The House of Gucci

by Sara G Forden

  Maurizio sat at his desk listening as the tape recorder played her sharp voice churning out the hate-filled words.

  Maurizio, I am not going to give you a minute of peace. Don’t make up excuses, saying they wouldn’t let you come visit me…my little darlings risked losing their mother and my mother risked losing her only daughter. You hoped…. You tried to crush me, but you couldn’t. Now I have looked death in the face…. You drive around in a Ferrari, which you bought secretly because you had to appear to have no money, while here in the house the white couches have turned beige, the parquet has a hole in it, the carpeting needs to be replaced, and the walls need to be restored—you know that Pompeian stucco crumbles with time! But there is no money! Everything for Signor Presidente, but what about the others?…Maurizio, you have reached the limit—even your own daughters don’t respect you and don’t want to see you anymore to better forget the trauma…. You are a painful appendage that we all want to forget…. Maurizio, the inferno for you is yet to come.

  Maurizio suddenly grabbed the tape recorder, tore the cassette out, and threw it across his office. He refused to listen to the rest and turned the cassette over to Franchini, who added it to his growing collection and advised Maurizio to hire a bodyguard. When he had calmed down, Maurizio decided to laugh it off. He didn’t want to live obsessed with Patrizia’s threats. That August he agreed to let Patrizia convalesce in Saint Moritz at her beloved L’Oiseau Bleu. She had a restful vacation—and renewed her claim to the estate.

  “Desidero avere per sempre Oiseau Bleu,” she penned in her diary; “I want my Oiseau Bleu forever.”

  Despite the generous revision in the terms of their agreement, true to her promise, Patrizia went to the press. She invited journalists to her Galleria Passarella apartment for interviews in which she smeared Maurizio as a businessman, husband, and father. Maurizio believed even the rumors that he had had homosexual affairs—by all accounts unfounded—could be traced back to Patrizia.

  She appeared on a leading women’s talk show, Harem, caked in makeup and dripping with jewels. She sat on the plump studio couch and complained to the audience that Maurizio Gucci had tried to wash his hands of her “with a plate of lentils,” namely, the Milan penthouse, the New York apartment, and 4 billion lire.

  “Something that is already mine shouldn’t be part of the agreement,” she protested as the other guests, not to mention viewers around the country, watched her, dumbfounded. “I have to think about our daughters, who find themselves without a future…. I must fight for the girls; if their father wants to go off on his Creole for six months at a time, well, let him go.”

  IN THE FALL OF 1993, when Patrizia realized that Maurizio risked losing control of the company, she intervened on his behalf; not because she wanted to help him, she explained later, but to save the Gucci company for his daughters. She said she acted as an intermediary with Investcorp, trying in vain—as so many others had—to persuade Maurizio to accept an honorary chairmanship and step back from management control. She tried to help him find money to get his shares back and claimed she sent the lawyer, Piero Giuseppe Parodi, who put Maurizio in touch with Zorzi for the last-minute financing that saved his Gucci shares from auction. When Maurizio lost his battle with Investcorp and was forced to sell his 50 percent stake in Gucci, Patrizia took it as a personal blow.

  “Are you crazy?” she screamed at him. “That is the most demented thing you could have done!”

  The loss of Gucci became another festering wound.

  “For her, Gucci represented everything,” said her former friend Pina Auriemma years later. “It was money, it was power, it was an identity for her and the girls.”

  15

  PARADEISOS

  Reaching over to the night table, Maurizio switched off the alarm clock before it sounded. Paola murmured and nuzzled her face deeper into the pillow. Maurizio put down the clock and looked across the room, past two green couches arranged intimately in front of the gas-burning fireplace to the large picture window that spanned the entire wall. The morning light had started to creep in softly through the blinds and gold silk drapes, which they always left slightly open in order to see the plant-covered balcony and garden below. Peacocks’ screeching filtered up from the Invernizzi garden next door, while sounds of traffic starting to fill Corso Venezia were barely audible. Maurizio liked the sense of peace the apartment gave him, even though it was located in the heart of downtown Milan, a stone’s throw from the elegant shops on Via Monte Napoleone and Via della Spiga that had once been the backdrop for the dream of his life.

  For the first few months after he sold his stake in Gucci, Maurizio had lived in a daze, a state of shock, as though someone has died. He blamed Investcorp for not giving him enough time to achieve the turnaround, Dawn Mello for not sticking to his design concept, De Sole for betraying him. He felt he had been outmaneuvered.

  “The big issue for Maurizio was that of betraying his father,” said Paola, later. “His fear was of betraying all the work that had been done before him and that caused him a lot of anguish,” she recalled. “Once he realized he had no choice but to sell, he relaxed. It was out of his hands.”

  With his debts paid off and more than $100 million left in the bank from the sale of his Gucci shares, for the first time in his life Maurizio Gucci had no battles to fight.

  After the sale, Maurizio bought a bicycle, which he stored in the basement of the Corso Venezia building. Then he vanished from Milan. He sailed the Creole back to Saint-Tropez for the Nioularge, then he holed up by himself in Saint Moritz. As the weeks passed, the fog and depression started to lift. He realized that a huge burden had been taken from him.

  “For the first time in his life, he could decide what he wanted to do for his own future,” said Paola. “Maurizio hadn’t had a carefree childhood; he had always felt the pressure of his name and all that the name brought with it. His father had thrown a lot at him and Maurizio had a strong sense that he was supposed to do what was ‘right.’ Then there was the jealousy of his cousins because he had inherited fifty percent without really doing anything, while it was their father who had built the Gucci name.”

  In early 1994, he came back to Milan, picked up his bicycle, and rode it back and forth from his Corso Venezia apartment to Fabio Franchini’s offices on the other side of town, where he started drafting his ideas for new business ventures. “He didn’t have anyplace to go and so he came here,” recalled Franchini. “At eight o’clock in the morning, he was already here, a churning volcano of ideas.”

  During one of his early-morning rides, Maurizio stopped off in Piazza San Fedele. On that chilly, gray morning in early February 1994, Gucci’s communications director, Pilar Crespi, had arrived early at the company’s San Fedele headquarters and walked up the carpeted stairs to her second-floor office long before anyone else reported for work. As Crespi moved around her desk, sorting through piles of glossy fashion magazines, her chiseled features pulled tight in concentration, something suddenly caught her eye outside her window. Below, the recently cleaned chalky facades of the church and surrounding buildings in Piazza San Fedele shimmered in the pale, early-morning light, looking like a ghostly opera stage set in nearby La Scala. Crespi put down her papers and moved to one side of the window to peer out without being seen. A silent, lone figure sat on one of the marble benches opposite the building, staring up at Gucci’s offices. The man was wrapped in a camel overcoat, his dark blond hair just brushing his collar. His figure blended so well into the surrounding stone and marble that she almost didn’t see him at first, but a familiar movement caught her eye as he brought one hand up to push his glasses higher on his nose. Crespi gasped—Maurizio Gucci sat looking up at the building. She hadn’t seen him for nearly a year. For weeks before the sale he had been remote and inaccessible; after the sale he had dropped entirely out of sight. She watched him as he slowly scanned the Gucci building, as though he were trying to visualize what was going on inside. As she watched him si
tting there, a wave of sorrow swept over Crespi. She thought about how patient and generous he had been with her in the beginning, letting her postpone her starting date until her son had finished school in New York and she could arrange a move to Milan. She recalled how energetic and enthusiastic he was—until desperation transformed him into a paranoid and unpredictable employer.

  “There was an expression of such sadness on his face,” Crespi said later. “San Fedele had been his dream. He just sat there and looked up.”

  “I am my own chairman now,” Maurizio said later to Paola. He founded a new company, Viersee Italia, and rented offices opposite the park in Via Palestro, a few paces from their home. Paula helped him furnish the rooms with bright wallpaper and colorful Chinese lacquered wood pieces, and Antonietta gave him amulets and powders to ward off Patrizia’s evil spells. He knew Paola frowned on his superstitions, but he liked Antonietta; she reassured him and gave him good advice. He turned to her the way other men might seek out a financial analyst or psychologist.

  Maurizio earmarked $10 million and gave himself a year to develop new investment prospects in any sector but fashion. Particularly interested in tourism, Maurizio started looking at several projects. First, he had been asked to help sponsor a port for historic boats in Palma de Mallorca, the Spanish harbor where he kept the Creole. He also sent a team of scouts to Korea and Cambodia to explore new tourism prospects there. In addition, he thought about opening a chain of small luxury inns in picturesque European cities, and invested 60,000 Swiss francs—less than $50,000—in a hotel in Crans-Montana, the Swiss skiing resort. The hotel, a prototype for a larger chain, featured pinball games and other activities in the lobby, including slot machines.

  “He was studying things very carefully,” said Liliana, who continued as his secretary after Maurizio left Gucci. “He wasn’t just throwing money at things the way he did at Gucci. Before taking on a new project, we worked very hard. He had finally grown up.”

  Maurizio’s old charm and enthusiasm crept back. For the first time in his life, he lived for himself. He bought clothes for his new role, leaving the gray CEO suits in the closet unless he had a special business meeting. Cotton twill pants, corduroys, and sports shirts became his new uniform. His ties peeked out from under cashmere sweaters instead of jackets. Even though he had lost his company, he strove to hold on to his bella figura—Maurizio had the right style for every occasion. He loved doing simple things and when he jogged along the shady paths of the Giardini Pubblici, he did it with U.S.-bought running gear. When he rode his bike around town, he had the perfect touring bike and the right casual apparel. Maurizio also tried to spend more time with Alessandra and Allegra, though Patrizia still made it difficult for him to see them, especially when Paola was around.

  Remembering how tightfisted his own father had been about giving him spending money, in June 1994 Maurizio gave Alessandra 150 million lire (about $93,000) for her eighteenth birthday, saying that the money was for her to manage, and should also cover the cost of her debutante party.

  “I want you to be responsible for the money and to manage it as you like—you can choose to throw a big party or a small one, depending on how you want to spend your money,” Maurizio said to his oldest daughter. Despite Maurizio’s wishes, Patrizia immediately took over the party planning—and arranged plastic surgery for herself and her daughter “in order to look our best for the event.” Patrizia had her nose done; Alessandra, her breasts.

  The night of September 16, some four hundred guests made their way up the candlelit drive to Villa Borromeo di Cassano d’Adda outside Milan, which Patrizia had rented for the evening. The champagne continued to flow after a sumptuous dinner as the band tuned up and the guests squealed in delight to discover that the musicians were none other than the popular Gipsy Kings—whom Patrizia had hired at an exorbitant cost to surprise Alessandra.

  Maurizio had failed to show up and Alessandra’s godfather, Giovanni Valcavi, greeted the guests alongside Patrizia and Alessandra. During dinner, Patrizia turned to Cosimo Auletta, the lawyer who had handled her divorce settlement and was seated at the same table with her.

  “Avvocato,” she said coyly as she seethed inside over Maurizio’s absence, “what would happen if I decided to teach Maurizio a lesson?”

  “What do you mean, ‘teach Maurizio a lesson’?” the startled lawyer replied.

  “I mean, what would happen to me if I got rid of him?” Patrizia specified more directly, batting her dark, mascara-covered eyelashes.

  “I don’t even want to joke about such a thing,” muttered the shocked Auletta, who changed the subject. When she asked him the same thing a month later in his office, Auletta refused to represent her anymore. He wrote her a letter inviting her to stop such discourse and reported the conversations to Franchini and Patrizia’s mother.

  Several days after the party, Maurizio called Alessandra into his Via Palestro office. The bank had called to tell him her new bank account was 50 million lire overdrawn (about $30,000).

  “Alessandra,” Maurizio said sternly. “The bank tells me your account is overdrawn by fifty million lire. I don’t intend to cover this amount and I want an explanation as to where the money went!”

  Alessandra shifted uncomfortably under her father’s gaze.

  “I’m sorry, Papà, I know I have let you down,” she said in a halting voice. “I don’t know what it all went for; you know Mamma took over all the arrangements. I promise I will go over all the accounting. I promise it won’t happen again.”

  When Alessandra came back with the accounts, it became clear that in addition to checks paid to the caterers and other services for the party, Patrizia had spent 43 million lire ($27,000) of Alessandra’s money that couldn’t be accounted for. Maurizio, exasperated, finally paid off the account. The financial lesson had failed.

  On November 19, 1994, Maurizio’s divorce from Patrizia became official. That Friday, he went home at lunchtime to surprise Paola, greeting her in the living room with a big smile and two martinis in his hands when she came home.

  “Paola, starting today I am a free man!” he said as they clinked glasses and kissed. A month earlier, Paola had received her divorce from Colombo. Maurizio finally felt he could rebuild his life, free from the personal and business problems that had so absorbed him up to then. He ordered Patrizia to stop using the Gucci name and started the paperwork to seek custody of the two girls. According to those closest to him, Maurizio didn’t want to remarry. However, he did ask Franchini to look into a relationship contract for Paola. Paola, of a different mind, told friends she and Maurizio were planning a Christmas wedding in the snow at Saint Moritz with a horse-drawn sleigh piled high with furs. That news flew back to Patrizia, who worried they might have a child together.

  Patrizia vented her fury in a new project—a five-hundred-page manuscript, part fact, part fiction, called Gucci vs. Gucci, that she had started after Maurizio lost the company. She called her friend Pina to come up from Naples to help her finish the imaginative chronicle of her experiences in the Gucci family. Pina had grown destitute following the failure of a clothing boutique she had opened with a friend and was glad to flee Naples and her mounting debts. She confessed to Patrizia she had stolen 50 million lire, or about $30,000, from the cash box in her nephew’s business where she had helped out for a time, and was eager to get out of town. Patrizia offered to put her up in a Milan hotel, but didn’t invite her to stay in the house—Silvana and the girls didn’t like Pina, finding her vulgar and unclean.

  MAURIZIO SLIPPED QUIETLY out of bed so as not to wake Paola. He felt rested after spending a quiet weekend at home in Milan instead of going to Saint Moritz as they had originally planned. Charly had visited his father, leaving Maurizio and Paola to themselves. Maurizio had just returned Wednesday from New York, where he had settled an old debt with Citicorp that was still hanging over his head from his embattled days at Gucci. Every reminder of the trauma he had been through made Maurizio feel fatig
ued and depressed all over again.

  That Friday, just before noon, Maurizio had decided he was too tired to make the three-hour drive to Saint Moritz. He called Paola, who canceled an appointment with the upholstery man in Saint Moritz, while Liliana notified the household staff in Saint Moritz and Milan of the change in plans. Most upper-class Milan families rarely spend weekends in the city, heading instead for the nearby Alps in the winter and the Ligurian seaside in the summer. Maurizio—in his new appreciation of a simpler life—enjoyed a weekend in Milan from time to time. As he left the office that Friday, his desk covered with a creative disarray of papers, pamphlets, and notes about his new projects, he taped his door closed with a note to the cleaning lady, asking her not to touch anything.

  On Sunday, after sleeping late and enjoying a lazy breakfast on the terrace, Maurizio and Paola visited the antiques market in the Navigli neighborhood along the two canals that lead into the city, where once a month the sidewalks are filled with antiques dealers selling their wares. Maurizio’s only disappointment that weekend was that he hadn’t been able to see his daughters.

  He had met Alessandra briefly on Friday at the driving school where she had gone to take her driver’s test. The next day she called him elatedly to say she had passed.

  “Fantastic!” Maurizio responded on the phone. “Next weekend, we’ll go to Saint Moritz together, just you and me.” That was the last time she spoke to her father.