| Paolo Gucci | |
| Birth Date: | 29 March 1931 |
| Birth Place: | Florence, Kingdom of Italy |
| Death Place: | London, United Kingdom |
| Children: | 5 |
| Partner: | Penny Armstrong (1990–1995)[1] |
| Father: | Aldo Gucci |
| Relatives: | Guccio Gucci (grandfather) Rodolfo Gucci (uncle) Maurizio Gucci (cousin) |
| Occupation: | Businessman and fashion designer |
Paolo Gucci (29 March 1931 – 10 October 1995)[2] was an Italian businessman and fashion designer. He was the one-time chief designer and vice-president of Gucci.[3] He is credited with helping design Gucci's famous double G logo.[4]
Paolo Gucci was born on 29 March 1931 in Florence, the son of Olwen Price and Aldo Gucci, who was the son of Gucci founder Guccio Gucci.[2] He was the chief designer of Gucci in the late 1960s. In 1978, his father named him the vice-president of Gucci.[3]
In 1980, Paolo secretly launched his own business using the Gucci name without telling his father, nor his uncle Rodolfo. When they found out, they were both infuriated and fired him from Gucci in September 1980. In addition, his father Aldo sued him, threatening to cut off any Gucci supplier who signed on with Paolo.[5]
In 1984, seeking revenge, Paolo got his father Aldo removed from the company with the help of his cousin Maurizio Gucci, who had recently become the majority shareholder.[6] In addition, Paolo also tipped off the IRS about his father's tax evasion. In 1986, Aldo was sentenced to one year and one day in prison for tax evasion.[7] [8] [9] In 1987, Paolo sold all his shares in Gucci to Investcorp for $42.5 million.[10] Due to divorce proceedings and bad business advice, he filed for bankruptcy in 1993.[6]
In 1952, Paolo Gucci married Yvonne Moschetto and had two daughters with her, Elisabetta and Patrizia.[11] Their marriage was not dissolved, having obtained a one sided Haitian divorce against Yvonne, which was not recognized by the Italian courts. In 1977, under the ruse of the Haitian divorce, he married a Brit, Jenny Puddefoot, an unsuccessful Operatic hopeful who spent a good deal of time serenading a stable of horses at Millfield Stables in Yorktown NY. Paolo had one daughter with her, Gemma Gucci.[12] In 1990, he separated from his second wife Jenny Puddefoot after having an affair with 19-year-old Penny Armstrong; Puddefoot commenced a NY divorce action despite not being a US citizen, the belief behind that was NY offered a better divorce bounty. Paolo had two children with Penny out of wedlock, a daughter Alyssa and a son Gabriele.[1] In 1994, he chose to spent five weeks in prison for failing to pay alimony and child support to Jenny Puddefoot [for their daughter] who did everything via NY court orders that resulted in Paolo's inability to earn an income via his right to design under his own name and sought to have him incarcerated. He eventually decided, on his own terms knowing he was going to jail, to show up in court in NY -to the surprise of Puddefoot and her attorneys, but also to the Judge who had him taken into custody as soon as she saw him in the courtroom. There was no need for the arresting fanfare because he wanted to go to jail and get it over with. He was sent to the Bronx County House of detention, where he was a model 'prisoner', well liked by guards and inmates alike, and that irony reigned then as it does now. The Judge treated him so poorly the next day, requiring his counsel, to specifically ask the Judge in court if she could obtain permission for her client to change into clean clothes she brought for him.. Begrudgingly, she said yes. This was the same Judge that handled the divorce of Donald and Ivana Trump and who enjoyed getting as many high profiled cases as she could, and in the belief of some, enjoyed the resulting divorce carnage. It was this yoke upon his design contracts that he obtained bad business advice to go bankrupt in NY; ironically the advice stemmed from a former Italian taxi cab like driver who came to America and made enough money to live in the far-outermost edges of Greenwich, CT in a tacky modular, two story home, who sought to enrich his pockets by attempting to garner as many design contractual rights as he could, by various methods, one being initially separating Paolo from competent legal counsel through what was believed to be deception as to the true results of bankruptcy. The bloodbath that resulted in those proceedings ate up almost everything in his estate, very much like a lion downed by a pack of hyenas, but he had high hopes of getting out with enough assets to bring his famous design skills back to the fashion world. Those hopes were curtailed by his death and then GUCCI AMERICA swept in to purchase those rights in bankruptcy to destroy them. One good thing that resulted from that purchase was GUCCI AMERICA shutting down the efforts of Puddefoot and her daughter from licensing goods using the Gucci name. Paolo Gucci died in London on October 10, 1995, at age 64 of chronic hepatitis in the midst of NY divorce proceedings where he was litigating the void marriage with Puddefoot, even though NY law held consistently, void marriages are void from their inception. .[10] [13]
The blazon recorded, as recorded in the Archives of Florence,[15] is as follows: "Blue, three red poles bordered with silver; a head of gold, to the right a blue wheel, and to the left a red rose." ("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.[16] However, Uberto Gucci (born 1960), the son of Roberto Gucci, the nephew of Paolo Gucci, and the grandson of Aldo Gucci, claims that the Gucci family still has the right to use the ancestral Gucci coat-of-arms.
In the film House of Gucci (2021), Paolo Gucci is played by American actor Jared Leto.[17] In April 2021, Paolo's daughter Patrizia Gucci criticized Leto's portrayal (unkempt hair, lilac suit) of her father in the film, stating that she "still feels offended".[18] Despite this, Leto's performance received praise from film critics and earned him nominations for a Critics' Choice Movie Award and Satellite Award—both for Best Supporting Actor.[19] [20]