In the Name of Gucci Page 8

  His Brunicchi was pure. She was his. He would never allow anyone to touch her.

  To her enormous relief, my father’s passion for her didn’t wane. On the contrary, he inundated her with ever more fervent messages of love and tokens of affection. In the coming days, they met whenever they could—often in his apartment—and he never once gave her cause to question his devotion.

  When he set off on one of his trips, he sent one telegram after the other continually declaring his love. She could be in no doubt of his ardor, and his stream of messages helped to appease any fears she might have had about what he got up to when he was abroad. As she still tried not to think too much about where their relationship would lead, her life unfolded in a way that she would never have imagined possible.

  All seemed near perfect until the day in November 1958 when my twenty-one-year-old mother realized she was pregnant. It was only a month since the Pope had died. As the consequences of what this meant dawned on her, she began to unravel. The disgrace of having his baby would be devastating, and in the repressive climate that they lived in, the damage to their reputations would be irreparable.

  In these enlightened times when a woman’s right to choose is widely respected and abortion is no longer taboo, it is astonishing to think of the dreadful predicaments unmarried women faced in those days. Although abortion was legalized in Britain in 1967 and in the US in 1973, it wouldn’t be legal in Italy until 1978. Even then, women were excommunicated from the Church for carrying out the operation. Prior to that, and in virtually every country, newspapers ran scaremongering stories about women who’d died having the operation illegally. Even today in Italy a high percentage of doctors refuse to perform the procedure on the grounds of conscientious objection.

  What all this meant for my mother in Rome in 1958 was that if she’d chosen to get rid of the baby and had been reported to the authorities, she could have been sent to prison for up to five years. Papà might have been similarly incarcerated for fathering an illegitimate child. Mamma had already paid a heavy price for being with him but from that moment on this emotional debt was about to increase tenfold.

  When she ended up losing the baby anyway she was almost relieved. Afterward, back at home, she was doubled up in bed with pelvic cramps and a rising fever from an infection. When my grandmother saw the state she was in, she put it down to food poisoning, and it was only when she went out that my mother was able to telephone a friend to get some help.

  By the time she was reunited with my father several days later, she looked pale and exhausted as she described what she’d gone through. “It was terrible, Aldo,” she sobbed. “I have never known pain like it.” Breaking down completely, she added, “Why did this happen? What is to become of us? How can we ever be happy?”

  He was so horrified that he kissed her repeatedly and promised everything would be all right. “Bruna, I will never allow you to suffer like that again,” he assured her. In spite of his words, something inside my mother changed forever. My father had robbed her of her innocence in so many ways that she no longer recognized herself. Where was the sweet smiling “Nina,” the young woman who’d hoped for so much but now seemed locked into a relationship with no future?

  Her sense of helplessness was compounded by the sudden reappearance in Rome of Pietro, who’d returned briefly from Holland. He looked more handsome than ever and when she accepted a ride in his little red MG convertible, driving through the streets of Rome without a care in the world, she realized how much she’d given up.

  Full of emotion, she went to my father’s apartment and told him, “I’m living a lie, Aldo. I can’t take it anymore. This is not who I am. I should have stayed with Pietro and lived an honest life.”

  His response was so heartfelt that she didn’t know what to say. Dropping to his knees and bursting into tears, my father told her that he couldn’t face the prospect of a life without her. “I promise, Bruna, farò di te una regina” (I will make you a queen), he told her emphatically. “With you at my side I can conquer the world. Without you I am nothing.”

  Once again his colorful prose melted her heart. No one else loved her like he did. None other could express himself so beautifully. She knew that come what may, he’d protect her. Flattered as she’d been by Pietro and the brief fantasy of a carefree life, there was really only one man for her and his name was Aldo Gucci.

  Having an affair with a married man must surely be one of the more complicated and heartbreaking situations a woman can find herself in. Helplessly at the beck and call of a lover, she has to wait for him to slip away from family commitments to spend a few precious hours with her before he returns to his other life.

  In Italy a mistress is referred to as l’amante and that is precisely what my mother became, although she’d be the first to say that my father was married more to his work than he ever was to his wife. It was the business that demanded most of his time and attention. “Gucci was the other woman,” she told me. “It was always Gucci, Gucci, Gucci.”

  Meanwhile, she carried on working in the office from which he ran his growing empire but they would soon relocate to larger premises a few doors down at number 8 Via Condotti. Similarly, in New York, he acquired the space he’d had his eye on for some time at 694 Fifth Avenue, on the corner of East Fifty-Fifth Street. The new store was in the prestigious Beaux Arts building that was also home to the St. Regis Hotel, sister to the Waldorf-Astoria.

  Occasionally, he took my mother with him on trips, always careful to book separate rooms to avoid any unwelcome gossip. More frequently, he took her to lunch or dinner at their usual haunts, followed by evening trysts at his apartment. Young and in love, she accepted whatever time he could offer even though most of her friends were getting married to men their own age and starting families. Her life was on hold.

  The irony was that although she hated the cloak-and-dagger nature of their relationship, she was never happier than in Papà’s company. Nor did the age difference seem to be an issue. He was so charismatic and young at heart and had such boundless energy that the fact he was in his fifties didn’t bother her in the least. Neither did she demand anything more from him, appreciating that he could never divorce. Not only was it legally impossible (divorce wasn’t fully ratified in Italy until 1974), he and Olwen were parents and grandparents at the head of a family he’d spent years portraying as dynastic, noble, and beyond reproach. The scandal would have been unthinkable.

  Long before my mother knew any different, if she ever worried about Olwen my father would reassure her that his wife had all she could possibly need. “She lives in a comfortable house, has a summer home in England and three boys who adore her. What more could she want?”

  Similarly, he made sure that his sons, Giorgio, Paolo, and Roberto, were adequately provided for, even if it was clear to her that he rarely showed them any affection. Employed by the company and destined to take over one day, these young men were much nearer her age—between five and eleven years older than she and by then with seven children of their own. Giorgio lived and worked in Rome but the others were in Florence. My mother saw them occasionally when they visited the Via Condotti store, when she would nod and say, “Buongiorno,” along with everyone else.

  “I never gave them much thought,” she said. “They were part of your father’s life and I had nothing to do with them. He kept it that way—entirely separate—and never discussed them with me unless it was in connection with a business matter or a letter I had to type.”

  And so, almost a year into their affair, my mother had settled into the strange routine of her tangled love life. She woke each morning in her childhood bed, caught the bus to work, and spent her days in the office, seeing my father whenever she could. He made their affair seem so effortless after such an extensive chase that as long as she didn’t fret about the future or worry too much about being found out, she could manage. Mamma had become reconciled to her strange new world. Or so she thought.

  To renew his commitme
nt and honoring a promise made to her after she had told him she’d have had a better life with Pietro, my father bought her a new apartment in the Balduina district of Rome, not far from Villa Camilluccia. With a huge terrace and several bedrooms and bathrooms, plus a smaller room for a maid, it was more than double the size of her family’s apartment and was hers to do with as she pleased.

  “He went and bought it for me without thinking twice, just like that!” she said. “I was amazed and it made me feel special, but really, it was too much.”

  Excited as she was about her new home, she knew that she’d then have to confess the truth to her mother. With my aunt Gabriella busy being a wife and mother and my uncle Franco relocated to Sardinia, there was only my grandmother left to lie to. She needn’t have worried, though. My grandmother Delia was anything but foolish and had suspected for some time. “I’ve known all along,” she told her daughter. “And I knew you wouldn’t be happy with Pietro. The only question I have for you, Bruna, is—are you happy now?” When she saw her face light up as she was able to speak freely of the man she loved, she had her answer. Showing nothing but compassion and understanding, the woman I never had a chance to meet promised to keep my mother’s secret.

  When Mamma took Delia to view the Balduina apartment for the first time my grandmother was quite overwhelmed by the prospect of living in such a beautiful, airy place with so much space and light. “It was beyond my mother’s wildest dreams,” Mamma told me. “She wandered around feeling lost. She said being there would feel as alien as living on the moon. She knew then that I was in good hands and was happy that this was now my life.”

  It was certainly different from the somber atmosphere they had left behind at Via Manzoni. For propriety’s sake, they decided to tell friends and family that, as a valued member of staff, Mamma had been offered the use of a manager’s apartment at a discounted rate. It was behind those doors that my grandmother met Papà for the first time, and—much to my mother’s relief—they liked each other immediately. They had been born in the same year, which must have felt somewhat strange. When my grandmother saw how he behaved with her daughter she sensed his total devotion.

  “That man will only leave you when he dies,” the amateur clairvoyant predicted, yet another prophecy that would ultimately come true. When my mother told me what she said I remember thinking how amazingly insightful she must have been. Of all my grandparents, she was the one I would have liked to meet the most.

  Once my parents happily settled into their new home, this period marked a whole new phase in their lives. Thanks to my father, they were worry-free and far more relaxed with each other now that my mother no longer had to invent the truth. When Papà gently suggested that she leave her job at Gucci, she had flashbacks to Pietro’s desire to control her, but my father was very persuasive. He insisted it would be easier for them away from prying eyes in the store and he promised to take care of her financially. “It would also mean you’d be free to travel with me,” he reminded her, “and you’d be able to wear all the things you’ve been hiding away all this time!” In the face of such assurances, even though she was reluctant to give up her independence, she eventually agreed.

  My father continued to shower her with gifts: handbags, shoes, clothes—he even bought her a record player so she could listen to her favorite singers, including Domenico Modugno, Claudio Villa, and other Italian singers of the time. He bought her jewelry and rings—“So many rings! I love rings,” she said, adding wryly, “Except the pearl one Pietro gave me.”

  In what seems to me now like such a romantic gesture, my father flew her to Paris for the weekend, booking a suite at the Hôtel de Crillon off the Champs-Élysées. He drove her to Naples in his Jaguar and they took the ferry to Capri, where—during the island’s “golden years”—they lay by the pool at the Hotel Quisisana and strolled through the streets, stopping in the famed Piazzetta for an aperitivo. Starting a tradition he maintained for years, my father bought her a tiny gold charm in virtually every city they visited, which she used to create a charm bracelet that I eventually received for my forty-fifth birthday. Like my father’s signet ring, I treasure it.

  He mentored her and made her feel like his wife in every respect—other than in name—and even though he took her to the most beautiful places in the world she still felt like she was on the outside looking in. “I was like an ostrich. I spent the best part of my life with my head buried in the sand,” she told me. “I was there but I wasn’t there. I saw but I didn’t see. I never really appreciated the value of these experiences until I was much older.”

  My father continued to profess his love for her, which he described as “pure and vast.” Nor did he stop buying her presents, everything from furs to jewelry, the likes of which she’d only ever seen on customers in the store. Most of it, however, remained packed away in boxes or on hangers in her wardrobe, never to be worn in public.

  “Where’s the gold and diamond necklace I bought you, Bruna?” was my father’s all-too-familiar refrain; he was irritated that she only wore it when he asked her to. “Why don’t you put it on?” Then he remembered that she’d never been the showy type, preferring simplicity to anything too flamboyant. Even her new apartment proved too much for her, so she had half of it closed off, downsizing it to suit her needs and to make the place accogliente, or “cozy.” When my father offered to buy her a new car, she spurned the idea of a coupe or luxury sedan, opting instead for a used Ford.

  Her modesty was a refreshing change for a man so often surrounded by ostentatious, overdressed women in the glamorous circles in which he mixed. Whenever he returned from a cocktail party or black-tie dinner he rarely talked about it, preferring to focus his attention on her. Despite his position as head of an emerging luxury brand, he didn’t consider himself a “celebrity” in the modern sense and always lived quite frugally. I suppose that, as the son of parents who’d known hardship, he’d inherited some of their judiciousness.

  In fact, there was little about my father that was what most people might think of as “Gucci” at all. He happened to create an extraordinary phenomenon but he didn’t do it through any kind of notion of, “Look at me, aren’t I fabulous?” He did it through his own vision and by maintaining the high standards his father had insisted upon. He had an instinctive flair, a mix of creativity and entrepreneurship, that found its perfect time. Like an artist born to paint, his canvas was fashion and his brushstrokes were the products he knew how to coordinate with a unique sense of style.

  People often find it hard to separate what they see in one of our stores from our day-to-day life. Although my father had Villa Camilluccia with its staff and formal dinners, it was more for his family and entertaining than anything else. He wasn’t a snob and he didn’t flaunt what he had. Generally speaking, his private life had little in common with the glamour and opulence associated with the brand. Once he came home, he’d take off his jacket and settle down to a plate of pasta. He was perfectly happy with a glass of Chianti and simple, honest food rather than caviar and champagne.

  Wherever he happened to be, whenever he was apart from my mother in those early days he’d miss her so badly that he would pick up his fountain pen once more. A loving note would arrive with a huge bouquet of flowers, or he’d pour out his heart in blue ink. “I feel your presence in everything I do and the decisions I make,” he wrote from Manhattan. “You once told me to stop writing ‘nonsense’ and that I should tell you about what I was doing etc. Well, what I am doing is thinking about you incessantly, wanting you, and dreaming of all the things I would like to do with you.”

  During the especially warm summer of 1960, he was back in Rome by her side while most everyone else fled the heat of the city as usual. The hottest day of the year was August 28, when the mercury reached 99 degrees Fahrenheit. It was also the week that the games of the XVII Olympiad opened in the Eternal City. Highlights of the games had been televised since the Berlin Olympiad in 1936 but this was the first time they wer
e broadcast in the United States and around the world. A new stadium had been built for the occasion and several sites, such as the Basilica of Maxentius and the Appian Way, were used for sporting events to show off the city’s most historic treasures.

  While much of Rome remained closed for the annual holiday—including the Gucci store—my mother had the luxury of watching the world’s greatest sporting extravaganza on a brand-new black-and-white television set. Papà had bought it for her so that she and her mother could watch their sceneggiati—popular Italian films based on classic books broken down into bite-size episodes.

  My grandmother, who no longer needed to work, lay listlessly on the couch, weakened after a virus that had debilitated her for several weeks. Pale and suffering from the heat and with high blood pressure, she nevertheless insisted that she was on the mend. It was only when she deteriorated dramatically during one of the hottest afternoons, September 1, that Mamma fully appreciated the gravity of her condition.

  “Bruna—I’m not feeling well,” my grandmother panted breathlessly, so my mother telephoned my father’s office immediately, only to discover that he was in a meeting and couldn’t be reached. By the time he received her message and sent his own doctor, Mamma was found collapsed by my grandmother’s side.

  Delia was dead. After a lifetime of hard work and a difficult marriage, her heart had simply given out. She was fifty-five years old. She’d buried her husband and seen her children grow up and make their own way in the world. Living with my mother in Balduina was meant to be a bright new start and her sudden demise must have come as a terrible shock.

  Orphaned and effectively without any family to speak of after her estrangement from her sister and brother, my mother wouldn’t be comforted. Dosed up with sedatives, she took to her bed and was far too distressed to attend the funeral, which was held at the same cemetery where my maternal grandfather, Alfredo, was interred.