The House of Gucci

by Sara G Forden

  By January 2000, Tom Ford was appointed creative director of Yves Saint Laurent, as expected, in addition to his duties at Gucci. The announcement came just in time for Ford to attend the YSL haute couture show in Paris and followed news the previous November that Gucci had appointed one of its rising young stars, thirty-six-year-old Gucci sales director Mark Lee, as the new managing director of Yves Saint Laurent Couture, as the company is now called. When Lee’s appointment was announced, many in the industry didn’t even know who the shy, soft-spoken Lee was. Gucci itself didn’t even have a prepared bio for him. Lee had worked at Saks Fifth Avenue, Valentino, Armani, and Jil Sander, before joining Gucci, and was well respected by his colleagues for his low-key, conscientious style. While Ford’s job will be to refresh YSL’s faded glory, Lee’s job will be to run the day-to-day business of the brand’s ready-to-wear, fragrances, and accessories, which includes overseeing some 187 licenses.

  As the quakes and tremors in the luxury goods business continue to turn established relationships upside down, two sharp young Americans have taken charge of two of the most visible—and previously sacred—jobs in French fashion. The next question in everyone’s mind was: who would Ford bring in to design the YSL ready-to-wear, or would he keep it for himself, and if so, would he continue designing for Gucci? Though on all counts a bright and talented young man who had brought a new perspective to the industry, one that melded fashion, design, lifestyle, and business into one overarching concept, could he really have it and do it all?

  Gucci had ridden the crest of the wave of consolidation sweeping the luxury goods industry and still had an active wish list of companies it would like to bring within its orbit. However, De Sole maintained that the real issue was still creativity, not size.

  “Tom and I look at our job as fixing and mending,” De Sole said. “We are really brand managers. When we look at a company, it’s not ‘Let’s buy it,’ but ‘What do we do with it?’ We aren’t investment bankers, after all.” Indeed, Ford and De Sole weren’t investment bankers and they didn’t come from the tough Florentine merchant stock that had engendered Gucci, but they brought their own brand of spirit, determination, and drive that continued to propel Gucci into stardom as an international enterprise.

  IN ITS EIGHTY-YEAR HISTORY, Gucci had plowed new ground at crucial moments. It gained attention both for the unprecedented litigious antics of its second and third generations as it drew back the curtain on the ups and downs of a privately held family business and as it logged achievements in the world of Italian luxury goods. In the 1950s, Aldo brought Gucci to New York, one of the first Italian names to land there. By the sixties and seventies, Gucci meant style and status. In the eighties, Maurizio invited a sophisticated financial partner into Gucci’s private share capital and signed off on a joint business plan. He was among the first in the industry to do this. In the early nineties, again leading the industry, Maurizio imported American design and marketing talent into the heart of European luxury by hiring Dawn Mello and Tom Ford. Steered by Investcorp in the late nineties, Gucci brought off one of the first and most successful IPOs ever staged in the fashion and luxury goods industry. By the end of the decade, with De Sole in control, Gucci first warned of the economic hardships coming to roil Asian markets and then weathered one of the fiercest takeover challenges in the business, winning against all odds with a previously untested takeover defense and a remark-able new partnership. Following the Gucci-LVMH battle, the European Community established community-wide regulations governing takeovers and tender offers, a project that had been in the works but never completed. Now as a new century rolls in, the Harvard Business School plans to conduct a case study of Gucci’s achievements.

  “I was interested in an Italian company that had wide appeal beyond an individual sector or country, a company in which there had been dramatic change and which had a broadly recognized consumer brand,” said Professor David Yoffie, who is heading up the study.

  Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina, “All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The Guccis’ own peculiar vintage unhappiness played out dramatically in boardrooms and courtrooms and newspaper headlines for the world to see. “The Gucci story is the perfect example of what a family should not do,” mused Severin Wunderman. “The amount of blood spilled was tragic, and a lesson in how not to end a dynasty.” What if things had turned out differently? If the Gucci family had been more united, would Gucci today be a quiet, predictable family firm happily churning out plastic-coated GG shopping bags with the red and green stripe or brown, bamboo-handled handbags? If Maurizio Gucci had achieved his vision—already radically different from that of his relatives—would Gucci be more like Hermès, a safe, respectable luxury firm with beautiful products and no fireworks? The Gucci family was mortified as each new blowup blazed across newspaper headlines. But who can say if their dysfunction and the attendant publicity didn’t help ignite that inexplicable magic that infused the Gucci name with desirability and style, raising the stakes of the business so high it ultimately tore the family apart? It was that magic, combined with the style and high quality of Gucci’s goods, that made Gucci products special in the customers’ eyes. After all, at its previous peak in the sixties and seventies, Gucci was still just selling black and brown handbags, Italian penny loafers, and status luggage. Today, despite all the magic Tom Ford works on the runway, in Hollywood and in Gucci’s glossy ad campaigns, black shoes and handbags are still the number one sellers in Gucci stores around the world.

  When asked where that magic came from in the past, Roberto Gucci answered without hesitation. “L’azienda era la famiglia e la famiglia era l’azienda! The company was the family and the family was the company! The issues that created the splits were company issues, not family issues,” mused Roberto, referring to clashes first over Paolo’s desire to create and license less expensive lines for younger buyers, and later to Maurizio’s ambitious mission to take Gucci upmarket and the sacrifices that entailed. “When you have a company where the managers and the family are one, then it is more difficult,” Roberto said. In a grotesque twist where blood ran thicker than company politics, Aldo Gucci had even tided his son Paolo over financially when the latter ran out of money after taking Gucci to court.

  While Gucci’s products became status symbols, the company and the family won the hearts of its workers, workers who remained loyal through the years despite the ups and downs of the market and family strife. “It was something that got into your blood bit by bit, like a drug,” said one longtime employee. “You began to understand the product, to know the artisans, and you began to see the potential and feel it inside you. You were proud to work for this company. It’s hard to explain. Either you believe in it or you don’t.”

  And the notion that there was a real flesh-and-blood Gucci family behind the signature luggage and handbags also captivated consumers.

  The Gucci story symbolizes the struggles faced by many families and individuals in Europe who have created and grown their own businesses. Now they face a classic catch-22: the price they must pay for their success is often letting go of their companies. As global competition accelerates industry consolidations, family and individual owners must surrender their autonomy by bringing in professional management, joining new business combinations, or selling out entirely, if they hope to survive financially.

  Others have contended with destiny more quietly. Valentino’s decision in 1998 to sell his Rome fashion house to Italian investment company HdP was accompanied by a few elegant tears during the press conference announcing the sale. Emanuel Ungaro’s decision to sell his Paris-based maison to Florence’s Ferragamo family in 1997 was sealed with warm handshakes. More recently, German designer Jil Sander stoically relinquished control to Italian label Prada in hopes of helping her business grow far beyond what she could achieve on her own. Rome’s Fendi family successfully kept the curtain down on its internal rifts while it artfully choreographed
the orbits of its circling suitors until agreeing to sell control to the alliance between Prada and LVMH.

  Gucci’s family wars evolved into a struggle between family management and professional, financial management as Maurizio failed to marry his vision for Gucci with a strong, pragmatic program. Sadly, the strong, pragmatic woman Maurizio did marry led him to his own violent fate. Driven by his vision but shackled by his temperament, Maurizio Gucci couldn’t do what ultimately needed to be done because he failed to lay a strong financial foundation for his dream. Nonetheless, he paved the way for Domenico De Sole and Tom Ford to move in their winning blend of business sense and style—and the right mix of power, ego, and image to bring the magic back. Following the transition, Gucci reappeared as a leader in the luxury goods market.

  In retrospect, the formula appears clear, but can it be copied? “I don’t think so,” said Suzy Menkes, the respected fashion critic of the International Herald Tribune. “There must be a magic ingredient. It’s like making a Hollywood film: you can have a great script and get all the right stars, but it’s not always a hit at the box office. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.”

  Now the Gucci family, well compensated, watches from the sidelines—with mixed sadness and bitterness—as the company that bears their name continues to dominate business and fashion news. Giorgio Gucci still lives in Rome with Maria Pia and travels frequently to Florence, where he acquired a respected Florentine leather goods manufacturer, Limberti, today one of Gucci’s suppliers, and where he works alongside his oldest son, Guccio. Guccio, who married into a wealthy textile manufacturing family from Prato, a medium-sized city near Florence, has been the most entrepreneurial of the fourth generation, trying to start first a leather goods business under his own name in 1990 and subsequently a collection of ties under the name Esperienza in 1997. He currently works full time with Limberti. Guccio has had various legal diatribes with the Gucci company over the years on issues ranging from the use of his name to real estate.

  The rest of the family, most of which lives in relative obscurity between Milan and Rome, finds Gucci’s continuing success hard to swallow. “Does the bitterness ever fade?” Alessandro, Giorgio’s youngest son, said to his mother, Orietta, once.

  Roberto Gucci still lives in Florence, where he founded his own leather goods business, House of Florence, just one month after Maurizio sold out to Investcorp. House of Florence produces handcrafted leather bags and accessories in the old tradition, operates a shop on Via Tornabuoni not far from Gucci’s, and has offices in Tokyo and Osaka as well. Roberto’s wife, Drusilla, and five of his six children—Cosimo, Filippo, Uberto, Domitilla, and Francesco—also work in the firm. The sixth, Maria-Olympia, is a nun. Roberto’s eyes still light up when he talks of handcrafted leather bags and the artisans that make them.

  “I do no more and no less than what I was taught—that is all I know how to do,” said Roberto Gucci. “I learned this trade and no one will take it from me and I will continue down this path.”

  The remaining Guccis have withdrawn into private life. Aldo and Bruna’s daughter, Patricia, who has homes in Palm Beach and California, often visits her mother, who lives quietly in Rome. Paolo’s youngest daughter, Patrizia, who worked for Gucci from 1987 to 1992 under Maurizio, lives on the outskirts of Florence in a tree-shaded villa where she pursues a career as a painter. Her older sister Elisabetta, the mother of two children, is a housewife.

  In Milan, Patrizia, having lost her appeal, passes the days in her San Vittore jail cell, trying to forget the past and unable to imagine a future. Her mother, Silvana, lives in the vast apartment on Corso Venezia and visits Patrizia regularly, still bringing her favorite meatloaf every Friday. In February 2000, prosecutor Carlo Nocerino quietly closed the file of reports that Silvana had hastened the death of her husband, Fernando Reggiani, and had known about, or assisted in, Patrizia’s plan to murder Maurizio. Now Silvana takes care of Patrizia and Maurizio’s daughters, checking in regularly with Alessandra, who is completing her third year of business school in Lugano, and Allegra, who lives in the Corso Venezia apartment with her grandmother and studies law in Milan—as her father did. Despite the cost, the girls have maintained Maurizio’s magnificent yacht, the Creole, which they enter in Saint-Tropez’s Nioularge each year in memory of their father. They have also enjoyed idyllic vacation cruises on the Creole and visits onboard from members of the European elite—Prince Albert of Monaco, for example. Today, Alessandra and Allegra think of their father as Peter Pan, the boy who never wanted to grow up.

  “He loved to play,” recalled Alessandra. “He and Allegra would play soccer for hours, then they would come home exhausted and start with the video games. He was passionate for Ferrari, Formula One, Michael Jackson, and stuffed animals. One Christmas he came home with a giant red parrot for me, rang the bell, and talked with a funny parrot voice. He always delivered his presents in person.”

  But he wasn’t always there for the girls.

  “For months at a time we would speak up to six times a day,” Alessandra recalled. “Then he would disappear and reemerge four or five months later. He could be alternately tender or like ice. But I was convinced that one day, despite all the fights, sooner or later he and my mother would get back together again.” The most important thing parents can do for their children, it is said, is love each other.

  A few blocks north of Corso Venezia, Paola Franchi lives with her son, Charly, in the twelfth-floor apartment deeded to her by her second husband. In a sumptuous living room decorated with plush upholstery, fine antiques, and hung with the famous green silk drapes she and Patrizia had argued about, pictures of Maurizio Gucci adorn every table and shelf.

  Perhaps of all the people Maurizio left behind, the one whose life is emptiest without him is Luigi Pirovano, his faithful driver. Now retired and a widower, Luigi spends his days retracing his memories of Maurizio. Each day he drives into Milan from his home in Monza in the city’s northern suburbs and tours their old haunts—the tenth-floor apartment on Corso Monforte where Maurizio and Rodolfo lived; and Via Monte Napoleone, where in 1951 Rodolfo opened Milan’s original Gucci store, still operating up the street from Gucci’s sleek new flagship store. Luigi drives past the Bonaparte residence in Via Cusani where Maurizio once lived and down Via Palestro, where on sunny days he parks to walk along the sandy paths of the Giardini Pubblici opposite the windows where Maurizio had his office and the doorway where he died. Four years passed before Luigi could bring himself to lunch at Bebel’s, a family-style trattoria that served Maurizio’s favorite fiorentina steaks. Maurizio brought Alessandra and Allegra here for lunch the week before he was shot.

  As he ate and chatted with the owners at Bebel’s, Luigi pushed his tortoiseshell glasses higher up on his nose, just as Maurizio used to do with his own glasses. In fact, Luigi’s were Maurizio’s glasses. A river of memories cascaded through Luigi’s head—recollections of Maurizio as a boy, his first car, the early sweethearts, his relationship with Patrizia, the beginning of the troubles, il periodo sbagliato. There were times when Luigi brought a feverish Maurizio homemade chicken soup from his own kitchen, nursing his boss back to health in Maurizio’s lonely pied-à-terre; regular evenings spent sharing roast chicken Luigi would pick up at a local delicatessen; constant traveling—Florence, Saint Moritz, Monte Carlo, Rome, and beyond.

  “Maurizio was alone. Completely, entirely, fundamentally alone. For him there was only Luigi. Night after night I left my wife and my son to go to him,” Luigi recalled. “It was too much, too much to ask of a person—but who wants to hear these things?”

  At Maurizio’s funeral, Luigi sobbed uncontrollably. His son looked accusingly at his father and said, “Papà, you didn’t cry like that when Mamma died.”

  Luigi still goes to Maurizio regularly, visiting his tomb in the little Swiss cemetery on the hill of Suvretta, just below the Saint Moritz estate he so loved and the place where Patrizia and the girls decided he should be buried. Luigi a
lso visits Rodolfo, who is buried with the rest of his family—Aldo, Vasco, Rodolfo, Alessandra, Grimalda, Guccio, and Aida—in the cemetery of Soffiano, just outside Florence.

  Back in Florence, in his high-ceilinged office overlooking the Arno, Roberto still blames Maurizio for the loss of Gucci and he points a finger at Patrizia without ever mentioning her name. It is outsiders marrying into a family, according to Roberto, who disrupt the subtle balance of power the family has carefully achieved. “What is the spark that lights the fire of ambition, the fire that burns out reason, moral principles, respect, and attentiveness, in the pursuit of unchecked riches? If one already has that ambition and beside him has one who blows the flicker into a flame—rather than dousing it with water—this is how!

  “The Guccis were a great family,” intones Roberto. “I ask forgiveness for all their mistakes—who doesn’t make mistakes? I don’t want to criticize their mistakes and I don’t want to accept them, but I can’t forget them. Life is a giant book with many pages. My father taught me to turn the page. As he used to say, ‘Turn the page! Cry if you must, but shoot!’”

  The Guccis were forced to turn the page when desire failed to keep step with reality. From the moment the family and the company split apart, the family set out on its bitter and tragic path, while the company began climbing from disarray to unprecedented success. Today, as Gucci develops its luxury goods group, the Gucci story continues to unfold as new players, captivated, commit themselves to perpetuating the magic. The challenge now is to move from hands-on management of a single brand to bringing along the new talent needed to handle multiple brands—while remembering that the Gucci legacy has a double edge.

  EPILOGUE