Fiat luxe
the lovechild of two of italy’s cultural luminaries, the new 500 by Gucci infuses Fiat’s beloved retro car with cool, Florentine glamour, debuting at this year’s Festival of speed W o r d s M a n s e l F l e tc h e r / P H oTo G r A P H Y c h r i s F loy d
fig.1
The original Fiat 500 is the car that everyone loved, and its contemporary counterpart, which went on sale in 2007, is similarly appealing. It’s this emotional appeal that allows the 500 to cut across the usual social stratification that’s implied by a person’s choice of car. Everyone likes Fiat 500s, which is why they are popular even in areas where people could easily afford to drive something much more expensive. London’s Notting Hill is just such an area, and there was recently a unique Fiat 500, with a matte-finished olive-green paint job, parked on the chi-chi Kensington Park Road. The car, which has an Italian number plate, belongs to Lapo Elkann {fig.1, with Gucci’s creative director, Frida Giannini} who, along with his brother John and sister Ginevra, represent the
current generation of the Agnelli family, who founded Fiat at the end of the 19th century. Elkann could drive any car he wanted, not least because his family owns a considerable stake in Ferrari, but he chooses to drive a Fiat 500 (as well as a babyblue Ferrari 599 and an army-green Jeep Grand Cherokee). Speaking at the launch of the new 500 by Gucci, Elkann – whose creative agency Independent Ideas also works with fashion houses such as as Diane Von Furstenberg, Diesel, Levi’s and Swatch – said, ‘This is a car that I feel affection for personally and nationally. This car, to me, is like a girlfriend. The 500 is my favourite car ever, and when I was manager of the Fiat group it was a car I always wanted to come out. It’s the cherry on the Fiat cake. Whoever you are, wherever you’re from,
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it’s a car that puts a smile on your face. There are very few cars like this in the world.’ One of the draws of the 500 is the degree to which customers can make it their own – it’s possible to specify all the available options in half a million different combinations. However, the newest version of the car, the 500 by Gucci, is only available in one of two glossy finishes: white or black. Both have a green and red stripe running the length of the car just under the window line. The green and red are the Gucci colours, and, not coincidentally, also the colours of the Italian flag. Italy’s pre-eminent luxury fashion house, Gucci, is currently enjoying unprecedented success under the aegis of its Roman creative director, Frida Giannini. Much of her success is down to her canny understanding of the need to balance fashion’s eternal pursuit of the future with some strong echoes of a more glamorousseeming past. The clothes that Giannini designs are contemporary versions of dresses and suits from the Sixties and Seventies, and so the allure of the new Fiat 500, itself a recreation of a motoring icon from an appealing era, must have been very clear to her. This spring, the 500 by Gucci was unveiled at a party at Milan fashion week. Earlier the same day Giannini, sitting alongside Lapo Elkann, explained how the car came about. ‘This product was born out of a wonderful bowl of spaghetti with tomato and basil in the Rome residence of Lapo, so it’s very Italian,’ smiled Giannini. She and Elkann are clearly good friends, as they paid each other extravagant compliments, but it’s notable that she said, ‘I trust him. If he has something in mind it’ll come true, it’s not just a conversation over lunch.’ So it was that the 500 by Gucci went from a conversation over pasta to a project that saw Fiat’s Centro Stile design studio collaborate with Giannini’s creative team. Elkann recalled, ‘Frida and her team came up with millions of ideas. When you see the car you see 100 of the concepts deployed on the product – of the countless ideas only 100 came true, but the team showed an energy, verve and passion towards the product that you can feel and taste.’ Giannini explained, ‘We didn’t want to create a new shape, because it’s so right, we wanted to customise it as if with make-up – it’s full of rich details. Of course the price isn’t the base price for the 500 – it is
‘The team showed an energy, verve and passion towards the product that you can feel and taste’
slightly higher – but it’s not impossible. It’s still affordable.’ The car, while mechanically identical to a regular 500, is extravagantly different in its details. The exterior is decorated with the red and green stripe, exclusive 16-inch wheels with Gucci’s interlocking ‘G’ logo on the hubcaps (which also have diamanté-studded spokes), a different Gucci logo on the boot and door frames as well as those specially developed paint finishes, sparkling black or pearlescent white. On cars fitted with 100HP engines the brake calipers are in Gucci’s deep green, but the inside of the car has received the most attention. The seats are finished in leather and stamped with a repeating Gucci logo, the belts are in green and red, and the logo on the gear stick is a further sign of the Florentine fashion house. Just as the Fiat 500 makes sense to Giannini, so Elkann is familiar with fashion. ‘I’m a suit freak,’ he says. ‘I’ve tested all the tailors from Savile Row to Milan and Naples.’ As a man who regularly appears at the very top of the best-dressed lists, and who was named by fashion designer Tom Ford as the contemporary male icon, he understands the power of image. On the day of the 500 by Gucci unveiling, Elkann wore a tan-coloured suit with wide peak lapels made by Savile Row tailors Huntsman over a chunky roll-neck sweater, with the collar of his shirt peeking above the neckline. However, the thing that makes him an icon isn’t just the outfit, but the ease with which he wears it. Elkann couldn’t look more comfortable if he was in a pair of pyjamas and a dressing gown. By contrast Giannini, sitting next to him, is the epitome of starched chic, her model physique all the more sensational given the demands of her job. Elkann, an Italian patriot despite having been born in New York, adores the Italianness of the Gucci-designed 500 and is pleased it’s arriving in 2011 as his country celebrates 150 years of unification. ‘Gucci and Fiat are two global Italian brands, but they didn’t forget where they came from, Gucci from Florence, and Fiat from Turin.’ Then he adds, ‘I’m very proud to be Italian. Italy has a potential that many other countries would dream of having.’ It’s certainly a potential fully realised in the new 500 by Gucci, which will be launched this year at Goodwood’s Festival of Speed. Mansel Fletcher is Style Editor of British Esquire
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