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Bags: hand or shoulder

24 Jan 2010 No Comments

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As Gucci celebrates its 85th anniversary with booming sales, Natasha Bita meets its new designer at a store opening in Hong Kong
‘HOW do you like to dress? Skirt or pants? Black or white? Shoes: flat or high? Belts: thick or thin? Bags: hand or shoulder?” In a luxury suite atop the Four Seasons Hotel, with vertigo-inducing views over Hong Kong, a Chinese journalist is giving Frida Giannini the third degree.
”How do you prefer to travel, by plane or cruise ship?” she demands to know of Gucci’s new creative director, who appears bemused by the barrage of inane questions. ”One question at a time, please,” the Italian designer pleads, in a loud, throaty voice that is incongruous with her frail figure and girlish looks. ”It is still early in the morning.”
Now the style scribe wants to know what Giannini takes on a plane trip. ”The iPod,” Giannini responds. ”A good book. Hydrating cream for the face. Sunglasses always; Gucci, of course. Maybe a pen.”
”Ooooh!” the journalist gushes, wide-eyed. ”Very intellectual.” Giannini struggles to keep a straight face: ”Yes, a pen because I need it for the immigration form.”
It is 9am and Gucci’s new creative star looks weary. She is winding up a three-week road trip through Asia, opening Gucci’s biggest store in Japan — a 3200sqm monolith in Tokyo — and a 1000sqm flagship boutique in Hong Kong, which opened on Monday.
The Asian fashion press seems fascinated by the blonde Italian picked to replace the inimitable Tom Ford, whose design flair and marketing genius transformed Gucci from a lacklustre leather goods label into one of the most glamorous luxury brands of the 1990s.
When the feisty Ford jumped ship in 2004 to start his own label, fashion analysts predicted the Florentine label would founder without its celebrity creative director. Indeed, Gucci initially replaced Ford with three designers — Alessandra Facchinetti for womenswear, John Ray for menswear and Giannini, who had defected from Fendi two years earlier, for accessories — then left things to a survival-of-the-fittest strategy of natural selection.
Facchinetti lasted only two collections, departing last year. Then, when Ray left in January, Giannini — whose revival of the flora print from the archives had proved a huge commercial hit — was put in charge. At 33, the Roman-born designer with the no-nonsense attitude joined Miuccia Prada and Donatella Versace as one of the few women at the helm of a blockbuster brand.
Her tomboy style, inspired by ’60s rock’n’ roll and ’70s disco glamour, and edgy accessories often featuring Gucci symbols such as bamboo and horsebit details and prints resurrected from the archives, has hooked younger customers. While Ford famously advertised the label by shaving a G into a model’s pubic hair, his successor is less confronting, preferring soft-focus images of girlfriends catching up for a day’s shopping.
”I think Gucci is still very edgy and modern,” Giannini says. ”Of course it’s different [from the Ford era]. I’m a different person and a woman. I’m looking a lot at women of my generation. My vision is a woman who is very strong, very confident, always optimistic and playful in a way; very sensual and powerful.
”Personality is a strong part of the style for a woman. She can have the dress of her dreams or the handbag of her desire, but most of all you recognise a woman’s style from her brains and her personality.”
Giannini says she tries not to design to suit herself, as it stifles her creativity, but admits her love of colour and distaste for vulgarity influence her designs.
”Don’t look at me today — when I am tired I always wear black because I don’t have to think in the morning about my wardrobe — but I really love the colours and the light in general,” she says. ”I would never wear something totally naked on myself, so I try always to be a little bit softer in that way. For sure, a part of my personality is reflected in what I do.”
Customers seem to appreciate Giannini’s feminine intuition. Last year, Gucci achieved record sales of E1.8 billion ($2.9 billion) — an 18.7per cent rise from 2004. In the first nine months of this year, sales surged another 18.5per cent, largely due to soaring sales in Asia and Australia.
Mark Lee, the American-born chief executive who is the brains behind the Gucci business, refuses to divulge the revenue from Australia. Gucci has five stores here — the most recent opening in Perth last June — and is planning an accessories boutique in Brisbane next year.
Gucci looks set to overshoot its stated aim, back in 2004, of doubling revenues within seven years. Already, its sales account for 20per cent of the turnover of its owner, the luxury goods group PPR, whose stable of labels includes Yves Saint Laurent, Sergio Rossi, Stella McCartney and Bottega Veneta. PPR chairman Francois-Henri Pinault this week predicted Gucci should be delivering half the group’s profits in a year.
Australia is lumped in with the Asia-Pacific, where sales jumped 28.5 per cent to E373 million last year. China has 10 Gucci stores, including four opened this year, with six more in the pipeline for next year. But that sales figure excludes Japan, Gucci’s biggest single market, where customers splurged E410 million in 54 stores last year (about $20 a household).
Sales in Australia mirror Asia’s double-digit growth and customers are on waiting lists to buy accessories from the Gucci anniversary collection, as well as GG-logo nappy bags for well-heeled mums.
”Australia is performing very well but I can’t give you specifics,” Lee says. ”It’s above expectations. It’s come back quite strongly in recent months. There was a moment in the last few years where it wasn’t performing as well.”
About 60 per cent of the Australian sales come from accessories. Handbags account for more than half of Gucci’s global sales, with a further 13 per cent from shoes. Clothing — which generates the most fashion hype — makes up just 12 per cent. Every Gucci item is crafted in Florence, the capital of Italian leather goods, where Guccio Gucci launched the label 85 years ago. Some of Gucci’s artisans have worked with the company for 30 years.
”Our first, most important value is our uncompromised commitment to fine craftsmanship,” Lee says. ”Let’s say it’s a combination of tradition and innovation. We have second and third-generation suppliers that have been supplying Gucci and producing leather goods going back to the beginning, the children and children of children who have inherited the [supply] business.
”This was not a brand that was built 10years ago. It has 85 years of history andheritage.”
Natasha Bita travelled to Hong Kong courtesy of Gucci.
GUCCI TIMELINE
* 1921: Guccio Gucci opens his first boutique in Florence.
* 1935: Gucci launches a woven hemp bag with a signature diamond print, after a League of Nations embargo against Italy forces him to find alternatives to leather.
* 1938: Gucci coins the slogan ”quality is remembered long after price is forgotten”.
* 1947: First bamboo-handled bag.
* 1953: Gucci’s eldest son Aldo leads an international expansion. The Gucci crest is registered as a trademark and the Gucci horsebit loafer is created. Guccio dies.
* 1961: The Jackie O bag is launched, and the GG logo is printed on canvas bags and luggage.
* 1966: The Flora scarf print is designed for Princess Grace of Monaco.
* 1975: First Gucci perfume.
* 1981: First ready-to-wear clothing paraded at the Pitti fashion shows in Florence.
* 1983: Maurizio Gucci, Guccio’s grandson and Aldo’s nephew, inherits half the company when his father Rodolfo dies, triggering a bitter family feud and nearly sending the company broke.
* 1989: Anglo-Arab holding company Investcorp buys 50 per cent of Gucci shares.
* 1990: Texan designer Tom Ford hired to design women’s ready-to-wear.
* 1994: Sales soar when Ford is promoted to creative director, starting the era of the celebrity designer.
* 1995: Maurizio Gucci is gunned down and ex-wife Patrizia Reggiani is eventually convicted of hiring the hit man. Long-time family adviser Domenico De Sole becomes Gucci chief executive.
* 1999: Gucci teams up with Pinault-Printemps-Redoute (now PPR) to fight a hostile takeover by rival luxury goods conglomerate LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton.
* 2004: Ford and De Sole resign after PPR takes over Gucci. American Mark Lee is made chief executive. Ford’s job is split among three designers: Alessandra Facchinetti for womenswear, John Ray for menswear and Frida Giannini for accessories.
* 2005: Facchinetti quits and Giannini takes over her job.
* 2006: Ray quits and Giannini is promoted to Gucci creative director, in charge of all clothing and accessories.

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