Having raised Maurizio alone from the age of five, when the boy's mother died, Rodolfo was extremely protective. The pair began dating - Maurizio reportedly asked Patrizia to marry him on their second date.īut their courtship wasn't all smooth sailing. He was just the quiet boy whose teeth crossed over at the front," Patrizia told The Guardian in 2016.įor Maurizio, it was love at first sight. He was on the cusp of finding a place in the successful fashion house founded by his grandfather, Guccio Gucci, in 1920s Florence. ( Erin Combs/Toronto Star via Getty Images) Maurizio Gucci (pictured) was the only son of Rodolfo Gucci, the youngest of Guccio Gucci's sons. Maurizio, the only son of Rodolfo Gucci, was shy, but quite the catch. In November 1970, Reggiani slipped on a red dress and headed out to a debutante party in the elite suburbs of Milan, where she caught the eye of an eligible young bachelor: Maurizio Gucci. "It was her only goal in life and became her life achievement."
"Patrizia always talked about how she wanted to marry a rich person and have a wealthy life," a schoolfriend told The Sydney Morning Herald in 1998. According to friends she had at the time, she was also busy making something of a reputation for herself in the social scene. "Patrizia became the living image of Silvana's ambition," Forden wrote in The House of Gucci.Īfter high school, Patrizia enrolled in a school for translators and became fluent in English and French. They moved to up-and-coming Milan where Reggiani later adopted Patrizia, doting on her and granting her every whim. Patrizia never knew her biological father, but by the time she was 12, her mother had left her first husband (a Martinelli) for a handsome trucking magnate, Fernando Reggiani. Scott's adaptation looks set to focus on how one ambitious woman, Patrizia Reggiani Martinelli, managed to muscle her way into the tight-knit family and threaten its legacy, setting off a "reckless spiral of betrayal, decadence and revenge".Īs Patrizia, played by Lady Gaga, puts it in the film's second tantalising trailer: "Gucci needs new blood … it's time to take out the trash." From daughter of a laundress to star of the social sceneīorn in the small northern town of Vignola in 1948, Patrizia grew up as the only child of Silvana Barbieri, a waitress and launderer. "This is a story where, if you made it up, it wouldn't really be believable, because there's so many twists and turns," Forden told the ABC. Based on Sara Gay Forden's 2001 book The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour and Greed, this is an impossibly true story.