“Let me help you,” Santino said, catching me as I toppled. When I looked up into his green eyes, I was hooked. Extremely handsome, he resembled a young Frank Sinatra. He was also spontaneous and naughty and I never knew what he was going to do next. Something about him thrilled me and we hit it off immediately. When I discovered he knew a friend of mine in New York I made sure he was invited to a catered black-tie party I was hosting at my apartment a few weeks later. He came and the following weekend he invited me for brunch with friends at his place in Greenwich Village so that we could watch the first-ever Gay Pride march. I rarely left his apartment after that, and for the first time in my life I had found a man who cherished me and did everything for me.
“I know what you’re thinking, but this one is different!” I told my mother, who couldn’t hide her skepticism. “He makes me feel special, unlike anyone else before.” I didn’t tell her that there was also something untamed about him that attracted me like no other man. I was completely smitten.
Not long afterward, when Santino suggested we jump on a plane and fly to Jamaica for a few days, I ran over to see my mother and tell her the news. “I have to go, Mamma! Will you cover for me?” No stranger to keeping secrets, she agreed to tell Papà the bare minimum and off I went. It wasn’t that I was afraid of my father but it was still early days and there was no point in telling him anything until he really needed to know.
In Jamaica, diving into the deep cold water of the Blue Hole, dancing ’til dawn at a reggae festival, or simply lying in a hammock under a palm tree, I don’t think I had ever been happier. It all felt new and exciting, as everything in my life seemed to be coming together in perfect harmony. My father had given me more responsibility in the business, my mother was in good spirits, and I had someone who made me feel as if I were the only woman in the world.
What could possibly go wrong?
My father’s house in Beverly Hills, c. 1980
Our happy home in Palm Beach
Courtesy of Mort Kaye Studios, Palm Beach
Papà and me at a party in Palm Beach, 1972
Photo by Laurent MAOUS/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
My brothers Roberto and Giorgio with my cousin Maurizio posing outside the Milan store
Courtesy of Lucien Capehart, Palm Beach
Me and my mother with Papà at the Palm Beach party where he sang our praises
One of my favorite photos of Papà
Courtesy of Lucien Capehart, Palm Beach
Mamma with Luciano Pavarotti at the Palm Beach party, 1980
My parents looking gorgeous in 1980
Wishing my mother a happy birthday at my New York apartment, 1983
Visiting Papà at Eglin prison in 1986
Courtesy of Clive Limpkin/Associated Newspapers/REX Shutterstock
Me being interviewed at the Gucci store on Bond Street, London, 1988
Courtesy of Klaus Lucka von Zelberschwecht
Modeling swimwear at the Gucci Galleria for Town & Country magazine, 1982
Me with Ruby Hamra at the opening of the latest store in New York, 1980
Courtesy of Christophe von Hohenberg
The new face of Gucci: my turn in the spotlight for a society magazine, 1983
With Papà at my eighteenth-birthday party at the Savoy, London—where it all began
Although some might think my family was lucky in many ways, my father and I would disagree. He wasn’t superstitious and he never believed in luck the way others do. Neither do I. We shared the view that people make their own fortune and through carefully considered decisions people are able to improve their lot in life.
My grandfather Guccio didn’t go to London and work in the Savoy on a whim—he planned it. That wasn’t down to luck. My father took a small Florentine business and turned it into a global phenomenon through his own vision and hard work, not because of serendipity. Mamma had set her sights on going to work and ended up at Gucci, although she almost certainly would have argued that it was written in the stars.
Later in my father’s life he had every reason to start believing in bad luck, however, when a series of misfortunes sent his carefully constructed world spinning out of control. Between my grandmother’s premonitions and my mother’s psychic dreams, we should have been able to predict what was headed our way. Mamma now says that the snake she encountered in Florida had far greater portent than she realized at the time even though she’d read it meant a calamity would befall the head of the household.
It first fell on a summer’s morning in 1983 as my father sauntered into the lobby of his Fifth Avenue office. He was unexpectedly approached by a stranger who served him with legal documents. The man turned out to be a representative of the Internal Revenue Service and the papers he thrust into my father’s hands were demands for his personal financial records plus those of Gucci America for the years 1979–81. This subpoena stemmed from one of Paolo’s lawsuits for what he called “financial impropriety,” with claims of tax-deductible payments being transferred to offshore accounts. Although the case was thrown out of court, the allegations were brought to the attention of the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS.
Relations between Paolo and Papà had recently sunk to an all-time low. Having been ousted from the company and thwarted at every turn, my brother telephoned my father in Palm Beach begging for help, pleading poverty now that he had divorced his first wife and remarried, had two families to support and a new baby on the way. Mamma was there when my father took the call and she could tell from his body language that the conversation wasn’t going so well. The subject of Gucci Plus came up again but my father flat-out refused to cooperate, unable to forgive the board incident or the fact that Paolo had brought a legal action against his own family.
Eventually, he exploded. Jumping to his feet he shouted, “No, Paolo! I cannot help you! You were invited back to the business and look at what you’ve done! How dare you? You have brought all this upon yourself!”
Then he slammed down the phone, cursing the day his son was born and calling him “un idiota!” before storming out of the room, leaving my mother speechless. What he didn’t realize was how far Paolo was prepared to go to exact his revenge. “The idiot” was elevated to “maledetto,” or “damned,” once we discovered that he’d also agreed to cooperate with the IRS, who were now in possession of confidential documents that could only have come from my father’s private papers.
Beneath Papà’s simmering anger was something far deeper—a bitter disappointment that his own son could sell him out like this. The betrayal broke his heart and the effects were plain to see. When Mamma rang me to recount the episode, she was so distraught I thought she was heading for a breakdown.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s your father. I can’t bear to see him like this. He just sits and sits and doesn’t say a word. It’s all Paolo’s doing. That man is despicable! I don’t know what to do.”
The latest news from New York only made things worse. Federal agents armed with warrants had stormed the Gucci offices and seized all company documents and bank statements. Financiers as far away as Hong Kong had been instructed to assist with the prosecution. This was a major international investigation and not something that was going to go away. As CEO, my father knew that he would have to take full responsibility, especially once the news was leaked to the press.
My mother and I were deeply worried but Papà tried to allay our fears, insisting it was all in the hands of his attorneys and accountants. They were the ones who’d set up the offshore payments to fund enterprises in the Far East, he said, and they’d now be called upon to sort out the mess. Determined to maintain an appearance of “business as usual,” he returned to work.
I know that he felt terribly beleaguered during those few months. Rodolfo and Vasco were dead, Maurizio couldn’t be trusted, and my father’s accountant and the chief architect behind the money transfers had recently passed away. My brothers Roberto and Giorgio were s
o alarmed by recent events and the possible repercussions for them and their families that they bombarded my father with calls from Italy day and night.
The more the IRS excavated the company’s affairs, the more disturbing the news became. The accountants claimed Papà had an income of just $100,000 a year but then the IRS discovered that his homes in Palm Beach and Beverly Hills had been paid for by the offshore entity. This led them to examine consultancy and other fees amounting to millions, where they claimed to have found further “irregularities.”
My father’s attorneys continued to work with the authorities, adopting a policy of openness and cooperation wherever possible. The company had conformed to standard business practices, he assured them, and there had never been any attempt to defraud the US government.
Mamma and I needed no convincing that everything he’d done was on the advice of his accountants and that he would never have knowingly taken such a risk. His legal team, in turn, assured him that even if there were some “inconsistencies,” any owed taxes could simply be repaid along with a fine and that would be the end of it. They maintained that my father could still avoid a custodial sentence even though his was a high-profile case being handled by an ambitious young attorney named Rudolph Giuliani. All he had to do was assume full responsibility and remain in the US for the trial. “We’ll cut you a deal,” I heard them tell him. “You’ll be fine.”
He went along with whatever they suggested. He loved America and had no desire to flee to Italy like a common criminal, even if that was precisely what my mother implored him to do. “Let’s go back to Rome, Aldo!”
“No, no, Bruna,” he’d tell her with a smile. “That’s out of the question.”
Besides, he had too much left to achieve—not just in America but globally. Even if the thought of leaving ever crossed his mind, he knew that his decision to stay in the US and face the consequences was the right one.
One of my father’s advisers felt differently, however, and took it upon himself to warn my mother one night over dinner that my father could well end up in prison. She became so upset that Papà had to cut the evening short and take her home. Once they were on their own, she went to pieces.
“Prison, Aldo? But you’re almost eighty! They couldn’t possibly lock you away, could they?”
He held her in his arms and promised that nothing like that would ever happen to him. “Don’t worry. Everything is going to be just fine.”
When Mamma told me, I felt sick to my stomach. “Prison?” I echoed. It was something I couldn’t contemplate. My father was invincible: a man in charge of his own destiny who fixed things when they went wrong and held everything together. This couldn’t be happening.
For the first time since he’d put me on his executive committee, I fully understood the benefit. I’d been placed there to agree with whichever motion was put forth and whatever decisions he made. This could be anything from approving the budget for a new store to setting sales objectives for the upcoming quarter. Even if I didn’t always grasp the meaning or lost the thread in technical or financial discussions (numbers were never my forte), if ever my father needed allies it was now. As with the board resolutions he sought to pass, he knew he could count on my support but that didn’t change the fact that he was under enormous pressure.
He may have kept up a façade with Mamma and me at home but in the boardroom I began to see a side to him I had only ever heard about. My brother Giorgio was the unwitting recipient of one of his worst tirades. I can’t even remember what it was that tipped my father over the edge but he suddenly leapt to his feet and started yelling at Giorgio across the table. The man was a tempest and his rage shocked me. All my life he’d seemed so levelheaded and in control. To see him standing there with the veins bulging in his neck, his face purple as he let loose a torrent of abuse, was not a pretty sight. Inwardly, I willed him to stop.
Poor Giorgio looked like a rabbit in the headlights. I’d never seen anyone so humiliated in public, and sensing his embarrassment, I looked away. In that moment, I’m sure I was the last person he wanted in the room. I was embarrassed for him and ashamed of my father’s unwarranted outburst. When his anger was finally spent, he sat back heavily in his chair, breathless. You could have heard a pin drop.
In that instant, I knew that his eruption had nothing to do with any perceived misdemeanor of Giorgio’s but his utter frustration at the catastrophes that were dogging him. He knew he was in serious trouble.
My mother sensed it too, and terrified of what might happen, she began to fall apart. One day, I found her alone and sobbing in their New York apartment while he was visiting his financial advisers in Italy, something he was still allowed to do. The prospect of my father’s going to prison had toppled her and she was fixated on the idea that he would never come out alive. I tried to reassure her but she couldn’t be comforted, in a way that brought back unpleasant memories of her depression when I was a child. In the end, I had to ask Papà to come back from Italy at once. Between us, we made the decision that it would be better if she returned home and was kept well away from the unfolding drama.
As worried as I was about Mamma, I was also deeply concerned about my father—especially once she flew home. It occurred to me that having to be strong for her had strengthened his own resolve. All of my life I’d assumed that she was entirely dependent on him. It wasn’t until the early days of the fraud investigation that I realized their dependency was mutual.
Feeling the burden of responsibility, I did my best to be supportive and distract Papà from his problems whenever I could. At the time I was working on one of my most challenging projects—the launch of our new ready-to-wear spring/summer range in front of three hundred VIP guests and invited media at the Cotillion Room of the Pierre hotel in New York. If it went well it would be repeated in Chicago, Palm Beach, and Los Angeles. Being cast as a director, choreographer, and producer was a welcome distraction of my own. Inspired by a set design from our recent show in Milan, which used a raised runway, I spent weeks selecting the models and the music, styling the clothes and choreographing the various segments. For the show soundtrack, I compiled a diverse playlist ranging from Brazilian and bossa nova music to reggae and R&B. I was swamped with lists of to-dos and knew that all eyes would be on me, which felt far more daunting than walking into any boardroom. The finale would feature models I’d chosen from hundreds of portfolios all emerging in skintight black catsuits and our latest jewelry from the Oro Coccodrillo collection.
To my great surprise, my father turned up early. When he saw my face, he kissed my cheek and said, “What? Can’t I wish my own daughter good luck?” Then he went back to sit at his table to watch the entire thing. I was so nervous that night and prayed that everything would go to plan as models rushed past me and out into the multicolored lights and the flashes of cameras.
As the show ended and the place erupted with applause, I knew from my father’s expression that I had given him a precious hour off from his woes, and for that alone it was worth it.
Seeing him standing shouting, “Brava!” and clapping along with everyone else, it no longer mattered to me that he hadn’t shown up at school for Parents’ Weekend or seen me in The Boy Friend.
“Patricia, I’m so proud of you!” he told me backstage later that night as he raised a glass of champagne in tribute. That was a moment of joy frozen in my heart. No matter what lay ahead of us, good or bad, I knew I would always have that.
I have heard it said that the worst part of betrayal is when it comes from those you thought were closest to you. That was certainly true in my father’s case. All of us suffer betrayal of some form in our lives—starting with the formation and disintegration of childhood cliques. By the time we reach adulthood, however, any kind of treachery becomes that much more serious and can often have devastating consequences.
My mother had experienced betrayal from her onetime friend who sent those letters to Giorgio. Papà knew it only too well, but there was far wors
e to come. The next Gucci board meeting was set for September 1984 in Manhattan but my father was too busy to attend. The IRS had announced a grand jury hearing into his case so he was tied up with his attorneys. Even though the board meeting was being held in the same building, he sent his deputy Robert Berry in his stead. When Robert breathlessly burst into his office later that morning calling out his name, my father looked up in surprise and braced himself for more bad news. Was there some new development? Had Paolo come up with yet another plot?
The response he got was probably the last thing he expected. In a shock move, Maurizio—who’d inherited Rodolfo’s holding—had lodged a motion to dissolve the board, dismiss my father, and create a new executive committee with him at its head. It was an outrageous coup planned with military efficiency. As Papà was to discover, Maurizio wasn’t acting alone. Paolo had agreed to sell him his shares, thereby giving him full control of the company.
My father didn’t even rise from his chair at the news. There was no point. The deed was done. A few floors below, his own nephew, whom he’d taken in as his own and taught everything, had forged a devilish alliance to topple him from his throne.
In the Name of Gucci Page 21