Patricia Gucci | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1 March 1963 London, England |
| Education | Aiglon College |
| Occupation(s) | Founder and Creative Director of Aviteur |
| Children | Isabella, Victoria, and Alexandra |
| Father | Aldo Gucci |
| Relatives | Guccio Gucci (grandfather) Paolo Gucci (brother) Rodolfo Gucci (uncle) Maurizio Gucci (cousin) Patrizia Gucci (niece) |
Patricia Gucci (born 1 March 1963) is an Italian designer and member of the Gucci family. She is the only daughter of Aldo Gucci and granddaughter of Guccio Gucci who founded the company in 1921. [1]
Patricia worked at Gucci America as Fashion Coordinator and Brand Ambassador in the US and Asia. In 1983 she became the first woman to be appointed to Gucci’s Board of Directors. In 2018 she founded the Luggage and Travel Accessories brand Aviteur. [2]
She is the daughter of Aldo Gucci, the patriarch of the Gucci fashion empire, and Bruna Palombo; the two met when Bruna was working at the Gucci flagship store in Rome. [3] He was still married to the mother of his three sons, and adultery was illegal in Italy, so they lived in England. [4] They married when Patricia was twenty-four years old and stayed together until his death in 1990.
In 2016, Patricia published a memoir, In the Name of Gucci, [4] in which she revealed that she did not learn that her father had another family and wife until she was ten years old. [4] Her elder half-brother Paolo Gucci broke away from the family firm and tried to set up a rival company. [5] In Aldo's last years, he was involved in a tax scandal and his sons, together with his nephew Maurizio, squeezed control of Gucci away from him. Aldo, in turn, made Patricia his sole heir. The Gucci family business was fully sold in 1993 by Patricia's cousin Maurizio Gucci. [3]
She is the founder and creative director of Aviteur, an Italian luggage and travel accessories brand established in 2018. [3]
She has three daughters, Alexandra, Victoria, and Isabella. [3]
Gucci was married to Joseph Ruffalo, a music executive who worked with Prince and Earth, Wind & Fire. [6] [7] Gucci divorced Ruffalo in 2007, because he had sexually abused her daughters Alexandra and Victoria since the early 1990s. [1] [8] In 2020, Patricia Gucci was named in a lawsuit brought forward by her daughter Alexandra for the childhood abuse by her stepfather. [1] In 2025 she was dropped from the lawsuit and Alexandra's stepfather was found liable. [9]
In 2016, Patricia Gucci published a memoir, "In the Name of Gucci," about her life and her parents' relationship, which began in secret and lasted 30 years. Aldo Gucci, her father, was already married and had three sons when he met her mother, a sales clerk in the Rome store; they began an affair at a time when adultery was illegal in Italy.
