Patrizio Di Marco

Talk about perfect timing. Less than three weeks after taking her bow at Gucci's Fall 2013 show, Frida Giannini has given birth to a girl.

Giannini and her partner, Gucci CEO Patrizio di Marco, delivered their new daughter on March 2 and named her Greta. A spokesman from the brand told Vogue UK, "Both mother and baby are doing well."

Giannini and di Marco announced they were expecting a child last November, but the excitement of the new addition hasn't slowed down the designer's schedule. She's expected to go on maternity leave until it's time to work on her upcoming menswear collection, which will be presented in June.

Photo via Gucci's Facebook page.

Gucci creative director Frida Giannini announced on Wednesday that she's expecting a child with the brand's CEO, Patrizio di Marco.

This will be the first child for the couple, who have been together since shortly after di Marco was named Gucci's CEO in 2009. Giannini will take a bow at both her upcoming men's show in January and her Spring 2013 women's show in February. Afterward she'll take maternity leave until her next men's show in June.

Though the two have generally been discreet about their relationship, di Marco said last year that their love is "very serious. When in life you choose someone to be with . . . someone you are looking to spend your life with — well, this is a match of minds and souls."

>> Frida Giannini and Gucci CEO Patrizio di Marco have publicly announced that they've been a couple for over two years. Although many fashion brands are or have been run by couples — Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli, Valentino Garavani and Giancarlo Giammetti, Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge — this marks the first time the couple is not the owners of the brand but rather its employees.

Giannini, 38, who became Gucci creative director in 2006, and di Marco, 49, who joined as CEO in January 2009, became romantically involved on a trip to China; both were divorced at the time. After their relationship changed, di Marco says he went to Rome to speak to François-Henri Pinault, the chief executive of PPR, which owns Gucci; Giannini also spoke to Pinault, separately. Both say they were fully prepared to leave Gucci if required, but Pinault “was very supportive.”

Pinault says that he is not concerned if the relationship were to go south: “If something changed and one left, well, we would deal with that. . . . This is a family business – it was started by my father, and I know how that can feel and seem to the outside world, but I also know how much that makes you be strict with yourself. And I knew them, so I knew if anything this would make them more demanding with themselves.”

>> Since Frida Giannini took the helm back in 2004, Gucci has been criticized for being too commercial, even earning comparisons to Zara at one point. The label's chief executive, Patrizio di Marco, who joined the company at the beginning of last year, agrees: "Gucci was going too mass-market, too commercial, too much on opening price points."

While having less expensive, aspirational products boosted Gucci's sales for several years, the brand had hoped to hit €3 billion ($3.9 billion) in sales by 2011. Last year, sales were €2.27 billion. Di Marco blames the fact that buyers for Gucci's own stores (which account for 70 percent of the brand's sales) were choosing cheaper, logoed items over Giannini's designs, causing her designs to be lost and an erosion of the brand's exclusivity. During the slump, aspirational purchases also slowed sharply, resulting in Gucci being hit harder than Louis Vuitton or Hermes.

So di Marco has set out to elevate the brand and shed it of its cheapening image. The brand's Spring 2011 collection focuses on "sophisticated seduction" and marks the debut of a new line of heritage-inspired handbags drawing from the brand's equestrian history. "Every single brand in the universe, especially in this industry, is talking about heritage — even when there's no heritage, no history," says di Marco, who noted that he supports Giannini's use of archives for inspiration. "Some designers say, 'The archives are old and I know best. That's the most pretentious attitude possible. This company is about icons."

He added that Gucci will place less focus on the cheaper "GG" monogram canvas bags, which saturated the market previously, and more emphasis on its new offering of "vintage" bags such as the New Bamboo bag, an updated $2,000 version of a 1947 bag with a bamboo handle, and the $3,000 New Jackie leather bag, which takes its inspiration from a purse made famous by Jackie Onassis. Gucci store buyers have also been given strict guidelines on what they can choose for their boutiques — instead of so many logo bags, prime positioning and focus will go towards the new heritage-inspired products.

>> While some luxury brands are just now getting on the ecommerce train (and some still have yet to do so), Gucci, which launched its US ecommerce site in 2002, is now taking its online shopping experience to the next level — creating what it terms a "luxury digital flagship store."

Frida Giannini has been working on the newly rolled-out experience for the past 18 months, and Gucci president and CEO Patrizio di Marco says: “The destiny of the gucci.com digital flagship store is that it will become our highest-volume store in the world.”

They're also taking runway livestreaming to the next level »

Bottega Veneta has become something of an obsessive secret for the most discrete members of the luxury class thanks to Tomas Maier's design restraint. Except of course that secret has helped sales soar as a heretofore ignored class of fashion consumer, those who askew flash and logo, flocked to the label.

This may seem a strange comparison but Bottega Veneta is American Apparel for the rich. It is basic, understated, comfortable, and constantly updated for the times without sacrificing its inherent classicism. And whether you are hipster or socialite, artist or corporate titan, one needs beautiful basic Platonic ideal of clothing fashion. Add to that fact that Maier is from a class of designer's designers for whom less is more, a well placed dart here, a tricky seam there, and you have a brand that is enjoying a new golden age. Perhaps this subliminally inspired Meier's Spring 2009 collection as the tawny, coppery and yes golden tones of the collection evoked a kind of rich Roman Holiday inspired pastoral life of simple beauty. Given that Rome has given us so much of our classical ideals of beauty we can only say well played.

On another note, do not forget that Rome is also home to some of our most perverse political machinations. That Machiavellian playbook is very much in effect at these Italian fashion houses now that Patrizio Di Marco, Boettga's former CEO is taking over Gucci from Mark Lee. We would like to know what internal Brutus sacrificed the extremely capable Lee. And we can only hope there is not a Brutus lurking for Meier. It would be a shame to lose this kind of genius for some political animals ambitions like we have lost Lee.