The fashion industry dominates the world in our generation. Everyone wants to present the best version of themselves and they use their clothes to make sure of that. People can express themselves through their style and create an impression. Throughout the years, there have been many fashion brands that have made breakthroughs in the clothing industry and have become recognized for their bold fashion items.. One of them is Gucci.
Established in 1921, Gucci is a luxury fashion brand that has a variety of products that include: shoes, accessories, and bags, all of which showcase their iconic logo – a bright red line between two dark green ones. It was found by Guccio Gucci in Florence, Italy. It is the highest selling Italian brand.
Gucci was born on March 26, 1881 in Florence. He was a porter at the Savoy Hotel in London. The alluring suitcases caught his eye and sparked an idea in him. He returned to Florence to join Franzi, a luggage brand. Later, he quit and started his own company. Following in his father’s footsteps, Gucci would get the finest italian leather and make saddles and other accessories for horseback riding. The equestrian influence is seen in Gucci’s designs today. The red and green stripes on the logo were inspired by the saddle details. Eventually, Gucci engaged his three sons- Aldo, Vasco, and Rodolfo- in 1938. The business later started expanding to Rome and, later, Milan.
In 1935, Gucci’s first boutique opened in New York despite the difficulties that the company had to face during World War II. Gucci passed away 15 days later but the company kept flourishing. In the next decade, Gucci kept growing as many celebrities started purchasing from the company. Rodolfo Gucci had a well known Italian illustrator design, a print for Grace Kelly, the princess of Monaco, as a present. The print has a diverse and vivid range of 37 colours and 43 types of flowers, insects, and plants. The print later became known as “Flora”. Two interlocked G’s were introduced around this time that would pay tribute to the founder, Guccio Gucci.
Grace Kelly wearing the Flora print
The brand started expanding towards the east, in Hong Kong and Tokyo. The golden era, like for most companies, came to an end as controversy arose among the brothers who were constantly fighting and Gucci came close to bankruptcy. Nonetheless, Tom Ford took control as the creative director and started pervading the brand with his ideas that were not seen on any other runway at that time. The 90’s had a minimalist trend and Ford designed slip dresses with glamorous stilettos and consumers were very fond of their fashion line.
Over the years it succeeded to become a famous and well known brand. However, in February of last year, Gucci released an $890 black wool balaclava jumper- also called the “blackface” sweater. February is black history month which is why the sweater received a lot of backlash. The garment was called “racist” and “Haute Couture Blackface”. Gucci later posted an apology and made sure that all the sweaters were “immediately removed from our online and physical stores.”
Since people were outraged by this they decided to boycott Gucci or burn whatever they owned from the company. Tariq Nasheed posted a tweet criticizing Gucci for the sweater and this only made it more infamous. Growth slowed down for Gucci and sales were low. Their sales totalled $2.6 billion and sales fell by 2% in North America.
Gucci’s creative director spoke out claiming that “racism” was never what the brand intended. The company launched a diversity scholarship program after the scandal. The program would run for four years to promote diversity. This was also widely insulted by people online.
People pointed out that this blunder could have been avoided if there were more people of colour hired in the industry. In an article by the Cut, published in August 2018, “What It’s Really Like to Be Black and Work in Fashion”, statistics showed that the dominant positions in the industry are rarely occupied by black people. An influential organization, the Council of Fashion Designers of America, has 495 members. Only 15 of them are black. Moreover, the first time Vogue published a black photographers work was in September of 2018.
Gucci did recover from this incident and now has a brand with a value of $17.63 billion. Their revenue is estimated at around $8.2 billion and they have employed around 12,979 people. Gucci has the most retail stores (in all the luxury brands), there are 520 stores worldwide. They are popular online as well, with nearly 19.5 million visits in 2019. Moreover, they have a firm instagram following of 40.6 million people.
With times changing around the world it’s important to make sure that everyone feels confident and bold in their style. Small mishaps can create issues and conflict among consumers and businesses. Therefore, being in touch with the consumers and changing trends is important to make sure no one is offended and so that businesses can maintain a strong relationship with their followers and customers.Furthermore, hiring more people of colour will create a more diverse environment that could definitely solve these issues and satisfy more demand as more fashion trends could be satisfied.
