Gucci
Gucci was founded in Florence in 1921 by Guccio Gucci, who opened his first shop selling leather luggage and equestrian goods, drawing on Florence's long tradition of craftsmanship. Over the following century the house developed a set of design signatures that became among the most recognised in fashion: the bamboo handle, introduced in 1947 using a technique borrowed from Japan; the Horsebit loafer, launched in 1953 and still in production today; the Flora print, created in 1966 by artist Vittorio Accornero for Grace Kelly; and the interlocking GG monogram that would become one of the most reproduced motifs in luxury fashion. The green-red-green Web stripe, drawn from equestrian girth webbing, and the Jackie bag, named after Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, further cemented the house's cultural reach. Through the latter half of the 20th century Gucci passed through family conflict, commercial crisis and creative reinvention under successive directors, Tom Ford, Frida Giannini and Alessandro Michele among them, each reinterpreting what the house had built for their own era. That continuity of recognisable signatures across a century of changing creative direction is what gives Gucci its particular depth as a house.
