Gucci shakes up design team again
 |  Giannini's designs have been hailed by management, fashion editors and customers. |
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MILAN, Italy (Reuters) -- Italian fashion house Gucci has shaken up its design team again, just two seasons after star designer Tom Ford left, handing the brand-building womenswear pen to its accessories stylist Frida Giannini.
Gucci said this week its women's ready-to-wear director Alessandra Facchinetti, one of three designers who took over from Ford last year, was leaving "after a disagreement with management."
Ford and former chief executive Domenico De Sole, who built Gucci into the world's third-largest luxury group, left after their own disagreement with managers at Pinault Printemps Redoute when it bought out Gucci last year.
Facchinetti, Giannini and men's designer John Ray all worked under Ford in the style teams which piece together the ready-to-wear collections that show twice a year in Milan and set trends from the top of the fashion set to the shopping mall.
In a statement, Gucci said Giannini would continue to design accessories for both men and women, which make up a huge chunk of the company's sales and profits.
Giannini's designs have been hailed by management, fashion editors and, most importantly, customers buying everything from entry-price twill hats to five-figure croc-skin tote bags.
Her pieces have featured prominently in Gucci's new advertisements, a solitary GG logo shoe or shimmering leather purse replacing the sultry models who used to sulk on billboards and magazine pages during the era of Ford.
Gucci Managing Director Mark Lee said on Tuesday that accessories designed for the Cruise and Spring collections had received an "enormously positive response."
Facchinetti's womenswear was softer than the sexy, skin-skimming creations Ford conjured up to transform Gucci from a tatty Florentine leather label torn apart by family feuding into one of fashion's most alluring objects of desire.
Gucci, whose sales have continued to boom post-Ford, did not say why Facchinetti had argued with management.
Giannini said she was "greatly looking forward to moving Gucci forward in women's ready-to-wear and maintaining the brand at the forefront of fashion."
Constant changes at any fashion company can create confusion among customers who build up loyalty to a label, its cut and the image it projects -- much of which depends on the women's ready-to-wear catwalk shows and magazine coverage.
There has been a string of designer defections lately as strong-willed creatives have left the multi-brand companies that snapped up their labels in the boom days of the 1990s but are still trying to squeeze profits out of smaller brands.
Milanese luxury group Prada lost both Jil Sander and Helmut Lang over the past year but handed their labels over to style teams who worked with them, hoping to achieve continuity rather than hiring a new star designer to take over.
