SITTING in the cavernous Milan courthouse, wearing a smart, pistachio-green designer suit and with her dark hair freshly coifed, Patrizia Gucci seemed every inch the haughty ex-wife of a Gucci-empire heir.
But on that warm July day in 1998, Patrizia was engaging in a last-ditch attempt to defend herself against charges she’d hired a hit man to kill her former husband, Maurizio.
It was just the latest drama for the Gucci family, whose tales of money, sex and manipulation have shocked the elite fashion world.
It’s a gripping story told by veteran fashion reporter Sara Gay Forden, whose juicy book, “The House of Gucci,” hits stores this month.
Forden, the former Milan bureau chief and business correspondent for Women’s Wear Daily, takes readers on a rollicking ride through the Gucci dynasties, from Guccio Gucci’s humble start in Florence, Italy, in the 1920s, through the signature horse-bit loafers and bamboo-handled bags of the ’80s, to the sexy, hard-edged Tom Ford designs of today.
The Gucci family is notoriously dysfunctional. A few days ago, on the eve of the Venice Film Festival, members of the fashion dynasty expressed alarm over reported plans by director Martin Scorsese to make a movie about the tempestuous history of the family, ending in Maurizio’s murder.
Although Scorsese says he will draw much of his material from British journalist Gerald McKnight’s 1987 book, “Gucci: A House Divided,” there’s also plenty of sensational new material from Forden’s book.
For starters, Forden has tremendous insight into the mind of Patrizia – dubbed “The Black Widow” by the Italian press – who was sentenced to 29 years in her husband’s killing.
“When I interviewed her in 1993 in her gorgeous penthouse apartment in Milan, I found her fascinating and a little bit scary,” Forden recalls. “She was so angry at her former husband for abandoning her that she wanted everyone to know what a heel he had been to her and the couple’s two daughters.”
Later, Forden developed a “jailhouse correspondence” with Patrizia in which the writer got exclusive insights into the couple’s relationship.
“She told me, ‘Maurizio was a man that I had loved most, despite all of his mistakes,'” Forden says.
Patrizia Reggiani, the daughter of a laundress, mesmerized Maurizio with her violet eyes and bright-red dress – which showed off her curvaceous, youthful figure – when they met at a debutante party on the night of Nov. 23, 1970.
For him, it was love at first sight. For her, it was the potential conquest of one of Milan’s most prominent bachelors.
The two began a whirlwind, passionate courtship – although Maurizio’s father, Rodolfo, warned his son he was falling for a gold-digger.
Patrizia became determined to make her husband a leading figure in the Milan fashion industry. She played the role of celebrity wife to the hilt, decked out in Valentino and Chanel suits. The society pages nicknamed her the “Joan Collins of Monte Napoleone.”
SHE seemed to suffer from a case of the terminally nouveau riche. Her idea for a signature line of gold jewelry for Gucci – which featured chunky, stand-alone pieces imprinted with a crocodile-skin pattern – was a major flop.
As Maurizio’s power rose in the Gucci company, his relationship with Patrizia deteriorated. He relied on trusted adviser Domenico De Sole, who would later become Gucci chairman and CEO, for advice, and became increasingly annoyed by Patrizia’s efforts to guide him.
“As a younger man, he’d looked to Patrizia to support him and give him the strength to stand up to his own father, but as he gained power, he felt oppressed by her criticism,” Forden says.
When Maurizio left Patrizia in 1985, she was devastated. For years, she held out hope for a reconciliation. But when Maurizio took up with a series of blondes – the physical opposites of Patrizia – her hopes turned to bitterness.
“She saw that all she had tried to achieve in life through Maurizio, all the fame and status and wealth, was slipping through her fingers,” Forden says.
Patrizia’s life fell into a downward spiral. Her darkest moment came in 1992, when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
Although it turned out to be benign, Patrizia was devastated when she initially asked Maurizio to take care of the two girls – and he refused, citing lack of space and difficulties at work.
Over the next three years, Patrizia’s bitterness festered and boiled. Although Maurizio gave her a $100,000 monthly allowance, he forbade her to use his homes in Saint Moritz, preferring to keep them as love nests for his new girlfriend, Paola Franchi.
Crazed with rage, Patrizia vowed to destroy her ex-husband, telling numerous people, including her housekeeper, that “if it’s the last thing I do, I want to see him dead.”
At 8:30 a.m. on March 27, 1995, Maurizio Gucci was shot outside his office in one of the most elegant neighborhoods in Milan by a dark, wavy-haired assailant.
His body was barely cold when Patrizia moved into his luxurious Milan apartment with the couple’s two teenage daughters, Alessandra and Allegra, banishing Franchi forever from the premises.
“He may have died,” Patrizia told a friend, “but I have just begun to live.”
ALMOST two years later, at 4:30 a.m. on Jan. 31, 1997, two police cars pulled up at Corso Venezia 38 and arrested Patrizia. Calm and unruffled, Patrizia emerged wearing gleaming gold and diamond jewelry, a floor-length mink coat, and a leather Gucci handbag.
“She honestly thought she would be able to get away with this murder, that she would be returning home in a few hours,” Forden says.
That was not to be. The Milanese police had plenty of evidence that Patrizia had ordered the murder of her ex-husband and paid about $375,000 for it. When she walked into the Milan courtroom a year and a half later, in June 1998, there was no trace of the society queen left on her puffy face, which showed her 50 years.
Her short, dark hair was uncombed. Her eyes were dead and lifeless. Although her closets back in her palace in Corso Venezia overflowed with designer suits, she was wearing only simple blue cotton slacks, a polo shirt and a blue- and white-striped cotton sweater wrapped around her shoulders. Her only nod to elegance were the pointy, white-leather, 4-inch mules she wore on her tiny feet.
That November, Patrizia, along with four accomplices, was found guilty of the murder of Maurizio Gucci, and was sentenced to 29 years in prison.
She remains in a Milanese jail cell today, awaiting appeal. Her mother, Silvana, lives in the luxurious Corso Venezia apartment, and brings Patrizia her favorite meat loaf every Friday.
But the real victims of this tragic story, Forden says, are the two daughters, Alessandra and Allegra.
“That morning when the police invaded the Corso Venezia apartment, Alessandra pushed her mother into the master bathroom, against the marble-tile wall, and hissed, ‘Tell me if you did it. It’s our secret!’ And Patrizia looked back at her oldest daughter and said, ‘I’m innocent,”’ Forden says.
“Even now, the two girls defend their mother’s innocence. Who knows if they really believe it or it is all a facade. It is so sad.”
BUT the rest of the Gucci family was far from functional.
Guccio Gucci, who began the company, was a waiter in London’s swank Savoy Hotel during the 1890s, where he saw countless guests breezing in and out carrying their affluence as easily as their expensive leather luggage.
The ambitious Gucci opened his own leather shop after returning to Florence in 1923. In later years, his son Aldo commissioned the prominent “GG” to be embossed on all handbags and luggage.
The company really gained steam under Aldo, who decided to expand to Rome and later to New York, where his Fifth Avenue shop was dubbed “the rudest store in town” for its staff’s haughty treatment of customers.
Internecine struggles for power were already emerging by the late 1970s. When Paolo, Guccio Gucci’s grandson and the middle son of Aldo Gucci, wanted to begin his own line in 1981, his father promptly vetoed the idea and fired him from the company. Enraged, Paolo initiated several lawsuits against him, and threatened to let the Internal Revenue Service know of the millions of dollars Aldo had evaded in taxes.
Meanwhile, Paolo was also waging war with cousin Maurizio, who had become power-hungry after inheriting a 50 percent stake in the company following the death of his father, Rodolfo.
Tensions came to a head on July 16, 1982, when, at an annual Gucci family board meeting in Florence, Paolo’s face was scratched during a heated argument. He sued the company for $13 million – although he couldn’t identify the attacker.
Paolo got his revenge four years later, when in 1986, at the age of 81, Aldo stood trial in a New York court and was sentenced to a year and a day in jail, plus fines for tax evasion. He made sure the press turned out in force to see his tearful father beg for mercy to an unsympathetic judge.
Still thirsty for revenge, Paolo photocopied Maurizio’s bank accounts and sent them to everyone he knew – forcing his cousin to temporarily flee Italy to Switzerland on charges of tax evasion.
Today, after decades of family warfare and the threat of hostile takeovers, CEO Domenico De Sole and creative director Tom Ford have transformed Gucci from a family-run company into a modern corporation on the cutting edge of fashion and marketing.
Now, the well-compensated Gucci family watches quietly from the sidelines as the company that bears its name continues to dominate business and fashion news.
But Forden, who convinced many top-level Gucci executives and family members to speak with her, says she thinks the family is happiest this way.
“The Gucci story in many ways seemed much more outrageous than anything I could make up,” Forden says. “Fact here is more incredible than fiction. I think the Gucci family is just content to lay low for a while.”