Gucci
Guccio Gucci S.p.A.,[1][2] doing business as Gucci (/ˈɡuːtʃi/ GOO-chee, Italian: [ˈɡuttʃi]), is an Italian luxury fashion house based in Florence, Italy.[3][4][5] Its product lines include handbags, ready-to-wear, footwear, accessories, and home decoration; and it licenses its name and branding to Coty for fragrance and cosmetics under the name Gucci Beauty.[6]
For other uses, see Gucci (disambiguation).Gucci
528 (2022)
- Jean-François Palus (CEO)
- Sabato de Sarno (Creative Director)
€9.9 billion (2023)
20,711 (2022)
Gucci was founded in 1921 by Guccio Gucci (1881–1953) in Florence, Tuscany. Under the direction of Aldo Gucci (son of Guccio), Gucci became a worldwide-known brand, an icon of the Italian dolce vita period. Following family feuds during the 1980s, the Gucci family was entirely ousted from the capital of the company by 1993. After this crisis, the brand was revived and in 1999 Gucci became a subsidiary of the French conglomerate PPR, which later renamed itself to Kering.
In 2023, Gucci operated 538 stores with 20,711 employees, and generated €9.9 billion in sales.[7] Jean-François Palus has been CEO of Gucci since July 2023,[8] and Sabato De Sarno became creative director in January 2023.[9][10]
In the history of Gucci, up until the end of the Gucci family era, the design, promotion, and production of Gucci products were handled by the members of the Gucci family.[73]
Initiatives
Culture
In 2011, the company opened the Gucci Museum (Gucci Museo) inside the 14th-century Palazzo della Mercanzia in Florence to celebrate its 90th anniversary.[80][48] In 2016, Alessandro Michele curated two additional rooms dedicated to Tom Ford's collections.[81] In January 2018, following a renovation, the Gucci Museum reopened with a new name, the Gucci Garden, and a new restaurant within its walls, the Gucci Osteria, managed by Massimo Bottura.[82] The Gucci Osteria was awarded one Michelin star in November 2019.[83] In February 2020, a second Gucci Osteria opened on the rooftop of the Gucci Rodeo Drive store in Los Angeles.[84] In March 2022, Gucci opened a "small but opulent" cocktail bar, the Gucci Giardino 25 in Florence.[85]
In April 2017, Gucci financed the restoration of the Boboli Gardens at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.[86] In June 2019, Gucci financed the restoration of the historic Rupe Tarpea and Belvedere Gardens in Rome.[87] In November 2022, Gucci pledged a three-year donation to help restore and preserve the Gyeongbokgung Palace in South Korea.[88]
Social
In 2008, Gucci launched the Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund, an $80,000 fund to finance movies promoting social change and presented at the Tribeca Film Festival.[89] By 2011, the fund grew to $150,000, including $50,000 for a newly created Women Documentary Award.[90] In 2011, with the Venice Film Festival, Gucci also launched the 'Gucci Award for Women in Cinema' to underline the impact of women in film-making.[91]
From 2005 to 2015, Gucci donated $20 million to UNICEF's Schools for Africa program. Once Chime for Change was created, it became the funding vehicle of the Gucci-UNICEF partnership.[92] Chime for Change was founded in February 2013 by Frida Giannini, Salma Hayek and Beyoncé as a global campaign for the improvement of education, health and justice for women worldwide.[93] In June 2013, Chime for Change organized the Sound of Change Live concert which generated $4 million to fund 200 projects in 70 countries.[94] In December 2013, Gucci inked a partnership with Twitter and Women Who Code to create the women-focused hackathon Chime Hack.[95]
Gucci sells a yellow t-shirt that reads "My Body My Choice" and redistributes its proceeds to Chime for Change.[96] In July 2013, activist Lydia Emily was commissioned to paint a mural on Skid Row, Los Angeles of a woman named Jessica, who is a survivor of human trafficking.[97] In January 2019, Chime for Change launched the murals campaign "To Gather Together" promoting gender equality and designed by the artist MP5.[98] In 2020, Gucci launched an "Unconventional Beauty" ad campaign, including a model with Down syndrome.[99]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Gucci pledged €2 million to two crowdfunding campaigns, the first to support the Italian Civil Protection Department, and the second for the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund.[100]
In 2023, Gucci reinforced its alliance with UNICEF with a new financial donation of 300,000 euros to the organization's Education Thematic Fund which seeks to ensure children's right to a 'high-quality' education globally.[101][102]
Environment
In 2015, Gucci launched its own environmental profit and loss initiative.[103] In October 2017, Gucci announced it would ban furs from its stores in 2018.[104] In June 2018, the brand launched 'Equilibrium', its platform to communicate on its social and environmental efforts and progress.[105] In June 2020, Gucci launched its first fully sustainable collection "Gucci Off the Grid".[106] This collection included pieces made from organic, natural and sustainable materials like organic cotton, recycled steel as well as regenerated polyamide.[107] In September 2022, Gucci received the Climate Action Award due to its devotion to environmental sustainability.[108] In 2023, Gucci obtained the Ellen MacArthur Foundation Award for Circular Economy at the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana (CNMI).[109][110] In February 2023, Gucci announced the launch of the Circular Hub, it next-generation manufacturing hub optimized for circularity and carbon efficiency.[111] Later in October 2023, Gucci introduced the Horsebit 1955 bag made with Demetra, an animal-free material,[112][113][114] which was awarded the prize for best vegan bag two months later by PETA.[115]
In popular culture
Eponymous adjective
"Gucci" is often used as an eponymous adjective; for example, "I feel Gucci!" or "that’s so Gucci!" are used to describe feeling luxurious or referencing something as being luxurious.[116][117] The earliest known instance of Gucci used in this sense is Lenny Kravitz describing his bedroom as "very Gucci"[118] in the September 1999 issue of Harper's Bazaar.[118]
Movies
After initially announcing plans for a movie about the Gucci dynasty in 2007,[119] filmmaker Ridley Scott detailed specifics about his movie in November 2019; titled House of Gucci, the movie would star Lady Gaga as Patrizia Reggiani and Adam Driver as Maurizio Gucci.[120] House of Gucci's world premiere took place at the Odeon Luxe Leicester Square in London on November 9, 2021.[121] The Gucci family heirs called Scott's movie "an insult to the legacy on which the brand is built today".[122] In 2000, Martin Scorsese had also announced plans to make a movie about the Gucci family.[123]
Counterfeiting
During the 1970s, the explosive popularity of Gucci turned the brand into a prime target of the counterfeiting industry.[11] The Gucci workshops elaborated the brindle pigskin tanning technique that became a Gucci signature, and a tanning process difficult to counterfeit. In 1977 alone, Gucci launched 34 lawsuits for counterfeiting.[12] By the mid-1980s, the brand was involved in "thousands of confiscations and lawsuits all over the world".[126]
In 2013, the UK's Intellectual Property Office issued a ruling that Gucci had lost the rights to its GG trademark in the UK "to a version of the GG logo in four categories, which encompassed garments such as bracelets, shoulder bags, scarves and coats".[127] However, "according to Gucci, the ruling does not affect the use of its GG logo in the region" because "Gucci is the owner of several other valid registrations for this mark, including a Community Trade Mark (covering the European Union) for its iconic GG logo and those rights are directly enforceable in the U.K."[127]
In November 2008, the website TheBagAddiction.com was shut down after being sued by Gucci for selling counterfeit products.[128] In 2013, Gucci cracked down on 155 domain names used by counterfeiters to sell fake Gucci products.[129] In 2015, Gucci's parent company Kering sued the Chinese website Alibaba for listing a lot of "obviously fake Gucci products" on its website.[130] In April 2016, Gucci's anti-counterfeiting legal actions backfired when the targeted products were papier-mâché shaped exactly like Gucci products and burned by Chinese people during the ancestral Qingming Jie tradition.[131] In April 2017, Gucci won a lawsuit against 89 Chinese websites selling fake Gucci products.[132] In October 2018, Marco Bizzarri warned the Chinese ecommerce giants Alibaba and JD.com that Gucci could not open shop on their websites as long as they would not remove the many fake Gucci products out of their listings.[133] In December 2019, Gucci sued three dozen websites selling fake Gucci products.[134] In 2023, Gucci USA filed a lawsuit against Sam's Club, Century 21 and Lord & Taylor for selling counterfeit Gucci products.[135]
Controversies
In April 2016, the UK's Advertising Standards Authority banned a Gucci online video ad because it starred an "unhealthily thin" model.[136]
In February 2019, Gucci removed a black balaclava sweater with a rollup collar and a cut-out red-lipped mouth from its shelves after it had been compared to a blackface costume[137][138] (Michele was inspired by Leigh Bowery but still apologized).[139] To address this issue, Gucci launched the 'Gucci North America Changemakers Scholarship' program dedicated to foster diversity within the fashion industry with a $5-million annual fund to support non-profits and community-based programs involved with "the African-American community and communities of color at-large".[140] Two months later, the Sikhs community in India criticized Gucci's cultural appropriation of a religious item when the Italian brand commercialized turbans at $800 apiece.[141] Gucci appointed a Global Head of Diversity to address the brand's latest issues with cultural diversity[142] and launched a $1.5-million scholarship program for US students traditionally underrepresented in the fashion industry.[143]
During a September 2019 show that mimicked a défilé of mental patients, catwalk model Ayesha Tan Jones held up her hands on which "mental health is not fashion" was written, a reaction to the brand's inappropriate commercial use of the imagery of mental illness.[144] Kering paid a $1.25 billion tax settlement in Italy following Gucci's 2011–2017 tax irregularities.[145]
In November 2023, in response to Gucci's October decision to move 153 of 219 design employees from Rome to Milan by March 2024, 50 employees went on a one day strike in the first industrial action against the company in its 102 year history.[146] Trade union representatives say the workers intend to protest throughout the month of November 2023.[147]