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Once again, Giorgio Gucci attends the Habano Festival, now in its fifteenth edition, and he cashes in on this new contact with our magazine’s readership to anticipate some of his company’s openings in Cuba.

Giorgio Gucci, fashion designer and guru of top-class feminine apparels, cherishes a number of anecdotes linked to his traditional contributions to the Habano Festival, like a memorable auction in which a lady talked her husband into bidding for a pricier humidor because he wanted to keep the Giorgio G leather purse tacked on it.

A representative of his family’s third generation, he came up with this brand for Cuba that, with a baker’s dozen boutiques on the island nation, offers top-of-the-line products at somewhat affordable prices –cheaper than in other parts of the world due to the features of the local market– with great acclaim among those who have a flair for good taste.

That’s why the company has been likened to Habanos over the past ten years, since they both sell deluxe items. Anyway, for Giorgio, “it all about sharing pleasures because people can wear clothes I design with Cuban cigars, the best in the world,” he says. And he beams, “I like puffing on them every once in a while.”

Charismatic and likeable as he tips a cigar among his fingers, he paces around the Comodoro Hotel’s store, jawing it up with clerks and customers who can’t believe their eyes as they can see the creator of purses, clothes and footwear in the flesh. 

With the good humor of any Italian, he admits that “forging ties with customers is no doubt the best way of advertising. I like to hear what they have to say and explain to them the details and the decorations, the motifs that tell my creations from others, and convey that passion to the saleswomen who, as a matter of fact, I’m very appreciative of, as well as of the companies that buy my products and have allowed me to set up shop in Cuba.”

Giorgio seems to have struck a chord of inspiration as he goes on to say: “There’s an assortment of colors in Cuba’s nature, especially in flowers, coupled with the exceptional female beauty, and believe me, le femmes are by far the best product you can possibly find.”

As the artist he is, Giorgio has cozied up with local creators like Eduardo Roca «Choco», Nelson Dominguez, or pianist Frank Fernandez, whose music “generates an atmosphere of Cuba that encourages me to work.” To make his case, Giorgio refers to some products related to the artworks of fellow Italian painter Antonio Corpora that he sells in his stores.

In addition to Florence –one of the cradles of the Italian and universal arts– Giorgio’s company is based in Rome and Barcelona, packed with a breed of young designers who have graduated from local art schools and with whom “we develop ideas and work with, and that exchange plays a role in the end product.”

At the end of the conversation, Giorgio announces the upcoming inauguration of a boutique at the Palacio de la Artesania in Old Havana, a confirmation that his presence in the country, where he owns roughly 30 outlets in the nation’s capital and in a number of tourist attractions in Santiago de Cuba, Holguin, Trinidad and Varadero.