Since it was founded by Guccio Gucci in a small shop in Florence in 1921, the company has built a catalog of genuinely iconic trademarks—the interlocking GG logo; the bar-and-bit belt buckle; the bamboo-handled handbag; the shiny velvet pantsuit; the omnipresent penny loafer, to name a few—all of which have helped the brand penetrate mainstream culture like no other Italian label in history.
It’s quite certain that when Guccio Gucci started out, he never dreamed that the small family-run luggage company would one day grow to one carrying such cultural significance. The groundwork for that epic expansion actually was laid under the leadership of Guccio’s eldest son, Aldo, who took over in the late 1940s. A flamboyant businessman, Dr. Gucci (as Aldo liked people to call him) transformed the lesser-known handbag and suitcase business into the accessories destination of choice for Europe’s emerging jet set. By the end of the 1950s, everyone from Princess Elizabeth (soon to be Queen Elizabeth II) to Elizabeth Taylor was a patron of Gucci.
Aldo Gucci had the foresight to bring his wares to an increasingly wealthy American market during the boom years that followed World War II. At that time, legions of consumers in the United States were itching to spend their new disposable income on status symbols, and Gucci’s fine Florentine workmanship and equestrian details offered a taste of the exotic to the women who might only recently have traveled abroad for the first time. Celebrity endorsements, of which the Guccis were early proponents, only added to the allure.
In keeping with the father-son tradition, Aldo’s son Paolo ushered in Gucci’s next great era in the late 1960s, with the introduction of ready-to-wear. At first clothing was just an offshoot of the luggage collection, but the division soon expanded into outer- and eveningwear collections—and, by the early 1970s, the lean silhouettes, fur-lined coats, and shiny satin lapels we think of today as Gucci hallmarks began to appear. The G insignia, by 1979, was ubiquitous enough to be called “a status symbol recognized around the world" by The New York Times. Paparazzi snapped actresses and It girls out and about in their modern-woman Gucci pantsuits, accessorized with head-to-toe Gucci-branded gear. “Scarcely an airport photo appeared withoutGG-printed Gucci luggage among the flurries of fur coats and dark glasses,” the fashion critic Sarah Mower commented, looking back in 2006.
The popularity of the brand was both a blessing and a curse. By the early 1980s overzealous licensing (which, asWomen’s Wear Daily later reported, resulted in the logo appearing “on everything from key chains to coffee mugs”) had tarnished the label’s identity. Meanwhile, vicious infighting—sparked by Paolo’s desire to break out on his own, and his father’s reluctance to let him take his valuable name with him—led to the Gucci family ultimately losing control of the company in 1993.
But even in its darkest days there was a glimmer of hope. Paolo’s legacy became the basis upon which a young designer named Tom Ford decided to build his vision when he became creative director in 1994. The now infamous Tom Ford look—what he later called “sexy, sensual, fuck-me clothes,” part modish tomboy, part Bardot-era sex kitten—oozed power and prestige and reminded customers viscerally of the company’s glory days in the freewheeling 1970s. In short order, Gucci was a global player once again.
“Looking back at the archives, I realized that this very traditional house was actually very hip and very cutting-edge in its heyday,” Ford told Vogue’s Katherine Betts in July 1995, soon after his debut show. “Why couldn’t it be hip and cutting-edge now?”
The French holding company Pinault-Printemps-Redoute, the company’s owner since 1999, took managerial control in 2004, to Ford’s extreme chagrin—and he departed, leaving the label with a very big pair of alligator loafers to fill. Ford had taken the company from virtual bankruptcy in 1994 to a value of $4.3 billion at the end of the decade, and the brand’s identity had never been stronger. Enter the relatively unassuming Frida Giannini, an accessories designer: She had been part of the Gucci design stable for nearly three years when she was awarded the top spot.
“I would be stupid and arrogant to say that I didn’t feel Tom’s weight,” Giannini said in 2006, reflecting on her debut collection. But by introducing lighter colors and more prints, and toning down the aggressively sexual overtones—which were beginning to look a bit dated in the less hedonistic light of the new millennium—she has won both critical accolades and a new crop of Gucci devotees.
