Gucci welcomes first students to its École de l’Amour

Gucci has opened its École de l’Amour, an innovative education programme designed to perpetuate the skills associated with the house’s artisanal craft and production in Florence.

The Italian fashion house is offering various courses including Craftsmanship School, a six-month programme in the Gucci ArtLab, which aims to teach about product design and production process for leather goods. This course is open to high school graduates and/or unemployed people aged 18 to 26, who have a “passion for making things by hand”.

In October, it welcomed its first intake of 10 students who will are studying full time from Monday to Friday. The next enrolment will be March 2019.

Gucci also added that it is working on producing a parallel training course for students wishing to specialise in the craft and production of shoes.

Marco Bizzarri, president and chief executive of Gucci, said in statement: “The heritage of Gucci is made up of people and their knowledge. Training is the most powerful method and tool we have to enhance our people and our products.

“It is no coincidence that École de l'Amour was born from the Gucci ArtLab, which is the perfect expression of the corporate culture that we are building and developing: a place that promotes learning and the development of skills, a laboratory of ideas, an environment where we work with passion; indeed, I should really say, where we work with love."

Other courses include the Factory School, a bi-monthly programme in Gucci’s factories, which trains people to become ‘production operators’ that specialise in specific leather goods manufacturing operations. The factory school was launched in October 2017 and has so far enrolled nearly 60 students.

There is also an internal programme of technical courses to meet the specific training needs of Gucci employees working in different departments and in the Gucci factories, which forms part of the fashion house’s learning and development programme.

Each course is taught by a combination of specialist artisans and managers in the company, as well as retired former colleagues.

Gucci’s manufacturing base, including Gucci ArtLab, employs more than 2,400 people.

Images: courtesy of Gucci