Gucci

Guccio Gucci had seen how the rich travelled. As a young man he worked at the Savoy Hotel in London, handling the luggage of its guests, and when he returned to Florence he opened a small shop in 1921 selling leather travel goods and equestrian accessories made by local artisans. The horse world gave the house its first motifs, the horsebit and the striped saddle girth, and Florentine craft gave it its reputation.

Shortages shaped its most famous inventions. With leather rationed after the Second World War, the workshop turned to other materials, and in 1947 it introduced a bag with a handle of heat-bent bamboo cane, the Bamboo 1947. The green-red-green web stripe, drawn from saddle girths, followed in the early 1950s; the Horsebit loafer in 1953, the year Gucci opened in New York; and in 1966 the Flora print, a floral scarf drawn by the illustrator Vittorio Accornero and associated with a visit by Grace Kelly. A shoulder bag carried by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis became known as the Jackie.

Guccio died in 1953 and his sons expanded the business around the world, but the family's quarrels in the 1970s and 1980s nearly destroyed it, as licences multiplied and the name lost its lustre. Guccio's grandson Maurizio took control, and between 1988 and 1993 the Bahrain-based investment group Investcorp bought out the family. Maurizio was murdered in Milan in 1995, a story later retold on film.

The revival began with Dawn Mello, hired from Bergdorf Goodman in 1989 as creative director, and a young Texan designer, Tom Ford, who arrived in 1990. Ford became creative director in 1994 and, with chief executive Domenico De Sole, turned Gucci into the sexiest name in fashion, with velvet hipster suits, slinky jersey and an overtly seductive advertising style. After LVMH built a hostile stake in 1999, Gucci sold a controlling share to François Pinault's PPR, the group later renamed Kering, which took full ownership in 2004, the year Ford and De Sole left.

Frida Giannini, who rose from accessories, led the house from 2006, reviving the Flora print and the archive bags. In January 2015 Alessandro Michele, a long-serving accessories designer, was promoted to creative director and remade Gucci in a romantic, maximalist and gender-fluid image, with the Dionysus and GG Marmont bags and the backless horsebit Princetown slipper. Sales more than doubled in his first years. He left in November 2022.

Sabato De Sarno, from Valentino, was appointed in January 2023 and steered the house towards a quieter, sensual minimalism in a deep shade he called Rosso Ancora, but sales fell sharply and he departed in February 2025. In March 2025 Kering named Demna, then at Balenciaga, artistic director from July. He introduced his vision through the La Famiglia lookbook in September 2025 and showed his first runway collection in Milan in February 2026, under chief executive Francesca Bellettini.