The House of Gucci

September 4, 2000
The brutal 1995 murder of Maurizio Gucci, the grandson of the Gucci company founder, serves as entree into the history of one of the world's most glamorous fashion houses. The author, a longtime fashion writer for Women's Wear Daily, wonderfully describes how Guccio Gucci learned, as a low-level employee at London's Savoy hotel in the 1890s, that luggage functions as a symbol of "affluence and taste," and then went on to create opulent leather goods that caught the world's eye. Forden traces how Guccio--and his descendants--used charisma and intuition, rather than trained business acumen, to create the handbag dynasty. The "Gucci concept," a group of colors and designs largely derived from horse stables, didn't hurt either. But much of the book is devoted to the in-fighting that developed among Guccio's sons and grandsons. This in-fighting as well as the Guccis' inability to adapt to increased competition, professionalize their management and maintain the value of their brand name eventually caught up with them. In fact, Maurizio, having risen to the top of the company in the 1980s by using outside investors to depose his uncle, was eventually bought out in 1993, leaving no family members in the company's top management. (Forden does explain how the Gucci company has since made a comeback.) The book is, at times, too detailed about fashion history and techniques, and some may find the author's use of dramatic re-creations annoying. Nevertheless, he offers an intriguing view of one of the families that helped to create 20th-century style and business. Photos not seen by PW.

September 1, 2000
For this cautionary tale about the Gucci dynasty, former journalist Forden (Women's Wear Daily) draws on numerous interviews, articles, and books, in particular Gerald McKnight's A House Divided (LJ 12/87). She opens with a history of the company, a Florentine "mom-and-pop" leather-goods shop started by Guccio Gucci in the early 1900s that evolved into a global fashion empire. Over the years, the Guccis had their ups and downs. In the company's heyday of the 1950s and 1960s, products bearing the Gucci name were status symbols. But the family was plagued by infighting, lawsuits, product imitations, mismanagement, greed, and tragedy. By the late 1980s, the business was in a slump, and 50 percent of the company was sold to a Bahrain-based investment group. Forden's story ends with the trial of Patrizia Reggiani, accused in a plot that killed her ex-husband, Maurizio Gucci, in March 1995. Forden is a skilled researcher and a good storyteller. Recommended for fashion collections.--Bellinda Wise, Nassau Community Coll. Lib., Garden City, NY

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2000
Thirteen years ago, Gerald McKnight made the story of Gucci seem like an overwrought soap opera in "Gucci: A House Divided." It was not a difficult task, since, while his book came out just after Maurizio Gucci forced three of his cousins and his uncle from Gucci's board of directors, it was before the company was taken over by a Bahrain-based investment group; before the company fought off a takeover attempt by status-purveying conglomerate and bitter rival L. V. M. H. Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton; before its American creative director Tom Ford turned Gucci into an edgy, sexy fashion house; before the company acquired such lines as Fendi, Yves Saint Laurent, and Sergio Rossi; and before Maurizio's ex-wife hired a fashionably dressed hit man to gun down her former husband just a few steps from his Milan apartment. Now, with enough implausible plot twists to make a hack pulp writer churning out potboilers blush, Forden updates the Gucci story. Forden is the former Milan bureau chief for "Women's Wear Daily" and is now the editor in chief for a new Italian magazine called "L'UNA." She documents the history of Gucci, its founder Guccio Gucci, and his family's lurid infighting, but she focuses on the sensational shooting of Maurizio in 1995 and the subsequent murder investigation and trial. Readers won't have to be interested only in the worlds of business and fashion to appreciate the gossip purveyed here. ((Reviewed July 2000))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)