Maurizio Gucci and Patrizia Reggiani, a fatal divorce

It didn’t miss. The 1995 assassination of Maurizio Gucci, one of the heirs to the prestigious, rowdy and lucrative Italian fashion house, became the highlight of a big-budget film. Released in 2021, House of Gucci is directed by Ridley Scott, with Lady Gaga in the role of sulphurous Patrizia Reggiani. And sulfurous is an understatement. In 1998, she was found guilty of ordering the murder of her ex-husband and sentenced to twenty-nine years in prison.

When we talk to him about House of Gucci, Giovanni Maria Dedola, one of Patrizia Reggiani’s lawyers, says how impressed he is by the resemblance between the singer and her client: “It’s the exact same person!” » It is undoubtedly one of the only truths of a film which knits the ingredients of success: love, money, luxury, jealousy, up to murder. At least that’s the opinion of Allegra Gucci, one of the couple’s two daughters: “It’s Hollywood-made fiction, but it’s not the truth. » In March, she released Fine dei giochi (“End of the game”, Piemme editions, untranslated), in which she tells another story.

In Milan, on March 27, 1995, Maurizio Gucci, recently retired from the family business and very wealthy – two years earlier, he sold his shares in the company to the investment fund Investcorp, founded in Bahrain, for 170 million dollars –, performs under the sun and on foot the short journey between his home and his office. He pushes open the imposing gray wooden door, climbs the few red marble steps that lead to the entrance hall, when his ambush assassin shoots four shots. The first bullet hit him in the right hip, the second below the left shoulder, the third in the right arm. The last, worn at the level of the right temple, killed him instantly, at 46 years old. The only witness, the doorman of the building escapes, shot in the arm.

Fake tunes by Elizabeth Taylor

Between Maurizio and Patrizia, the story had however started well. It’s a Gucci. The name, for all Italians, is synonymous with luxury and power, money and elegance. Founded in 1921 by his grandfather, Guccio Gucci, the Florentine house specializes in travel items, before creating an empire in fashion accessories, shoes, watches, handbags, perfumes and, of course, in the ready to wear. The brand is part of the great history of Italian fashion, punctuated by the sagas of families who value year after year the traditional know-how of the Peninsula – the houses of Fendi, Prada or later Versace.

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