the body. His tailoring was also covetable: coats with a hint of Poiret draped over the shoulders like the petals of a tulip, tailored shawl collar jackets and slim pants. The fashion press called him a minimalist master. The Los Angeles Times once wrote that Mr. Gigli single-handedly changed the course of fashion.
“For me, it was so simple,” he said. “It was my vision. When they said to me, ‘You started a revolution,’ I didn’t realize that. I simply did my vision of women.”
At the peak of his career, there were stores worldwide and lucrative perfume licenses. Mr. Gigli’s face lit up when he spoke of the stores, like the one on the then-unfashionable Corso Como in Milan. Spaces where he insisted on bringing in other designers, like John Galliano and Martin Margiela, where he encouraged creatives to show their art and ceramics and where Malcolm McLaren introduced “Waltz Darling,” his seminal album about vogueing.
Then it all ended. According to Mr. Gigli, he retained control of his company only after a protracted battle with his business partners in 1991. He lost a string of properties and was left with paralyzing debt, followed by further legal woes when, in 1999, he sold a 65 percent share of the company to the Italian clothing manufacturer Ittierre. By the early 2000s, the company was sold again, and for a time, he could no longer use his own name for design projects.
“I lost all the money, the company, my name, everything …,” he said. “It was a nightmare, but I survived.”
From Milan to Marrakesh
Twenty years ago, to spend vacations, Mr. Gigli and his wife, Lara Aragno, bought a riad, or traditional Moroccan house with an interior courtyard, in the quiet lanes behind the main souk in Marrakesh. Mr. Gigli had first visited Morocco in 1967.
“I have always loved the people and the energy here,” he said. During the pandemic, they moved, with their daughter, Diletta, from Milan to Marrakesh, embarking on three years of renovations to transform the riad into an intimate maison d’hôte.
Following new Moroccan safety laws, they completely rebuilt the structure, as designed by Mr. Gigli. With its shimmering Zellige mosaics, grand Roman arches and zigzagging iron metalwork, the riad has a distinctly Byzantine-meets-Modernist air. Custom-made floor tiles and hand-carved headboards are reimagined with new colors, proportions and graphics.
An elegant ground-floor salon has glazed wooden doors that interpret Moroccan geometric designs in large angular planes of beveled glass. Across the riad, custom light fittings reference Art Deco and midcentury Modernism.
Mr. Gigli designed and followed the production with artisans in the local medina. “I created different spaces, which I believe can inspire meditation and concentration for creative work,” he said. “I also want to use this space to showcase local young artists and designers.”
Ms. Aragno, who was director of the fashion department of the IED design school in Rome from 2006 to 2014, and Diletta, an entrepreneur working with an events management company in Morocco, will oversee Riad Romeo’s day-to-day operations. A passionate cook, Ms. Aragno plans to create a daily menu of Italian and Moroccan food.
Destruction and Creation
Of course it’s gratifying to be a fashion icon, but one gets the sense that these days Mr. Gigli prefers to focus squarely on the future.
He became most animated when speaking of the “happenings” he wants to create at Riad Romeo, “like the ones I used to have at my Milan or New York stores,” he said. “An artist one week, a ceramist the next — a constant mixture. It’s what I like.”
So far, he has refused requests to do a monograph on his work. “I don’t like fashion books,” he said, wincing. “I would want a book to be about my vision.”
Riad Romeo may be a showcase for it.
