Craftsman’s son Guccio Gucci was Born in 1881. In history, 1898 Guccio Gucci left Florence in Italy to travel to Paris and London, where he “gained an appreciation of cosmopolitan culture, sophistication, and aesthetics”. So in 1905 he returned to Italy and started selling saddles and saddlebags, and was quite successful. Guccio’s first talent was his craftsmanship in leather goods. He started out selling leather bags to horsemen in the 1920’s and progressed to luxury luggage as his clients graduated from equine transportation to horseless carriages. 1923. Guccio Gucci creates the label with the two “G”s. soon after that, Gucci becomes one of the most highly appreciated and most profitable luxury goods brands. In 1932 Guccio Gucci created the loafer shoe with a gilded snaffle. These are the only shoes to have found a place in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. In 1938 Guccio Gucci opened their first retail shop on the Via Condotti in Rome.

Gucci targeted the Far East for further expansion in the late 1960s, opening stores in Hong Kong and Tokyo. At that time, the company also developed its famous GG logo (Guccio Gucci’s initials), the Flora silk scarf (worn prominently by Hollywood yctress Grace Kelly), and the Jakie O shoulder bag, made famous by Jackie Kennedy, the wife of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

Gucci remained one of the premier luxury goods establishments in the world until the late 1970s; it didn’t take long before counterfeiters ravaged the company’s pomp by flooding the market with cheap knockoffs, further tarnishing the Gucci name. Meanwhile, infighting was taking its toll on the operations of the company back in Italy: Rodolfo and Aldo squabbled over the Parfums division, of which Rodolfo controlled a meager 20% stake.

By the mid-1980s, when Aldo was convicted of tax evasion in the United States by the testimony of his own son, the outrageous headlines of gossip magazines generated as much publicity for Gucci as its designs. In 1983 Rudolfo died of cancer, Maurizio his, inherited his share and took over running the business.

The family was ultimately incapable of turning the company around and in 1993 Investcorp, a holding company, bought them out. The company ultimately recovered with a new helm and a new designer, Tom Ford. In 1995, the company was bolstered by Ford’s new collection and its adoption by superstars including Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow. In this same year, Gucci became a publicly traded company.