A label to die for

As the House of Gucci celebrates 90 years in fashion, Craig Jacobs looks at the dramatic family behind the name

Flash back to 1982 and if you picked up a copy of the September 6 issue of American celebrity tabloid magazine People, you could be forgiven for stumbling across the most sensational plot for a soapie.

There was a fully fledged brawl in the middle of a boardroom meeting, with the black sheep of the family bloodied as he crawled out after being assaulted by his brothers. A succession of multimillion-dollar law suits followed - all the drama set amid the Lamborghini of luxury goods empires, fuelled by Latin tempers and with a dazzling mix of beautiful women, fast cars and lavish locations.

Little surprise that the headline for that People magazine article screamed: "Move over, Dallas: Behind the Glittering Façade, a Family Feud Rocks the House of Gucci."

But if that family feud titillated, then what ensued 13 years later sent shockwaves around the world. Maurizio, the heir to the Gucci empire was gunned down outside his offices on Milan's Via Palestro by what newspaper reports described as "a well-dressed man" - who turned out to have been hired by his ex-wife, who had enlisted her fortune teller as an accomplice.

This year, one of the biggest series to hit the TV screens will most likely be The Borgias, a tale set around Italy's "first crime family", which sees Jeremy Irons play Rodrigo Borgia, the man who makes Machiavelli look like a lightweight as he cheats and connives his way to becoming Pope.

At the same time, Hollywood heavyweight Ridley Scott wants to put the Gucci family on the silver screen, with Angelina Jolie touted to play "the black widow", sentenced to 29 years for killing her ex-husband after he left her for interior designer Paola Franchi; and Leonardo DiCaprio fingered for playing the gunned-down heir.

And, it's not surprising that this darker side to the House of Gucci is one that the owners of the Florentine luxury goods company would prefer not to see highlighted, especially not just now, as it pops the champagne on Gucci's 90th anniversary.

The company operates more than 550 stores worldwide, is found in the globe's most luxurious department stores and boasts more than à4-billion a year in revenue. And what it would prefer to transmit is the message of the heritage of its iconic pieces, rather than the family's squabbles, murder and mayhem.

The Gucci Bamboo bag, the horse bit, the intertwined Gs of its logo and green-and-red stripe known by Gucci aficionados as "the web", are all part of an exhibition making its way through Europe right now to commemorate the 90th anniversary.

This side of the history of the house of Gucci starts with Guccio Gucci, the son of hat-makers, who was born in Florence in 1881 and whose search for work found him in London, where he secured employment in 1897 at the city's esteemed Savoy Hotel.

Trunks, suitcases and hatboxes were what the wealthy travelled with then, and young Guccio became enthralled with luggage, returning to Florence a few years later and finding work with leather manufacturer Franzi. He married Aida Calvelli and the couple had six children - four of them boys.

Inspired by "the refined aesthetic of English nobility", in 1921 Guccio opened his own leather-making business with stores on Florence's Via Vigna Nuova and later Via del Parione.

It wasn't long before Gucci attracted a clientele of mostly horse-riding aristocrats, his revenue source inspiring the equestrian emphasis in those first Gucci bags, trunks, gloves and belts.

The leather, though, came from London and when Mussolini invaded Ethiopia and the League of Nations slapped Italy with sanctions, the house of Gucci could have floundered. But in response, Guccio developed a special woven hemp from Naples which was printed with a series of small, interconnecting diamonds in dark brown, using leather strips only on the edges to protect against wear, and embellishments to give them lustre. Thus evolved one of the most iconic pieces in the world of luxury goods.

Three of the Gucci offspring ended up joining the business, with Aldo poised to follow his father's lead in steering the company, while Vasco was in charge of the factories and Grimalda helped out at the stores, which now included a Gucci post in Rome that attracted the country's jet set.

The youngest son, Rodolfo, was more interested in a career as a film star, but he returned to work in the family business after marrying actress Alessandra Winkelhausen in 1944. Their son, Maurizio, was born four years later.

It was Rodolfo who would create another of Gucci's most iconic designs, the Flora silk scarf, after Princess Grace of Monaco visited the Milan store and he offered her a souvenir gift. The princess suggested a scarf and, realising there was none available to match her regal stature, he created one from the finest silk, featuring a colourful bouquet of flowers which could be seen no matter how it was worn.

Aldo, meanwhile, focused on expanding the Gucci name across the world, clashing with his father, who felt that opening new stores was too costly. In the end Aldo won the battle and the first American Gucci store opened in the Savoy Plaza Hotel in New York in 1953.

Days after the successful store opening (thousands visited it every day, and New York society dinner-party conversation was peppered with the idiosyncrasies of the Italians, who dutifully closed shop every day for lunch), Guccio died of a heart attack and control of the family business moved to the next generation.

His will, though, made it clear that none of the Gucci women should form part of the company's management - he left equal shares to his sons, with his eldest, Grimalda, cut out. His antiquated views defined a Gucci male dynasty - no other wife or daughter in future generations would help run the business. When Vasco died of lung cancer in 1975 and left his share to his wife, Maria, the remaining brothers bought her out and divided it equally among themselves.

Furthermore, the duty of a Gucci wife seemed to be to bear children - and turn a blind eye to the dalliances of the men.

Take Olwen, an English-born dressmaker who married Aldo in 1927 and who bore him three sons: Giorgio, Paolo and Roberto. While she stayed at home to look after the boys, he apparently collected mistresses from the Gucci workplace - from Bruna Polumbo, who worked behind the counter in the Gucci store in Rome and who bore him a daughter, to Chantal Skibinski, who headed up PR in Europe for the company.

Jenny Gucci, in Gucci Wars, her tell-all book about life as a Gucci wife, points out that Aldo's son, Paolo, to whom she was married, would follow in his father's footsteps: she caught him having an affair, first with his secretary, and then with the 18-year-old stable hand of his English estate.

Jenny's book details her seven-year battle to divorce Paolo, who flaunted the law by refusing to pay maintenance or support their daughter Gemma - going so far as to starve his prized horses in order to claim bankruptcy and thus avoid parting with his $40-million fortune.

The book also details just how dysfunctional the entire Gucci brood was. At one meeting, for instance, Aldo threw a crystal ashtray at his son's head and missed by barely a few inches, while at a 1982 board meeting Paolo's face was cut so badly by his brother Giorgio's signet ring after a scuffle that he fled bloodied through the store below the Gucci offices, startling customers and staff.

That was the incident that inspired the People magazine piece, which went on to explain that Aldo Gucci had typically played down the incident, observing that his errant son, the black sheep of the family, "likes to exaggerate", adding: "Who is the father who has never given a slap to a reckless son?"

Mind you, there is a long stretch between fatherly discipline and claims of business subterfuge, and on Paolo's side, he felt that, since he owned a 3.3% share of the business, after his father had given him and his brothers 10% of his holding, he had every right to ask about the company books.

But it wasn't just Aldo who was faced with a family feud. Rodolfo, didn't fare any better with his only son, Maurizio. He refused to give his blessing to Maurizio's marriage to his girlfriend, Patrizia. The entire family boycotted their nuptials. But blood proved thicker than water, and Rodolfo eventually accepted his son's marriage, inviting him back into the fold and allowing him to help control the family's American interests.

Maurizio, the outsider, would end up having the last laugh. When Aldo died on May 14 1983, Maurizio inherited his father's 50% stake, making him, at just 25 years old, the most powerful Gucci alive.

Maurizio's rise fittingly came in the "Greed is Good" decade, a time during which the company's success unravelled as the family became embroiled in legal fiascos, mostly of their own making - there were more than 15 law suits between family members and by 1986 the eldest Gucci, Aldo, would find himself behind bars in a US jail for evading $7-million in taxes, while the youngest, Maurizio, was facing off a criminal investigation over allegations that he had avoided paying inheritance tax (he was found not guilty).

The decade saw Maurizio exert his power, conspiring with his uncle's much-addled middle son, Paolo, to push Aldo out thanks to their combined majority share.

But Maurizio seemed hell-bent on owning the luxury goods company all by himself. He turned his back on Paolo and invited an Anglo-Arab investment company, Investcorp, to buy out his relatives. He stoked Paolo's desire to outsmart his father, encouraging him to sell his 3.3% share for a whopping $40-million, thereby allowing Maurizio and his partners to take control of the business and forcing the other brothers to follow suit.

But, just like a Mafia flick, where the bad guy eventually gets his comeuppance, Maurizio's satisfaction in booting out his family proved to be short-lived.

"I feel like Rocky Marciano," he was quoted in a British newspaper as saying about his battles with his backers. "Each time he fought, his face was covered in blood, but he always won."

Maurizio sold his share for $200-million in 1993 and, under the direction of Domenico Sole, Rodolfo's tax lawyer, Tom Ford was brought in to turn the business around.

Two years later, at 8.30 in the morning of March 27 1995, Maurizio was shot dead outside his offices.

And in a further twist worthy of Mario Puzo, the gunman, along with his accomplice (a pizza shop owner), was enlisted by a friend of a clairvoyant, who was asked to organise the hit by none other than Maurizio's wealth-obsessed wife, Patrizia.

Rodolfo surely would have been turning in his grave, justified in refusing his blessing to the woman who, horrified after she had been cut out of Maurizio's life, turned to her fortune teller with the offer of $1.5-million to organise the murder.

With the clairvoyant, Pina Auriemma (who turned state witness two months before the trial started), described as the "black witch" and Patrizia "the black widow", the six-month-long trial captivated the Italian and global media - especially when prosecutors presented evidence such as Patrizia's diary in court.

She had written: "There is no crime that money cannot buy" and, revealingly, the single-word entry "Paradeisos" (or "paradise" in Greek) on the day Maurizio was shot dead.

With quotes from the black widow such as: "I would rather weep in a Rolls-Royce than be happy on a bicycle", it isn't surprising that master filmmaker Scott is committed to bring this family drama to the silver screen.