“I still feel like a Gucci – in fact, the most Gucci of them all.”
Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci is out now, and with a cast like that, it’s sure to be a hit.
Starring Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Salma Hayek, Jared Leto, Al Pacino and more, the retelling of Maurizio Gucci’s scandalous murder is reaching an entirely new audience for the first time in years.
Gucci was killed in 1995 on the steps outside his office in Milan. Two years later, his ex wife Reggiani (portrayed by Gaga in the film) was arrested and convicted for her involvement in a highly publicised trial.
But who was the real Patrizia Reggiani, and what happened to her?
Who was Patrizia Reggiani?
Patrizia Reggiani is known widely as the Black Widow due to her involvement in the murder of her husband, Maurizio Gucci. She was convicted on charges of murder arrangement in 1998 and was sentenced to 28 years in prison. She was released in 2016 for good behaviour.
Reggiani grew up in poverty in Northern Italy in the 1950s. She never knew her father and was later adopted by entrepreneur Ferdinando Reggiani, who married her mother Silvana when she was 12-years-old.
In 1970, she met future husband Gucci at a party. The pair wed two years later and moved to New York where Reggiani became one of the city’s most well known socialites.
Two children and a decade of marriage later, Gucci told his wife that their relationship was over while on a business trip to Florence. Reggiani was granted an annual alimony of $1.47 million and although it was illegal to do so, continued to use the Gucci surname, stating: “I still feel like a Gucci – in fact, the most Gucci of them all.”
