Kering launches Florence academy to preserve Italian craftsmanship

Kering put its Italian craft base on display in Florence with a new academy designed to keep luxury skills from fraying as the industry changes hands, tools and materials. The company said Italy is home to more than 13,700 of its employees, more than a quarter of a global workforce of 47,000, and that Italian brands make up more than half of its portfolio. That scale makes craftsmanship less of a branding flourish than a supply-chain necessity.

The Accademia per le Eccellenze was unveiled on April 15 at the historic Gucci Archive, timed to the third National Made in Italy Day and introduced by Kering chief executive Luca de Meo and Pomellato chief executive Sabina Belli, with Senator Adolfo Urso, Italy’s minister for enterprises and made in Italy, in attendance. The setting mattered. Florence is where luxury likes to tell its origin story, but Kering used the occasion to argue that the next chapter is about keeping those skills teachable, repairable and economically viable.

The academy will be based at Valore Italia in the MIND Milano Innovation District in Milan, and Kering says it is meant to work as an integrated, distributed learning ecosystem rather than a single school. Its curriculum will focus on ready-to-wear, menswear tailoring, leather goods and jewelry, while also adding technology, AI and new materials. First courses are scheduled to begin in September 2026, giving the project a clear runway before the next fashion season fully settles.

That breadth is what makes the initiative interesting. Kering is not simply preserving the romance of the atelier; it is trying to build a pipeline for the hard-to-replace métiers that keep a handbag from collapsing, a jacket from losing its line and a jewel from feeling generic. The company said the academy will consolidate training already developed inside Bottega Veneta, Brioni, Gucci and Pomellato, then extend it through partner institutions including Politecnico di Milano, Galdus and HModa. In other words, the goal is to stitch together the kind of expertise that luxury brands usually guard behind their own walls.

The timing also reflects Kering’s wider Italy strategy. The group said its transformation into a luxury-focused company began with stakes in Gucci Group in 1999 and Bottega Veneta in 2001, and Luca de Meo has been positioning craftsmanship, technology and supply-chain renewal at the center of that identity since taking the role in September 2025. If the academy works, it could become more than a heritage gesture. It would be a bid to treat Italian craftsmanship as an industrial asset, not just a story told in boutiques.