Gucci’s latest sustainability move is playing out not in a lab-coated campus on the outskirts of a city, but inside a working tannery in the heart of Tuscany. By re-engineering an existing production site in San Miniato into a live materials test bed, the house is folding experimentation directly into its leather supply chain rather than treating innovation as an off-site pilot.
In San Miniato, a historic leather district where Gucci already operates its Marbella tannery, the brand has set up a dedicated centre for materials research, development and testing. The facility is structured to operate as a “tannery of the future,” where industrial-scale equipment is used to trial lower‑impact leather processes alongside next‑generation, plant‑based materials in real production conditions. Instead of separating R&D from manufacturing, Gucci is turning a core tannery into the nerve centre for how its future materials are designed, processed and validated.