In the Name of Gucci Page 5

  “Dr. Gucci, this is the girl I spoke to you about,” Laurent said breezily. He used the title “dottore,” commonly employed as a mark of respect, regardless of qualifications. “Her name is Bruna Palombo. She’s trained as a stenographer, but with your approval, I’d like to start her downstairs.”

  My father stepped from behind his desk to shake my mother’s hand and flash her a disarming smile. Her eyes lifted to meet his as he asked how old she was. When she told him she’d be nineteen in October he looked her up and down and replied, “Very good. You can start next week.” She lowered her gaze, hardly believing her ears.

  The few moments she’d spent inside the Gucci store were all she could talk about once she reached home, as she regaled my grandmother and her friend Maria-Grazia with details of how opulent everything was, exclaiming, “You can’t even imagine!”

  “And what was the boss like?” Delia asked.

  “Kind,” she replied thoughtfully. “And with the bluest eyes…such eyes!” The job he’d offered her was, she told me, the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her in her young life. “I couldn’t wait to get started!”

  It was certainly one of the happiest days of my mother’s life when she took the orange M bus to work that Monday. Her life seemed to have taken on a filmlike quality as she rode past the Colosseum to Piazza di Spagna and imagined playing a young girl about town. By chance and good luck, she had somehow slipped through a portal and entered that other world she’d dreamed of as a little girl, the one inhabited by women who were free to do as they pleased and wear gowns like those her mother crafted.

  For her first few weeks she worked on inventory, stocktaking and pricing in a back room, and was delighted to be there. Whenever she could, she’d peer out onto the shop floor and watch with fascination as the cream of high society gathered beneath the crystal chandeliers. “The store attracted such interesting, elegant people, all of them clearly very well-off, many from the nearby embassies, and some movie people too. I was fascinated by how they dressed and the beautiful jewelry they wore.”

  Secretly, she studied their body language too, as well as the poise and grace of the staff, who hovered discreetly, ready to enthuse about the products and offer customers any assistance. “Buongiorno, posso esserle d’aiuto?” (Good morning, may I help you?) they’d politely ask, exhibiting the kind of etiquette insisted upon by the Gucci family since my grandfather’s days.

  My mother may never have heard the name before she started working there, but she quickly came to understand that it was one of the most esteemed luxury brands in all of Italy, with film stars such as Ava Gardner, Joan Crawford, Kirk Douglas, and Clark Gable frequently passing through its doors. The queen of England had even been a customer; as a fresh-faced princess, she had dropped into the Florence store. With a lady-in-waiting in tow, the young British royal was served personally by Dr. Gucci’s father and apparently told him, “There is nothing quite like this in London!”

  Before long, it was my mother’s turn to take to the shop floor, an event she regarded with as much trepidation as a model regards her first step on the runway. Although she made mistakes at first, she quickly endeared herself to staff and customers with her demure manner and sweet smile. When I look at photographs of her back then I can see why—she was stunning and her presence must have caused quite a stir. One Iranian diplomat apparently took such a shine to her that he became one of the shop’s most frequent visitors and informed her that, with her dark hair and porcelain skin, she had “the complexion of a Persian beauty.”

  Back home, she told my grandmother that working at Gucci was a dream come true, adding gleefully, “Every day there I feel like I’m in a movie!” As her confidence grew, she mimicked the more experienced girls and began to engage customers in conversation.

  My father, whom she knew only as “Dr. Gucci,” came and went—always at a breakneck pace. He worked at least six days a week and flew around the globe in what seemed like a punishing schedule. Papà didn’t even pause for the month of August—a long-standing Italian tradition. While the majority of Romans left the city to relax by the sea or in the cooler climates of the mountains, he remained at work, complaining that the rest of his countrymen were fannulloni, or “layabouts.”

  His fedora hat firmly on his head, a leather attaché case under his arm, my father sprinted from place to place but never failed to scrutinize everything as he passed through his stores. In a manner I have witnessed many times myself, he’d spark a tremor of fear among his staff whenever he stopped to adjust the slightest misalignment or check that a surface was gleaming. Every now and again, he’d lose his temper and flare up, bawling out some poor underling who’d been sloppy with a display or dared leave a fingerprint on glass.

  “Are you blind?” he’d shout. “Have you learned nothing here?” My mother told me that, before he mellowed with age, my father could be formidable. “He was like an earthquake. You could hear his voice throughout the store. People would quiver in their shoes!” She wondered at his outbursts but had been quite accustomed to them with my grandfather so she bit her lip and prayed never to be on the sharp end of his tongue.

  The moment a potential customer walked through the door, though, it was as if a veil had lifted and my father once again became the epitome of charm. Always willing to engage with those who appreciated what Gucci stood for, he’d shepherd them toward his latest creations. He left the mesmerized men and women in no doubt that—for a few moments at least—they were at the center of his world. “That man could sell his own mother to the Bedouins,” Mamma told my grandmother when she got home. “It’s incredible to see him in action.”

  What she didn’t realize was that my father was also watching her. Although he was hard on others, he was uncharacteristically gentle with her. Every time he saw her, he’d call out in his distinctive Tuscan accent, “Ciao, Nina!” endearingly using the tail-end of his nickname for her—Brunina. Sometimes he’d stop to see what she was doing or lift his fedora to greet her and ask how she was getting along.

  Happy in her work, Mamma blossomed both as a young woman and as a member of the sales force. With her own money and a growing sense of her own worth, she found Pietro’s controlling nature increasingly irritating, especially when he started warning her not to become “over friendly” with the customers. His insinuation angered her. She always behaved properly both in and out of the store and had never done anything untoward. After four (celibate) years together, surely she could be trusted! Their increasingly bitter arguments often ended with her dramatically calling off their engagement. Other times, she’d tearfully slip his ring from her finger and put it in the shoe box along with the nest egg they’d saved for a future she no longer wanted.

  She didn’t even have anyone to talk to about her concerns, as her best friend, Maria-Grazia, had moved to America for love, and she missed their conspiratorial times together. A salesgirl named Lucia was friendly but they weren’t yet close enough to discuss affairs of the heart. Then one day, somebody walked into my mother’s life who was to become her dearest friend.

  She was at the counter when she first spotted the handsome young man with dark hair in a very British-looking plaid duffel coat loitering outside the store. She stepped outside to ask if she could help. His name was Nicola Minelli; he had experience with retail in London and had recently returned to Rome. “I’d so love to work here,” he said with a mischievous smile that Mamma and I would come to know only too well. “Who should I approach about applying for a job?” Nicola spoke fluent English and had a certain flair about him. My mother was immediately impressed. She suspected from the start that he wasn’t interested in her, or any woman for that matter, and she was right. She invited him in and then let my father know that there was a presentable young man downstairs looking for work. She was told to send him up. Soon afterward, Nicola appeared in front of her beaming with gratitude. He would start the following week.

  Nicola was a godsend for Mamma—and
ultimately for me too. With his wicked sense of humor, his shop-floor gossip reduced my mother to fits of giggles. “See that man over there? He thinks that buying a woman the most expensive bag will make her love him. With a face like that, she’ll be gone as soon as she gets it!” It felt good to laugh again. There hadn’t been much of that in my mother’s relationship with Pietro lately.

  My father, meanwhile, continued to take an interest in his youngest salesgirl and one day, having stopped to see how she was faring, he suddenly reached out and stroked her cheek with the back of his hand. It was a spontaneous, affectionate gesture and one that made her blush, but she didn’t shy away. In fact, when he next came down to the shop floor on his way out to another meeting, her eyes found his and they locked for a moment in a way they never had before. He held her gaze and then he left.

  In December 1957, the staff was told by Laurent that a special customer would be making an appearance. Dr. Gucci was abroad but his wife, Olwen, was traveling the short distance from her home at Villa Camilluccia in the district of Monte Mario, one of the seven hills of Rome, to select some Christmas gifts for her English family and friends. Like everyone else who worked in the shop, Mamma was curious to see what the boss’s wife looked like. She was pleasantly surprised by the unassuming middle-aged Englishwoman, who seemed almost abashed by the attention everyone paid her. She didn’t personally serve Signora Gucci but said later that she seemed like “a wonderful lady” and “extremely nice.”

  One day in the early part of 1958 my mother was summoned to my father’s office and was immediately alarmed. “I worried that I’d done something wrong,” she told me. With great trepidation, she knocked on his door and found him sitting alone behind his desk. Alarmingly, his secretary was not in her customary position in the corner, as if he wanted a quiet word.

  He quickly put my mother at ease by telling her, “Ah, Bruna, my secretary Maria is getting married and will be leaving soon. I need to replace her and Laurent mentioned you trained as a stenographer, no?” She nodded. With that unnervingly beguiling smile of his, my father assured her that she’d be perfect to take up the position and could start the next day. He gave her no option but to accept.

  My mother, who was twenty years old and had worked in the store for a little over a year, rushed home that night to tell my grandmother the good news. “It will be greater responsibility and more money,” she assured her. “I think I have the skill set and I am sure I can learn a great deal from Dr. Gucci.”

  She needn’t have worried that she wouldn’t be up to the job. As soon as she sat at her narrow desk against the wall with its telephone, Olivetti stenotype, and narrow spools of paper, all that she’d learned in her course came flooding back. Sitting to one side of “Dr. Gucci,” she typed whatever he dictated. These were mostly reprimanding letters to the factory or to managers he didn’t feel were doing a good enough job. There were more considered missives to lawyers and banks, and many curt notes to his brothers or to his three sons—usually to berate them for missing a delivery deadline or overstocking raw materials. She noted that his letters to his family were always brisk and businesslike and that he never added anything warm or personal.

  She also came to understand that Papà was a man of routine who only stopped work for un caffè or lunch. He kept himself busy from dawn ’til dusk, but every time she looked up, she’d catch him gazing at her in a “gentle but special way.” She added, “I was very shy at the time and I didn’t know what to do.” His glances, she said, weren’t overtly sexual; it was more as if she entranced him somehow. Whenever his scrutiny became too intense, though, she’d find an excuse to leave the room and take a breather. “I had never received this kind of attention before and I just couldn’t concentrate on anything.”

  In time, it became apparent that she hadn’t just been chosen for her stenography skills and she began to feel uncomfortable about where this might lead. Having prided herself on efficiency, she was upset when her work suffered and many of the letters she typed needed correcting, but my father didn’t seem to mind a bit.

  My mother desperately wanted to keep her job but was wary of his glances. Nevertheless, she found herself arriving for work earlier and taking even greater care with her appearance. Pietro didn’t like that and became unreasonably possessive, which only sparked more rows. Before long, my father began to notice how often my mother wasn’t wearing her engagement ring, which secretly amused him, for he believed it showed his shy little “Nina” had some spirit after all. In time, he came to regard that ring as a temperature gauge for how her relationship with her fiancé was faring.

  The first gift my father left for Mamma on her desk after a trip to Florence was a bottle of perfume. More presents soon followed—silk scarves, cashmere sweater sets, the kinds of luxury items she would have loved to own but couldn’t possibly afford.

  “I cannot accept these, dottore,” she told him politely. “It wouldn’t be proper.” She also knew that there would be too many questions if she ever took them home.

  Flirting outrageously, my father teased her and refused to take them back. With a sigh, she began to stack them in a cupboard in his office where she hoped no one would find them. Before too long, that little cupboard was crammed full with one little package after another—a veritable treasure trove of my father’s growing affection. It became like a game to him. He’d bring her something home from every trip and then wait for her to decline it.

  As the sexual tension mounted, they accidentally bumped into each other one day while she was opening the mail by his desk. Taking her by the elbows to steady her, he suddenly pulled her toward him and kissed her passionately on the lips.

  “There was,” she told me, “a strange but not unpleasant feeling that I’d never felt before—not with Pietro anyway.” Caught unawares however, she dropped her bundle of letters, then stepped back and cried, “No, dottore! What are you doing?”

  “Mi fai soffrire! Mi fai sudare!” Papà announced boldly. (You make me suffer! You make me sweat!)

  Mortified, she ran from his office. As she splashed cold water on her face in the ladies’ room, she looked at her reflection in the mirror and touched her mouth with her fingertips. “I didn’t know what the kiss meant. What if anybody had walked in on us? Would Dr. Gucci dismiss me for not kissing him back?”

  She felt terrified and exhilarated all at once—an unwelcome mix of emotions in one so young. Smoothing down her dress and straightening her hair, she took a deep breath before she opened the bathroom door and headed back along the corridor.

  As she turned the handle and stepped inside to resume her secretarial duties, she sensed instinctively that nothing would ever be the same again.

  Even though I was raised in a Catholic family it still astonishes me to think that the year my father first kissed my mother, adultery carried a prison sentence under Italian law.

  Infidelity may have been quietly accepted as an integral part of the male psyche (especially in a country that forbade divorce), but it still had to be hidden. If any indiscretions ever came to the attention of the general public, then they often became a matter of high drama, pored over in the tabloid press.

  A few years earlier, news had leaked out that the married Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman was having an affair with the married Italian film director Roberto Rossellini and had borne him a child. The scandal that ensued led to Bergman’s denunciation by the US Senate as “an instrument of evil” and banned her from many public appearances. Rossellini too fell out of favor and when Bergman fled to Italy to be with her older lover—and gave him two more children—details of their respective divorces became the stuff of tabloid legend, which haunted them both for years.

  In a similar scandal, Fausto Coppi, one of the most idolized names in Italian sport, was the subject of public opprobrium because of his affair with a married mother of two. Coppi, who was known as “Il Campionissimo” (the Hero) after winning the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France cycling races in the
same year, was dragged out of bed along with his mistress, although only she—not he—would end up in prison.

  Even the Vatican became involved, publicly criticizing Coppi and orchestrating attempts to repair his marriage if only for the sake of his child. When he was tried for adultery in 1955 and the couple’s children were summoned as witnesses in court, Coppi was Campionissimo no more. The guilty parties were sentenced to two- and three-month prison sentences, though these were later suspended.

  Aside from her own high moral principles, my mother was only too aware that her boss was a public figure and that his feelings for his youngest member of staff would not only be condemned but widely publicized if they ever came to light. His persistent wooing was endangering them both, a dilemma that occupied her night and day.

  She was spooked from the moment he kissed her, something my father must have sensed. Her body language became tense to the point of rigidity, there were no more conspiratorial smiles, and she avoided eye contact and any physical proximity. He couldn’t get her out of his head, though. At fifty-three years of age and feeling trapped, he was no stranger to infidelity, but this time it was different. He had fallen hard for a woman young enough to be his daughter. It was an infatuation that ran bone deep and one that he seemed unable to fight even though he was aware of what he was risking—for him and for her.

  Disappointed with her response, he left Rome on one of his business trips and tried not to let the distance between them torment him. Thankfully, by 1958 he was able to take advantage of the new jet age, which changed intercontinental travel for good, making the rest of the world accessible within a single day. Never seeming to tire, Papà was one of the first passengers to travel to New York nonstop, using the first commercial flights such as BOAC’s de Havilland Comet and Pan Am’s Boeing 707. These suddenly shaved an astonishing nine hours off transatlantic crossings. Jet travel also offered the ultimate in luxury, with fine food and wines and even a chance for him to smoke his pipe or enjoy one of his Toscanello cigars.