THE HOUSE OF GUCCI by Sara Gay Forden

There is a famous saying:
The first generation starts the business, the second generation continues working at it sustaining the company, and the third generation spends all the money earned by the first two generations.

For the Gucci family, Guccio Gucci, who was the founder of the well-known fashion company, Gucci, passed on his legacy to his son named Rodolfo who worked together with his brothers to maintain their business. Rodolfo would later pass on the legacy to his only son named Maurizio who married for love to only be killed in the end.

“- Be careful, Maurizio, Rodolfo growled. I have received information about the girl. I do not like the sound of her at all. I am told she is vulgar and ambitious, a social climber who has nothing in mind but money. Maurizio, she is not the girl for you.”

“- Papa, he said. I can’t leave her. I love her.”

Unfortunately for Maurizio, his father proved to be right.
To give you an idea of the kind of woman Patrizia was when her eldest daughter turned 18 and received $30,000 from her father as a gift, Patrizia decided that they should both get plastic surgeries with that sum of money: so, Patrizia remodeled her nose, and her daughter had a breast augmentation procedure.

Fed up with his wife’s spending habits, after almost 20 years of marriage, Maurizio finally decided to ask for a divorce, and as part of the settlement, he is obliged to pay Patrizia $500,000 as annual alimony.
Even though she had more than enough money from the settlement alone, Patrizia was not happy that her former husband had moved with his love life. Therefore, she hired a hitman, and in 1995, Maurizio was shot and killed.
Three years later, Patrizia was found guilty and was convicted to 29 years in prison.

Typically, you would think that with age comes wisdom.
For Patrizia, this had yet to come. In 2011, when she was 63 years old and still in jail, she declined an Italian court’s offer of early release, because the deal would have involved her getting a job (she had never worked a day in her life, and she did not intend to start now).

She is known for saying: “I’d rather cry in a Rolls than be happy on a bicycle.”

P.S. The author does a great job in telling us how Tom Ford was brought to work for Gucci by the CEO, Domenico del Sole, and how under his creative genius, the company thrived.

Published by William Morrow, 2000