Romeo Gigli’s Marrakech Hotel Is the Designer’s Latest Creative Venture

MARRAKECH, Morocco– In Marrakech, Inshallah, Arabic for “if God is willing” or “everything happens for a reason,” is a phrase locals use a lot. This perhaps couldn’t be more true in the case of fashion legend Romeo Gigli’s career, which pivoted when his enthusiasm for the fast-paced Milan fashion scene faded and eventually made a new life for his family in Northern Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Just as the golden hour has descended atop the Medina of Marrakech, Gigli walks into a busy Berber fusion restaurant called Black Chich. His gray hair is gathered in a bun and he’s donning his signature low-crotch ultra-tailored harem trousers.

With the ease of a local, he guides me through the dusty, narrow streets filled with honking bicycles, wagons full of merchandise and past a carpet purveyor sitting outside his shop and whom he greets warmly. In an almost hidden corner of the Medina, we arrive to the aqua blue door of Riad Romeo, his luxury boutique hotel, much of which he designed himself and which serves as a vestige of his fashion past and his future in design.

The Gigli family — his wife, fashion veteran Lara Aragno, daughter Diletta — forayed into hospitality by chance, starting with their purchase of an old riad in 2005, which was intended to be their permanent vacation getaway. When they decided to live in Marrakech permanently, they realized the bustling Medina wasn’t the right place for their five dogs and three cats. “Given my love for architecture and design, I decided to demolish the old riad and redesign a new, solid one with solid foundations,” he reflects. “We’re good here. When I arrived years ago, it seemed like the Middle Ages, it was beautiful. There were no cars, but donkeys and horses, a few bikes and everyone was wearing traditional clothing,” Gigli recalls, noting his first visit to Morocco in 1967.

He reminisces about how he was meant to take over his father’s antique book-dealing business, after the passing of both parents in his late teens. Travel, he recalls, changed the course of his life forever. “I was really shocked [from losing my parents], so I started traveling the world for 10 years and it changed my attitude,” he explains, pointing out how that chapter of his life was his first big pivot.

Upon entering the property, guests close the doors of the frenetic market behind them and enter an oasis bathed in white, vibrant yellows, calming blues and oranges. At first glance, a three-story-high mosaic fountain, which serves as the hotel’s centerpiece and designed by Gigli, captivates the gaze. Design elements are subtle, blending in seamlessly with the classic architecture and North African vibe that surrounds the hotel. Italian artist and designer Jacopo Foggini designed the lights dripping with strands of aqua blue, along with the yellow “octopus” chandeliers in the ground floor courtyard and the futuristic tables and chairs on the terrace.

To the side is a lounge where furniture and decor designs abound. Among them are two orange ribbed leather poufs, a retro couch, a glass table shaped like a puddle of water. Inside the bedrooms, traditional Moroccan wood carved beds have been transformed by pop colors like lime green and tangerine.

Elsewhere, tiles painted with black raindrops and mosaics made of zellige, a traditional glazed Moroccan tile, serve as elements of Gigli’s newfound world. After opening in 2024, he says, requests came pouring in for new pieces.

“People ask me how to buy these things, but I’m waiting to achieve good quality. Because here, time is something strange, you know? If I say to you, you can have that table in four weeks, it could be four weeks or eight or 10,” he comments.

Also on display are Aragno’s collection of ceramics made in the Atlas Mountains by craftspeople who work on the ground. “Each piece has its own imperfections, which is what I love very much. This sort of imperfection is characteristic of this country that also gives life to objects,” says Aragno, who worked for Giorgio Armani, Miu Miu and Romeo Gigli. The plan is to go online with the home decor, but “slowly,” she says.

Inside a small shop corner in the lobby, and to the delight of the fashion and design curious, there are about 20 limited-edition clothing items with a tag signed by Romeo Gigli. With a new logo in the form of an X, Giglio’s latest creations are on display: a bouclé jacket made of French wool and polyester, a shirt and pants outfit made of Italian cotton used for pajamas, a sinuous dress made of a French velvet and more.

“When you wear this one, it feels like flying. When you twist, it moves gracefully,” he said from the shop corner in his Riad Romeo. After over a decade of absence from the fashion scene, a cliché comes to mind when he showcases these rare pieces: “You can take the designer from fashion but you can’t take fashion from the designer.” Gigli says he’s keen on producing more pieces, but gradually. “We are focused on a small production of fashion pieces for women and men, which I hope we can soon put online,” he states.

In Milan, a fashion comeback by Romeo Gigli would be hot news, contends one of his biggest fans, Wait and See store founder Uberta Zambeletti. Even today, his vintage pieces are among the first to fly out of her shop. In September, Zambeletti celebrated the store’s 15th anniversary with a selection of Gigli’s archival pieces, in a nod to her roots and as a homage to the designer that sparked her love for fashion. The thought of Gigli producing ready-to-wear again, even on a small scale, is great news for the elite fashion community.

“There are millions of women who can’t wait. If you have loved him, you don’t unlove him ever, you can’t. You feel so unique with a Romeo Gigli piece,” she enthuses, recalling the depth in terms of materials and patterns that Gigli incorporates into every design. “They are imbued with such flavor and sound and I can hear bedouins and the sun scorching my skin and smell spices. These things happen when I look at anything he does.”

Those who worked with Gigli are also looking forward to seeing this next chapter unfold.

“I think it’s wonderful that he can channel all those decades of experience, knowledge, culture, learning and produce a handful of pieces purely as a personal exercise. It’s a kind of meditation on a really high level of aesthetic,” said Ian Phin, who served as the head print designer at Romeo Gigli from 1992 to 1998. In 2002, Phin went on to start fashion brand Rohka with his wife Maria Restrepo Jaramillo, who also worked with Gigli on his fashion design team. “I knew Romeo in a moment in which we ran at full speed. To meet Romeo now, in a massive garden surrounded by his family dogs, cats and even a tortoise, talking about his riad, making chairs, tables, carpets, fountains… I saw a creator complete within his surroundings,” Phin adds.

Gigli made a splash on the New York City scene during the heyday of Studio 54 and where he started his career with Piero Dimitri, an Italian-born designer. Gigli eventually launched his own brand in 1983 and conceived looks with architectural shapes combined with romantic, Renaissance touches, dashes of punk and ethnic inspirations that were all powerfully influential in the ’80s. The label has suffered through several changes of ownership, beginning with a bitter dispute in the early ’90s with former partners Carla Sozzani and Donato Maino. Gigli was left empty-handed after the now-defunct IT Holding, which owned the designer’s namesake brand, sold the Gigli business, in a complicated deal involving the separation of the company and the license for the brand, to the Luxembourg-based company Euroholding, Italian real estate company Immobiliare Esse and Mood Srl.

It led to the designer being shouldered out of fashion in 2004, and his brand being produced without his creative input. For fall 2009, Gigli launched the short-lived Io Ipse Idem line, which was shuttered after financial backers pulled the plug, followed in 2010 by the XII XII XLIX par Romeo Gigli — the numerals stand for his birth date of Dec. 12, 1949. In 2012, Gigli made a comeback in a collaboration with influential retailer Joyce, and in February 2017, Gigli presented a collection designed for the Italian brand Eggs.

Earlier this year, the family hosted Yonas Tadesse, an artist and photographer, as well as Kevo Abbra, a creative stylist, in the Riad Romeo residency. Both exhibited their exploration of the cultural exchange that emanated from African coastal trade at the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair. The latter is the result of the growing community of new generation expats in Marrakech drawn to the city for its creative possibilities. Their daughter Diletta is also thriving. An equestrian who is producing her own line of sustainable equestrian gear, she is also an event organizer collaborating with Marrakech-based boutique Souk and working with design-forward brands.

“It’s really booming here,” Aragno says, when discussing new names like ceramics and textile brand Lrnce and fashion atelier Marrakshi Life, which have flourished over the past few years. “Here, you can experiment freely, you have the hands, you have the people available, you have the time to do all this. So it’s important. And then this community is a stimulus, because they have different ideas, different stories, different reasons why I’m here, which is very nice,” she adds.

The family has made their home in a villa on the edge of a verdant golf course, dotted with palms and where time seems to stand still. Gigli says his wife mentioned that she wants to live in Marrakech forever. She, too, agrees that they have finally achieved the ultimate slow luxury of being able to enjoy life — something that through their many projects the locals have taught them well, she continues.

“They have a saying here, she says, ‘You have the watch, we have the time.’”