No one outside the industry knew who 29-year-old Tom Ford was. Not many people inside it did, either. But marquee “name” designers wouldn’t touch the basket-case firm. Ford once told me he jumped at it mainly because it got him away from New York, where too many of his close friends had died from Aids. He also said that when he first got to Milan, the company was so hard up, just finding a photocopier that worked was challenging.

No wonder it took him a while to locate the key to igniting Gucci mania. His first catwalk show for the label – silk organza prom-shaped skirts decorated with flower pots – in the spring of 1995 was a misfire, even though it was charming and designs from it now fetch on eBay at least as much as they would have cost then. Ford sensed something was wrong. When a few editors – a handful of Brits, including me, who’d been rounded up by the efficient new London PR – headed backstage to congratulate him, he’d already fled.

But by that autumn, Ford had assembled his A-team – the French super-stylist Carine Roitfeld (who would later become editor of French Vogue) and the ebullient Peruvian photographer Mario Testino, who would, many years later, become engulfed in a #MeToo scandal. All that was to come. And no, I haven’t forgotten The Murder.

In the autumn of 1995, one of those once-in-a-decade moments was about to occur, when everything in fashion changes and stars are born. In an 180-degree deviation from the “flower pot” collection, Ford sent Kate Moss, Amber Valletta and Shalom Harlow down the catwalk in jewel-coloured velvet trouser suits, worn with satin shirts unbuttoned to the navel, smokey eye make-up and a whole lotta attitude. Turns out the key to firing up this Italian Sleeping Beauty wasn’t charm but sex. This time it wasn’t just a few editors who stormed backstage to air-kiss him, it was everyone.

For the next few years, Gucci was the world’s number one luxury fashion brand. Everyone wanted to wear it, from Madonna and Gwyneth to the Spice Girls (only Posh was allowed to because the Italian PRs didn’t realise her sobriquet was ironic). Ford became a superstar: clever, witty, ridiculously handsome.

Just as well, because the dizzying ascent of Ford’s Gucci distracted us from the festering underbelly that was the family. In 1995, Maurizio Gucci – the one who’d helped oust Aldo – was shot dead at the age of 46 by a hitman hired by Patrizia Gucci, Maurizio’s former wife.

She – who, by her own account, was northern Italy’s answer to Elizabeth Taylor – had met and wooed Maurizio in 1970. But, by 1995, she had been discarded by her once-infatuated husband. Driven crazy by his coldness, she flipped. With the help of a clairvoyant (played for laughs in the film by Salma Hayek, the real-life wife of François-Henri Pinault, chief executive of Kering – the conglomerate that now owns Gucci) she orchestrated the murder of her ex, for which she spent 18 years in prison.

One of the many extraordinary aspects of this Italian soap opera is how little it impinged on the fashion press back then. There was no social media bringing us minute-by-minute accounts of Patrizia’s latest bombshells in court, or accounts of what everyone wore. Instead, eyes were firmly on Ford and the increasingly glittering court of celebrities around him.

It’s really only now, with the release of the film, that many people are discovering the full story. Not that it’s a good film; in my opinion, it’s a gold-plated turkey. It’s way too long – and who decided, in 2021, that it was a good idea to have non-Italians speaking in hammy Italian accents? Pacino, you would have thought, could muster a convincing one, but no. Adam Driver’s is all over the place and Jeremy Irons gives up halfway through. Jared Leto appears to have based his characterisation of poor Paolo Gucci – the one with design aspirations – on Waldorf from The Muppets. Poor, by the way, is the operative word: Paolo died in poverty in London, in 1995, having burnt his way through the $42 million (£31m) he received for his Gucci shares.

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Lady Gaga’s charisma is by far the best thing in it and at least her Mauritanian accent is consistent throughout. She also wears Gucci, on-and off-screen, con brio. This last talent can’t have escaped many people because she’s been dressed head to toe in the brand for weeks as she publicises the film. Together with the captions at the end, which helpfully point out that Gucci is now valued at around $60 billion, you’re left with the impression that the relationship between filmmaker and subject was a bit too cosy for anyone involved to have the confidence to edit it properly.

The Gucci family is, by all accounts, none too happy either, albeit not for artistic reasons. They’re allegedly “considering their next steps”. Ominous words in Gucci land. This opera has legs.

The Telegraph, London

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Source: | This article originally belongs to smh.com.au

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