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Agnelli's fashion sense stood out, even in a country like
Italy, where dressing well and fashionably is generally perceived as very
important. His style has inspired and influenced menswear throughout the years
in Italy and around the world. In his retirement speech, Milanese fashion
designer Nino Cerruti named Agnelli as one of his biggest inspirations along
with James Bond and John F. Kennedy.Esquire magazine named Agnelli as one of
five best dressed men in the history of the World.
Agnelli's dress style was a featured a foundation of classic
suits. He had a large number of bespoke Caraceni suits, which were of very high
quality and classic design. It was the accessories and the way they were worn
that made Agnelli stand out as a "fashionisto". He is known for
wearing his wristwatch over his cuff and conveyed sprezzatura, the Italian art
of making the difficult look easy.
Apart from his dress sense, Agnelli's homes were work of
designers and looked like studies in elegant living. Additionally, he was
interested in football, sailing, fast cars, Cresta tobogganing, skiing and
horses.
Agnelli's nickname "The Rake of the Riviera"
inspired the classical menswear magazine The Rake
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Giovanni "Gianni" Agnelli, 12 March 1921 – 24 January 2003), also known
as L'Avvocato ("The Lawyer"), was an influential Italian
industrialist and principal shareholder of Fiat. As the head of Fiat, he
controlled 4.4% of Italy's GDP, 3.1% of its industrial workforce and 16.5% of
its industrial investment in research. He was the richest man in modern Italian
history.
As a public figure, Agnelli was also known worldwide for his
impeccable, slightly eccentric fashion sense, which has influenced both Italian
and international men's fashion.
Agnelli was awarded the decoration Knight Grand Cross of the
Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 1967 and the title Knight of Labour
(Cavaliere del lavoro) in 1977. Following his death in 2003, control of the
firm was gradually passed to his grandson and chosen heir, John Elkann.
Agnelli was born in Turin, but maintained strong ties with
the village of Villar Perosa, near Turin in the Piedmont region. His father was
the prominent Italian industrialist Edoardo Agnelli and his mother was Princess
Virginia Bourbon del Monte, daughter of Carlo, 4th Prince of San Faustino, head
of a noble family established in Perugia. Agnelli was named after his
grandfather Giovanni Agnelli, the founder of the Italian car manufacturer Fiat.
His maternal grandmother was American.
Gianni – as he was known to differentiate from his
grandfather, with whom he shared his first name – inherited the command of Fiat
and the Agnelli family assets in general in 1966, following a period in which
Fiat was temporarily "ruled" by Vittorio Valletta while Gianni was
learning how his family's company worked. Agnelli raised Fiat to become the
most important company in Italy, and one of the major car-builders of Europe.
He also developed the accessory business, with minor companies also operating
in military industry. Agnelli and Fiat would come to share a common vision,
Agnelli meaning Fiat and, more sensibly, Fiat meaning Agnelli.
Agnelli was educated at Pinerolo Cavalry Academy, and
studied law at the University of Turin, although he never practiced law. He
joined a tank regiment in June 1940 when Italy entered World War II on the side
of the Axis powers. He fought on the Eastern Front, being wounded twice. He
also served in a Fiat-built armoured-car division in North Africa, where he was
shot in the arm by a German officer during a bar fight over a woman.[citation
needed] After Italy surrendered, due to his fluency in English, Agnelli became
a liaison officer with the occupying American troops. His grandfather, who had
manufactured vehicles for the Axis powers during the war, was forced to retire
from Fiat, but named Valletta to be his successor. Gianni's grandfather died,
leaving Gianni head of the family but Valletta running the company. Fiat then
began producing Italy's first inexpensive mass-produced car.
Prior to his marriage on 19 November 1953 to Donna Marella
Caracciolo dei principi di Castagneto – a half-American, half-Neapolitan
noblewoman who made a small but significant name as a fabric designer, and a
bigger name as a tastemaker– Agnelli was a noted playboy whose mistresses
included the socialite Pamela Harriman and even Jackie Kennedy. Though Agnelli
continued to be involved with other women during his marriage, including the
film star Anita Ekberg and the American fashion designer Jackie Rogers, the
Agnellis remained married until his death of prostate cancer in 2003 at the age
of 81. He was universally considered to be a man of exquisite taste. He left
his extraordinary paintings to the city of Turin in 2002.
His only son, Edoardo Agnelli, was born seven months after
the couple's wedding, in New York on 9 June 1954. Gianni gave up trying to
groom him to take over Fiat, seeing how the boy was more interested in
mysticism than making cars (he studied religion at Princeton University and
took part in a world day of prayer in Assisi). Edoardo, who seemed burdened by
the mantle of his surname, committed suicide on 15 November 2000 by jumping off
a bridge near Turin; Gianni himself joined police at the scene. Edoardo never
married, but he had one son (born out of wedlock in 1973) who was not
recognized by Gianni Agnelli.The Agnellis had only one daughter, Countess
Margherita Agnelli de Pahlen. She is the mother of John Elkann, Lapo Elkann and
Ginevra Elkann.
Agnelli became president of Fiat in 1966. He opened
factories in many places, including Russia (at the time the Soviet Union) and
South America, and started international alliances and joint-ventures (like
Iveco), which marked a new industrial mentality. In the 1970s, during the
international petrol crisis, he sold part of the company to Lafico, a Libyan
company owned by Colonel Qaddhafi; Agnelli would later repurchase these shares,
however.
His relationships with the Left, especially with Enrico
Berlinguer's Communist Party, were the essence of the relationships between
labour forces and Italian industry. The social conflicts related to Fiat's
policies (some say politics) always saw Agnelli keeping the leading role; in
the 1980s, during the last important trade union action, a dramatic situation
in which a strike was blocking all of Fiat's production, he was able to
organise the march of 40,000 workers who broke the pickets and re-entered the
factories.[citation needed] This marked the demise of the power of trade
unions, which to this day have not recovered their influence on Italy's politics
and economy.[citation needed] In the 1970s, Fiat and its leaders were attacked,
mostly by the Red Brigades, Prima Linea and NAP.[citation needed] Several
people working for the group were killed, and trade unions were initially
suspected of hiding some of the attackers in their organizations, though the
same terrorists later targeted trade unionists like Guido Rossa. Agnelli's
politics and the events at Fiat in the 1970s were the subject of Dario Fo's
1981 satirical play Trumpets and Raspberries.
Agnelli was named senator for life in 1991 and subscribed to
the independent parliamentary group; he was later named a member of the
senate's defence commission.
In the early 2000s, Agnelli made overtures to General Motors
resulting in an agreement under which General Motors progressively became
involved in Fiat. The recent serious crisis of Fiat found Agnelli already
fighting against cancer, and he could take little part in these events.
Agnelli was also closely connected with Juventus, the most
renowned Italian football club,[8] of which he was a fan and the direct owner.
His phone calls, every morning at 6 am, from wherever he was, whatever was he
doing, to the club's president Giampiero Boniperti, were legendary.
Nicknamed L'Avvocato ("The Lawyer") because he had
a degree in law (though he was never admitted to the Order of Lawyers), Agnelli
was the most important figure in Italian economy, the symbol of capitalism
throughout the second half of 20th century, and regarded by many as the true
"King of Italy". A cultivated man of keen intelligence and a peculiar
sense of humour, he was perhaps the most famous Italian abroad, forming deep
relationships with international bankers and politicians, largely through the
Bilderberg Group, whose conferences he attended regularly since 1958. Some of
the other Bilderberg regulars became close friends, among them Henry Kissinger.
Another longtime associate was David Rockefeller (yet another Bilderberg
regular), who appointed him to the International Advisory Committee (IAC) of
Chase Manhattan Bank, of which Rockefeller was chairman; Agnelli sat on this
committee for thirty years. He was also a member of a syndicate with
Rockefeller that for a time in the 1980s owned Rockefeller Center.
Later life and death
Agnelli stepped down in 1996, but stayed on as honorary
chairman until his death. Giovanni Alberto Agnelli, the son of Gianni's younger
brother, Umberto Agnelli, died of a rare form of cancer in 1997 at age 33 while
he was being groomed by his uncle to head the Fiat Group. John Elkann, the son
of Gianni and Marella's daughter, Margherita, was expected to take over Fiat
after Gianni's death. However, Umberto became chairman, taking over from Paolo
Fresco. Fresco had diversified the Group's holdings, but Umberto refocused its
activities on its auto and mechanics division. He then brought in Giuseppe
Morchio to mastermind a rescue strategy for the company. Morchio was expected
to continue to run the Fiat Group as it attempted to claw its way out of its
latest financial crisis. However, upon Umberto's death, Ferrari chairman Luca
Cordero di Montezemolo was named chairman, with Elkann as vice chairman;
Morchio immediately offered his resignation. His successor Sergio Marchionne
was an expert of reorganisation who between 2002 and 2004 led the Swiss
certification company Societé Générale de Surveillance (SGS).
Gianni Agnelli died in 2003 of prostate cancer at age 81 in
Turin.
Fiat-owned Scuderia Ferrari named their 2003 F1 contender
the F2003-GA, in tribute to Agnelli.
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