Our story
Determination, vision, courage and ideas. These are the choices that
become the story of a lifetime, that of Paolo Pecchioli, born in 1941,
Florentine entrepreneur and stylist, founder of GERARD, an Italian brand
with a fictional name, which in a short time is known around the world,
marking the stylistic avant-gardes of fashion for over thirty years:
GERARD unwittingly introduces pret a porter, breaking all the patterns
and conventions of making fashion until that time.
When Paolo Pecchioli
started working at Matucci’s in Florence, he was 13 years old. First in
the warehouse, then in the shop windows .. and then as a salesman: he
took the measurements for the tailored clothing. A bespoke training
school that lasted 17 years and inspired him in 1969 to open his first
GERARD store in Via Calimala, Florence.
These are the formidable 70s,
years of turmoil, revolution and social mutation .. GERARD was born
between freedom and desires: a transgressive, alternative, avant-garde
brand … trending with the younger generation and reaching beyond,
drawing the attention of journalists, stars and artists.
A real concept
store of alternative culture. A few years later, he opens JEFF in Via
Roma, Florence, and then in 1979 he opens GERARD in Via Durini, Milan,
quickly becoming a reference point in the fashion worlds of music and
cinema. In 1980 GERARD lands in Japan… the first GERAMODA store in
Tokyo.
The combination of Paolo’s know-how and refined Japanese
techniques will lead to the opening of another 5 stores in a short time
between Kyoto and Karuizawa. Florence’s historic P.za
Signoria was host to Gerard from 1981, a multi-brand store that also
discovers emerging talents such as Stone Island, Thierry Mugler, Dirk
Bikkembergs, Romeo Gigli and Marc Jacobs.
The real challenge came in
2013: the year in which GERARD became exclusively a single-brand store.
In the splendid new setting of Via de ‘Sassetti, Firenze. Giulia
Pecchioli, inspired and contaminated by over 40 years of travel and
research in the world together with her father Paolo, creates and
designs the GERARD collections for men, women and children. Today’s
GERARD collections contain the same DNA and creativity as always.
Fabrics from all over the world, washed and colored by hand, limited
editions, small and continuous capsule collections created in the family
run creative office in Florence, and made exclusively in Italy.