Guccio Giovanbattista Giacinto Dario Maria Gucci (; 26 March 1881 – 2 January 1953) was an Italian businessman and fashion designer and founder of the fashion house Gucci.
As a teenager, in 1899, Guccio Gucci worked at the Savoy Hotel in London. Little is known about his early life circumstances and what influenced his move to London. Gucci was inspired by the elegant upper-class hotel guests and by luggage companies such as H. J. Cave & Sons. He returned to Florence and started making luxury luggage and accessories. He initially worked for the Italian luggage brand Franzi, where he gained experience in leather craftsmanship before establishing his own business.
In 1947, responding to post-war material scarcity, Gucci created the Bamboo Bag, using lightweight bamboo for handles, which became one of the brand's signature designs.
In 1951, Gucci opened their store in Milan. He wanted to keep the business small, and for nearly the entirety of his life, the company remained only in Italy. Two weeks before Guccio Gucci's death, the New York Gucci boutique was opened by his sons Aldo, Rodolfo, and Vasco.
The Gucci Museum (also called Gucci Garden) in Florence, is a fashion museum centered around the history of the company and Guccio Gucci.
In his final years, he lived near Rusper, in West Sussex, England.
Guccio Gucci adapted, or incorporated, the Gucci coat-of-arms, as recorded in the Archives of Florence, into the Gucci company's knight logo, which was trademarked by the Gucci company on 4 February 1955.
The blazon recorded in the Florence Archives is as follows: "Azure, three red poles bordered argent (white); a chief or, loaded to the right (dexter) of a wheel of azure, and to the left (sinister) of a rose of red." ("D'azzurro, a tre pali di rosso bordati d'argento; e al capo d'oro caricato a destra di una ruota d'azzurro, e a sinistra di una rosa di rosso.")
Translation: "Family of San Miniato; Giacinto Gucci and his brothers were admitted to the nobility of San Miniato in 1763 (on that occasion it is declared that the family had come from Cremona in 1224); Giuseppe di Gaetano Gucci, on the other hand, was admitted to the nobility of Fiesole in 1839. Francesco di Benedetto Gucci obtained Florentine citizenship in 1601, for the Golden Lion banner; Giovanni Battista by Giovan Piero Gucci obtained it in 1634, in the Scala banner."
Court documents, records, and subsequent rulings indicate that, because the Gucci family trademarked the coat-of-arms in 1955, the trademark transferred with the sale of the Gucci company by Maurizio Gucci to Investcorp, and subsequent company owners, in 1993. However, Uberto Gucci (b. 1960), the son of Roberto Gucci, and the grandson of Aldo Gucci, claims that the Gucci family still has the right to use the ancestral Gucci coat-of-arms.
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