This Italian Trend Designer Turned His Marrakech Residence Right into a Resort—and It is a Beautiful Mixture of Types

Although he’s been out of the style trade for a number of a long time, Romeo Gigli has reentered the dialog. The garments that made him one of many largest names within the Eighties—cocoon-shaped coats; tulip skirts—are discovering new life on the posh classic market.

In the meantime, the Milanese designer nonetheless experiments with colour and type, however on a bigger scale. Final yr, he opened Riad Romeo, a five-room lodge within the Marrakech medina. Previously his household trip house, the property is a love letter to the town.

Gigli first visited Marrakech in 1967. “I used to be 17, and it was my first outing of Europe,” he says. “Morocco has been and can at all times be, for me, a mild nation, from its local weather to the hospitality of its folks.”

On the time, he was finding out structure, however on return journeys all through the Seventies to Marrakech, as nicely to locations like China and India, he found new passions, for artwork, jewellery, and the normal clothes he encountered. “The entire pictures I recorded in my reminiscence shaped a artistic melting pot,” he says. He launched his first assortment in 1984 and debuted at Paris Trend Week in 1989.

By the top of the 90s, he had retreated from the style world, however by no means forgot his love of Marrakech and continued to go to. “All my life, I used to be pondering, ‘Perhaps after I’m an outdated man, Marrakech could be good place to spend the remainder of my life,’ ” he says.

He and his spouse, Lara Aragno—who labored for Giorgio Armani and Prada for a number of a long time and can be a ceramist and jeweler—bought the property that will develop into Riad Romeo 21 years in the past. They visited the town ceaselessly; through the pandemic, the couple, together with their daughter, Diletta Gigli (who now manages the lodge), moved there from Milan and commenced a three-year renovation.

Gigli tapped Italian architect Giacomo Allievi for the structural improve. Inside, each element—from the intricately sculpted plaster doorways to the hand-carved headboards and the inlaid tables within the eating space—was chosen by Gigli and crafted by artisans, lots of them Moroccan. The three visitor rooms and two suites function conventional Moroccan designs, comparable to zellige-tiled showers and handwoven cotton bedspreads made in Rabat.

Gigli additionally labored with Italian artist and designer Jacopo Foggini, who created the octopus-shaped yellow chandeliers within the courtyard and the chairs and tables on the terrace. The pair additionally collaborated on an orange-and-gold dewdrop set up over the stairway and the glimmering waterfall sculpture within the three-story courtyard.

Visitors hoping to take a chunk of Gigli’s world house can browse the lodge’s boutique, which has a number of his designs, together with djellabas (widespread North African robes) and brocade jackets. It additionally carries leatherwork and ceramics by Aragno. Moreover, any customized piece within the riad will be made to order; it can come numbered and signed by Gigli.

Although the household is commonly round to supply recommendation, in addition they have a concierge crew to rearrange experiences in and across the metropolis, together with sidecar excursions and visits to Gigli’s favourite outlets within the medina. “The hope is that our company can uncover the actual Morocco,” says Gigli, who likes to flee to lesser-known corners of the nation, like Tetouan, a Mediterranean port city recognized for its craft traditions, and Asilah, on the Atlantic coast.

Although he’s not designing for the world stage, Gigli nonetheless sees his work on the riad as an extension of what he started a long time in the past. “Simply as I did in style, I’m making a gift for different folks,” he says. “It’s my angle: to make happiness.”

A model of this story first appeared within the November 2025 subject of Journey + Leisure underneath the headline “Out of Entire Material.”