Guccio Gucci: The History of Success

Everything started in Florence in 1921 when Guccio Gucci, coming back from London where he was working for the Savoy Hotel, decided to open a shop specialized in fine leather goods. He started selling leather bags to horsemen because the Florence nobility started to ask him to make accessories for horse riding, in this way burned the first logo of Gucci: the clamp. He began to have different clients so he started to make luxury luggage. During the years of Fascist, Guccio Gucci was forced to make the best out of necessity and since the laws before and after World War II did not allow the importantion of materials, he began to use strange type of material (flax, hemp, jute) for the luxury market, during this period the Bamboo bag was born since the craftsmen began to brown the reeds in order to make the handle.

After Guccio’s death in 1953 the company was inherited by his four sons: Aldo, Ugo, Vasco and Rodolfo; in those years for the first time was introduced the so known tape with the green, red, green weft taken from the traditional saddle circumference that today is still the banner of Gucci, but it was just in the “60s that was born the two crossed Gs. The fortune of Gucci was made by the Hollywood stars, which opened shops in London, Paris, Palm Beach and Beverly Hills, while the Hobo bag was worn for Liz Taylor, Peter Sellers and the first lady Jackie Kennedy passed her name to the shoulder bag, the Jackie O.

In the “70s there was the total spread of the brand: the first pret-a-porter where the banner is carved on the buttons or printed on the shirts, the growth in the East pushed by the right perceptions of Aldo which brought to the opening of Tokyo and Hong Kong, rising elaborated processes and always more luxurious materials following the ideology of Aldo Gucci according to whom the price, although high, was shortly forgotten unlike the quality is destined to last and be for a long time appreciated. In 1982 Gucci was turned into a limited company run by Maurizio, Rodolfo’s son, who owned 50% of the shares, but in 1987 Investcorp started the acquisition of Gucci.

Investcorp is an investment company that in the“90s had total control of Gucci. After some difficult years as a result of these business events Gucci came to rule the world with the arrival of a new creative director in 1994, Tom Ford.The Texan designer, thanks to some marketing campaigns, impose a new image of the brand; high heels, silk jersey dresses, visible inserts on deep necklines or nudity became the codes of Gucci’s woman, which was also accompanied by a corresponding masculine image vain and luxurious.In 1998, Gucci was listed by the CEO, Domenico De Sole, on the stock market and named the European Company of the Year by the federation of European Ec.