“House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour and Greed” (Harper Collins, 2021) by Sara Gay Forden is written by a true fashion insider. Forden, now with Bloomberg, was a journalist covering the Milan fashion scene for 15 years. Forden’s work led her to interview Patrizia and Maurizio Gucci, as well as top talent in the industry, including Giovanni Versace and Salvatore Ferragamo.

“Hell hath no fury like a woman’s scorn” is an appropriate saying that perfectly applies to the saga detailed in Forden’s well-researched, compelling, award-winning book.

Lady Gaga, Al Pacino Headline the Blockbuster Movie
“House of Gucci” is also currently a blockbuster movie currently in theaters. Directed by Ridley Scott, it stars Academy Award-winners Lady Gaga, Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons. Jared Leto, Adam Driver and Salma Hayek are also in the movie. It is an explosive masterpiece with a soundtrack ranging including hits like David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes” and Pavarotti’s Libiamo Ne’lieti Calici (Brindisi). More importantly, the story that Forden weaves dives deep and personally into the Gucci brand and family’s history and dark secrets.

“House of Gucci” the movie, which was filmed throughout COVID in 2021 (February through May) opened in theaters on November 24^th, 2021, and has since grossed $95 million.

It initially details Patrizia Gucci’s (Lady Gaga) marriage to Maurizio Gucci (Adam Driver), the heir to the Gucci fashion house fortune. The film, mirroring the elevations and valleys of the mountains near Milan, details the highs and lows of the marriage, blending in familial drama and Patrizia’s descent into madness. The film spotlights Patrizia’s accelerating greed, manipulation, and consistently increasing anger at her husband, Maurizio, causing their marriage to fall apart. Eventually, acclaimed director Ridley Scott shows Patrizia’s efforts to recruit a hitman to kill her husband, with the murder of Maurizio Gucci happening on March 27^th, 1995.

Sara Gay Forden Spills
Book and screenplay author Forden details (in a podcast interview with the National Press Club’s Gemma Puglisi, a professor at American University), says the movie portrays only a particular slice of the story, as the movie focuses mostly on Patrizia and Maurizio’s tempestuous relationship.

“My book goes deep into the origins of the Gucci brand—the company, and the family, and then goes into non-family management, and into the modern world of the conglomerate,” Forden says.

Forden says that as she sat down to write the story, she realized how perfectly tailormade it was for a movie: “As I wrote it, I could see this being an extraordinary story for a film, but I never in a million years believed this would become a project of this level. I think the thrust of the film is true to the arc of the story… to have this experience of seeing my work taken up by such a star-studded cast and such a talented director, gives it a whole new life.”

Additionally, Forden touches on how her work to complete the book took years, noting that when she was a Milan fashion reporter, she had unfettered access to Gucci, Armani, Versace and Ferragammo. To write the book, Forden extensively interviewed Gucci employees, family members—and Maurizio and Patrizia Gucci themselves—many times before the sensational murder of the Gucci namesake.

Dead Serious
Forden calls Maurizio’s murder “shocking and unexpected,” adding that “a shroud of mystery overcame [it] because no one knew who had done it.”

However, as secrets inevitably came to light, she adds, “I think people were surprised and horrified” that Patrizia (brilliantly portrayed by Lady Gaga as a shameless golddigger) would go so far as to hire a hitman to commit the murder.

“I had interviewed her in 1993, and she was very upset with Maurizio at the time. She was launching a smear campaign against him in the media. She was known to have gone around Milan asking if there was someone to kill her husband, so she was very vocal about her anger with him. But nobody really took her seriously,” Forden says.

In the book, Forden writes just how serious Patrizia was, with her hatred being venomous enough to successfully organize the killing of her ex-husband. “Only the maid saw Patrizia Reggiani sobbing uncontrollably the morning of March 27, 1995, after she heard the news of Maurizio’s death. Afterwards, she dried her tears and penned a single word into her Cartier diary: Paradeisos, meaning ‘paradise’ in Greek. With her pen, she slowly drew a bold black border around the date.” 

The heartache that hit the Gucci empire did not end with Maurizio’s murder. Paulo Gucci, the former vice president and man credited for creating the famous double-“G” logo (Maurizio’s cousin), would die of chronic hepatitis—in poverty—just months after Maurizio’s murder, per The Independent.

Takeover and Transformation
A dramatic hostile takeover attempt from Bernard Arnault, the chairman of LVMH, would result in Arnault attempting to buy 100% of the company, including bidding twice for shares owned by conglomerate PPR at $81 per share and $85 per share, respectively. The attempt would be thwarted by French financier Francois Pinault in 1999, but the company would be shaken to the core by the departure of Tom Ford and Domenico De Sole in the early 2000s, “who transformed Gucci from an unprofitable Florentine leather-goods company into a publicly traded global luxury conglomerate.”

A significant part of both the book and the movie details the purchase and IPO of Gucci by Investcorp. The Bahrain-based investment firm would acquire half of Gucci in 1988 and fully buy out the company in 1993. After Maurizio and Investcorp agreed to the deal that saw the Bahraini firm fully acquire Gucci in 1993, Maurizio Gucci and the rest of the Gucci family ended association with the company.

Under new ownership, “By the summer of 1995, as Ford’s blockbuster collection moved into stores, preparations for a fall stock market listing moved into high gear. Sales rocketed, jumping 87.1% in the first half of 1995 year-over-year, higher than anyone’s wildest expectations,” Forden writes in her book.

Women’s Wear Daily reported that Gucci went public in October 1995 at $22 million, with Investcorp realizing $228 million from its 11 million shares. The offering came on the heels of spectacular earnings for Gucci. Net earnings in its 1995 fiscal year ended Jan. 31 vaulted nearly five-fold to $81.4 million, or $1.65 a share.

The success for Gucci and its new owners did not stop in 1995, as one year later, “In April 1996, Investcorp completed its sell-off in a secondary offering that was even more successful than the first, making Gucci a completely publicly traded company.”

Maurizio Gucci would not live to witness the empire his grandfather founded to become a publicly traded company.
Nor would he live to see the hostile takeover dispute end in 1999. What Maurizio Gucci did live and witness, though, was Patrizia’s cold-blooded, seething rage. The ex-wife was hellbent on harming him to the point of a successful hit in broad daylight on the streets of Milan.

For Patrizia, that day, disturbingly, was the equivalent of “paradise” for her. But the story of the House of Gucci is not exactly one of paradise or happy endings, and it is a story that Sara Gay Forden and Ridley Scott expertly show in House of Gucci.