WE’RE ALL GAGA FOR THE GUCCI STORY
Wilder than anything Hollywood could dream up, a new biopic of the opulent Italian fashion house is winning rave reviews… and enraging the real-life clan behind the famous couturier
DIAMONDS and furs, fast cars, private jets and loose morals abound as Lady Gaga plays murderously ambitious fashion queen Patrizia Reggiani in the movie House Of Gucci, which opens on November 26. “They had it all: wealth, style, power,” the star says. “Who wouldn’t kill for that?”
Italian design icon Gucci is a byword for classic elegance and sophistication. Yet the extraordinary true story of the battle for control of the fashion empire and its fortune seems more outrageous than anything a Hollywood scriptwriter could invent.
Patrizia hired a hitman to kill her ex-husband Maurizio Gucci, played on screen by Star Wars veteran Adam Driver. She had a reasonable explanation for why she didn’t pull the trigger herself: “My eyesight is not so good. I didn’t want to miss.”
Maurizio was shot dead as he entered his office in Milan one morning in March 1995. Patrizia was convicted of ordering the hit, and sentenced to 26 years behind bars.
“I became fascinated with the journey of this woman,” says Lady Gaga, 35, who was persuaded to take on the role by the opportunity to work with director Ridley Scott and a cast packed with Oscar winners: Al Pacino, Jared Leto, Jeremy Irons and Salma Hayek.
“I wish not to glorify somebody that would commit murder, but I do wish to pay respect to women throughout history who became experts at survival,” she added.
But the film, though winning rave reviews, has not been welcomed by the Gucci clan, least of all Patrizia, now aged 72, and at liberty after serving 18 years of her sentence.
“I am quite annoyed by the fact that Lady Gaga is playing me in the new Ridley Scott film without even having the foresight and sensitivity to come and meet me,” says the disgraced fashion queen. A cousin, coincidentally also named Patrizia Gucci, says of her kinfolk: “We are all truly disappointed. They are stealing the identity of a family to make a profit.”
SHE criticised the casting of Al Pacino as Aldo Gucci, complaining that in the film he appears as “fat, short, with sideburns, really ugly,” when he was in fact a tall, elegant, “very handsome man.”
Gaga, her blonde hair dyed dark chestnut, had her own vision, insisting: “Nobody was going to tell me who Patrizia Gucci was – not even Patrizia Gucci.”
With her trademark over-sized sunglasses and gaudy jewellery, Patrizia embodied the avaricious 1980s ethos of “greed is good”. She was a fixture in Italian society pages, dubbed “Lady Gucci” and “the Elizabeth Taylor of High Fashion”.
She sailed her 200ft yacht, Creole, between private islands in the Caribbean, and flitted in private jets between her Italian palazzos, Connecticut farmhouse, Saint Moritz chalet and villa in Acapulco, with nights at New York’s Studio 54 alongside Andy Warhol and Bianca Jagger. She spent £9,000-a-month on orchids alone.
“It’s better to cry in a Rolls-Royce than be happy on a bicycle,” she famously said.
Patrizia embraced wealth with the zeal of a girl born out of wedlock who grew up poor in Vignola, Northern Italy, but who infiltrated high society after her mother wed a wealthy freight tycoon. She married Maurizio Gucci in 1972, and had two daughters.
But Patrizia was doing more than her share of crying in her fleet of RollsRoyces. In 1985 Maurizio abandoned his family for a new young lover, and six years later was granted a divorce.
Patrizia was outraged at his offer of a paltry £480,000-a-year in alimony.Worse yet, a series of bad business decisions forced Maurizio to sell the Gucci brand to a Bahraini investment group for £150million: a betrayal that Patrizia feared would impact her alimony payments and child support. “Maurizio was spending money in a way that was out of control, and she was afraid that once he’d sold his stake, that money was finite and would dry up,” says Sara Gay Forden, who wrote the 2001 bestseller The House of
Gucci, on which the film is based. The iconic brand, founded by Maurizio’s grandfather Guccio Gucci, had long provoked feuds among the extended fashion clan.
One board meeting ended in bloodshed; another boardroom battle saw a Gucci cousin send his own father to prison.
“Blood was not thicker than water,” says Forden. “There were high stakes and, ultimately, ambition and greed drove them apart rather than bringing them together. There were repeated betrayals among the family that completely eroded any trust and ability to work together towards a common goal.”
Investigators initially suspected Maurizio’s murder “was a Mafia gam
‘Nobody was going to tell me who Patrizia Gucci was... not even Patrizia Gucci’
bling debt that had turned ugly,” says the author. Patrizia had openly spoken of wanting to see her ex-husband dead, but it took two years of investigations before a tip-off finally led to her arrest.
Dubbed the “Black Widow”, she was accused of paying around £275,000 to hire four accomplices, including her clairvoyant, to ensure her ex-husband’s demise.
MAINTAINING her innocence, Patrizia pleaded mental instability, brought on by surgery for a brain tumor in 1992. Ironically, immersing herself in the murderous role took a mental toll on Lady Gaga, in her first starring role since winning an Oscar for her 2018 remake of A Star Is Born. She went so deep into Patrizia’s character that she admits losing sight of reality. “I had some psychological difficulty at one point towards the end of filming,” says the singer, who for nine months only spoke using Patrizia’s Italian accent, whether on or off the set.
“I was either in my hotel room, living and speaking as Reggiani, or I was on set, living and speaking as her.” Taking a walk in Italy after two months of solid filming, she says: “I panicked. I thought I was on a movie set.”
Lady Gaga, real name Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, is of Italian heritage, and spent six months before filming perfecting her accent.
Singing legend and Gaga’s sometime duet partner Tony Bennett cautioned her about how Italians are too often stereotyped as villains by Hollywood, and urged her to seek a nuanced performance.
“I knew I was about to play a murderer,” she says. “I also knew how Tony feels about Italians being represented in film, in terms of crime. I wanted to make a real person out of Patrizia, not a caricature.” Filming in Italy, she says: “Every day I was able to plant my feet on the ground and know that I was in a place where my family lived before coming here [to America] and working hard so I could have a better life.”
The Gucci family is waiting to see what it fears will be “inaccuracies” in the finished film before deciding whether to sue. The Gucci brand is unlikely to pursue litigation.The movie is expected to boost sales, and the fashion label is now owned by Kering, whose CEO Francois-Henri Pinault happens to be Salma Hayek’s husband.
Patrizia Gucci was released from prison three years early in 2016 due to good behaviour. But she turned down the chance to get out five years earlier, on the condition that she got a job. She declined, saying that she had “never worked in my life, and am certainly not going to start now.”
Patrizia now lives in Milan in a mansion just behind the courthouse where she was convicted, surviving on an annual grant from her ex-husband’s estate. She can be found walking the streets with her pet macaw on her shoulder... the ultimate fashion statement for a former jailbird.
‘Patrizia turned down the chance to get out of prison five years early if she got a job... she declined to work’