AMERICAN AUTHOR TO TALK ABOUT AMAZING STORY OF “HOUSE OF GUCCI”
Finance and fashion are intertwined as the topic of our first program of the year on January 28, 2018, at Casa Italiana. Our speaker, Sara Gay Forden, lived in Milan for 22 years where she covered financial news which frequently intersected with fashion news and personalities. So Sara knew a lot about one of the legends of Italian fashion—the House of Gucci—and she decided to write a book covering the travails of one of the most storied Italian fashion houses.
The Oscar-winning director Ridley Scott has an option on the book and plans to make it into a movie, and it will no doubt be a hit. After all, Sara’s book is entitled, “House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour and Greed.” (Note: If you would like a signed copy of the book, please order it in advance and bring it to the meeting for signing by the author). To gather information for her in-depth book, the author interviewed 100 people over a two-year period. While in Milan, as a journalist with Dow Jones and Bloomberg, she covered business and financial news.
She normally covered stories like Chrysler/Fiat and Parmalat, but this being Milan, a city with some big personalities, sometimes the business and financial beats overlapped with the fashion world. In fact, even now, there are reports in the news about Gucci’s problems with the Italian tax authorities. Sara now lives in Arlington, VA, and told us that she is familiar with Casa Italiana since her daughter once took language classes there. She is also a board member of the Italian Cultural Society.
Explaining some of the highlights of her book, she noted that often some of the fashion brands were cheapened because too many family members who were at odds got involved, but in the case of Gucci, it was able to be brought back to the highend fashion world envisioned by its founder, Guccio Gucci. While it has had its up and downs, it was fortunate to have talented designers like Tom Ford. No doubt you will be fascinated to learn the details of the infamous trial involving the murder of one of the Gucci heirs, actually the founder’s grandson.
This story is stranger than fiction, and Sara covered the trial and wrote about it in detail.So please invite your family and friends, and make your reservation early to hear this most interesting talk. The deadline for paid reservations is January 24, 2018. We will also have a delicious lunch catered by Fontina Grille. The menu includes baked ziti with cheese, chicken piccata with lemon and capers, rice, house salad and dessert.See you there
! SAVE THE DATES:
2018 CALENDAR OF AMHS MEETINGS & EVENTS
•Sunday, January 28, 1:00 p.m., Casa Italiana.
•Sunday, March 25, 1:00 p.m., restaurant TBD
•Sunday, June 10, 1:00 p.m., Casa Italiana
•Sunday, July 22, 1:00 p.m., Casa Italiana
•Sunday, August 12, 3:00 p.m., Ferragosto Picnic
•Sunday, September 23, 1:00 p.m., restaurant TBD
•Sunday, November 11, 1:00 p.m., Casa Italiana