Just in time for PITTI UOMO in FLORENCE, Gucci re-opened its museum as GUCCI GARDEN, a hybrid that moves between exhibition space, boutique, and fine dining. Housed in the PALAZZO DELLA MERCANZIA, which dates to 1337, the space is an homage to legacy and artisanship, designed with the kind of luster and architectural grandeur luxury group labels are known for. In its former life, the space was more strictly a cultural institution as GUCCI MUSEO. This time around, the cultural heritage—opening with an exhibition by curator MARIA LUISA FRISA—is mixed freely with exclusive products, video installations, art, and food. That kind of hybridity should feel natural to fans of Gucci under CEO MARCO BIZZARRI and creative director ALESSANDRO MICHELE. The fusion effect, mixing time periods, art, pop culture, and fashion—what Michele has referred to as an alchemist approach—has been deftly executed by the brand, and it's good for business. It preserves legacy while at the same time opening awareness to the brand's recent category expansions: home goods and fragrance. The Garden's 50-seat restaurant is by chef MASSIMO BOTTURA, whose other restaurant, OSTERIA FRANCESCANA, has three MICHELIN stars. Gucci is clearly ambitious in expanding the brand's universe. How far will it continue?... Fashion needs to be where its customers are: shopping, at the gym, in the car, on their phones, traveling, home clicking through endless product pages. Luxury today is as much about being able to fluidly move through these spaces—from software abstractions to actual clothes and back again. Customers can sense how agile a company's operations are. For BOF Pro subscribers, LAUREN SHERMAN wrote a great summation of how fashion and apparel companies are making efforts to bring agility to their supply chains, some modeled after TOYOTA's famed "just-in-time" manufacturing from the mid-twentieth century. More recent efforts have come from the athletic industry, with the ADIDAS SPEEDFACTORY and NIKE's FLEX partnership cited as some of the more promising moves. Would love to see this kind of agility continue to grow in retail as well... In brief: ADRIAN CHENG's K11 invests in AI startup OBEN... WECHAT launches brand zones.