DALLAS, Aug 8, 2006/ FW/ --- Gucci enters the Spring 2007 womenswear season with a high note. Business Week just listed is as the top brand in Italy, ranking #46 in the 100 Best Global Brands. And last week, the Gucci Group posted to €1.623 billion, or $2.045 billion sales, a 20.3% rise compared to the same period last year.

That Gucci is Italy’s top brand, which in turn makes it the country’s top fashion brand, is heartwarming. The company that was started by Guccio Gucci in 1920 as a leather goods accessories shop hit its stride during the 1950s, becoming global on the strength of the now classic ‘bamboo’ handle and the moccasin with the distinctive Gucci snaffle-bit. It became a household word during the 1960s.

But the 1980s was not very kind to the Italian brand. Racked by scandals, bad press and court litigations, it was sold to Investcorp, an Arab multinational in 1993. In 1994, Tom Ford took the creative helm of the brand, and together with Domenico De Sole, they made the Gucci brand the chicest of the chic for over a decade.

In 2003, the company changed hands once again, and PPR, a French retail empire owned the controlling interest of the company. By that time, it was already called the Gucci Group, as it owns several high fashion labels – Gucci, YSL, Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Boucheron, Sergio Rossi and Bedat and Co.

It was Bottega Veneta that contributed the most to Gucci Group’s 20.3% rise in sales for the first half of 2006 with a whopping 79% rise in sales to €116.8 million, or $147 million, powered on by the label's rapidly expanding retail network.

The Gucci label’s growth was not to be sneezed at either at 21% rise in sales to €978.9 million, or $1.233 billion.

Perhaps, the Fall 2006 collection presented last February in Milan was a harbinger of this golden time. Mostly eveningwear, the clothes are like liquid gold from the wide-legged pantsuits to the golden fur coats and the slinky gold lamé evening gown.

Feminine and sexy, the whole collection screams red carpet affairs not just for Hollywood celebrities but for the millions of Gucci fans out there.

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