Gucci

Gucci is an Italian luxury house founded in Florence in 1921 by Guccio Gucci as a leather goods and luggage shop [2]. A century later it is one of the most prominent names in fashion, and since 1999 it has been a subsidiary of the French luxury group Kering. The brand remains active across fashion, leather goods and accessories, and its name extends into beauty through Gucci Beauty, a licensed fragrance and makeup business.

In beauty, Gucci does not manufacture its own products. It licenses its name to a third party, which develops and distributes Gucci-branded fragrance and cosmetics. That arrangement is currently the subject of a legal dispute, with the licence due to change hands in 2028.

Guccio Gucci (1881-1953) opened his first shop on Via della Vigna Nuova in Florence in 1921, selling imported leather luggage and fine goods. According to company accounts, he had worked as a bellboy at the Savoy Hotel in London, where he became taken with the luxury suitcases carried by the city's wealthy travellers [2]. That exposure shaped the firm's early identity as a maker of leather luggage and handbags rooted in Italian craftsmanship.

The house stayed in Florence, where it is still headquartered on Via Tornabuoni. Its early decades produced several products that became long-running signatures, including the Bamboo bag of 1947 and the Gucci loafer of 1952.

Through the mid-twentieth century Gucci built a reputation tied to a series of accessories and famous wearers. The Jackie Bag, introduced in 1961, was later named after Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. In 1966 Rodolfo Gucci and the illustrator Vittorio Accornero created the Flora scarf print for Grace Kelly — a floral motif that the brand's fragrances would draw on decades later.

Gucci moved into beauty-adjacent categories in 1972, when it launched Gucci Perfumes alongside its first watch. The 1990s brought a sharp change in direction: Tom Ford was appointed creative director in 1995, and the company listed on the New York Stock Exchange the same year [2].

Control of Gucci passed out of the founding family in stages. In 1988 Maurizio Gucci sold a 47.8% stake to the Bahrain-based investment firm Investcorp; in 1993 Investcorp acquired the remaining holding, ending the Gucci family's involvement in the company [2]. In 1999 the French group then known as PPR — now Kering — acquired a stake, bringing Gucci into the portfolio it still belongs to. Within Kering, Gucci sits alongside houses such as Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Brioni and Boucheron.

Gucci presents itself as a luxury house built on creativity, Italian craftsmanship and innovation, a framing it repeated around its centenary [1]. Its long-standing tagline, recorded as "Quality is remembered long after price is forgotten" [2], reflects a positioning centred on craft rather than price. The beauty arm extends that identity into makeup and fragrance framed as tools for self-expression.

Gucci Beauty's strongest presence is in fragrance, organised around several pillar franchises. Gucci Bloom, launched in 2017, is a white-floral line that the original scent's notes built around jasmine, tuberose and Rangoon creeper; it was composed by the perfumer Alberto Morillas with direction from then-creative-director Alessandro Michele. The Bloom line has continued to expand, with newer releases listed as recently as 2026. Gucci Guilty, spanning women's and men's editions, is a long-running pillar, while the Flora franchise — including Flora Gorgeous Gardenia — ties back to the 1966 scarf print.

Makeup was relaunched in 2019 under Alessandro Michele and produced by the licensee Coty [5]. The launch was led by colour cosmetics, anchored by the Rouge à Lèvres Satin range of 36 lipsticks in nude and red shades, with #25 Goldie Red presented as a signature shade. The line later widened into mascara, face powder, highlighter and foundation. By trade-press accounts, the relaunched cosmetics sold more than one million lipsticks shortly after release [5].

The 2019 makeup relaunch drew coverage in trade and beauty press, including the Moodie Davitt Report [5] and a product review in Hypebae [9]. Reporting at the time described the line's maximalist aesthetic, with gold and pastel palettes, art-deco detailing and a floral motif [5].

Gucci has faced several public controversies. In 2018 it released a sweater that critics said evoked blackface; the company issued an apology [2]. In 2019 members of the Sikh community criticised the brand for commercialising an $800 turban. In 2025 the animal-rights group PETA filed a lawsuit over alleged inhumane python-killing methods, and the European Commission fined Gucci 119.7 million euros, alongside Chloé and Loewe, for fixing resale prices [2].

A separate dispute concerns the beauty business itself. Gucci has licensed its fragrance and cosmetics to Coty, which has run the beauty operation since 2016. In October 2025 a Coty subsidiary, HFC Prestige, sued Gucci America, Guccio Gucci SpA and Kering SA in a UK commercial court, ahead of the planned transfer of the beauty and fragrance licence from Coty to L'Oréal [4]. Coty has said it will defend its rights until the contract's final day, while Kering has rejected the allegations. The licence is set to move to L'Oréal when Coty's existing agreement expires in 2028, under a 50-year deal [4].

Gucci is active. It operates as a Kering subsidiary, with a global retail presence reported at more than 500 stores, and Demna Gvasalia was appointed creative director in March 2025 [2]. The beauty business remains operational under the Coty licence, with continued fragrance launches — including a new Bloom release listed for 2026 — even as the licence prepares to transition to L'Oréal.