About

Antonella Centra is the most senior lawyer and global general counsel of premium Italian fashion brand Gucci, which has a worldwide legal department based in its home country of Italy providing a localised but globally-minded legal and compliance support function. Centra presides over a team comprised of 28 members that has undertaken a recent redesign that, in her own words, enables the team to ‘meet new business requirements and maximise results in an innovative way’. The culture of the legal team is one that closely follows from the high level of involvement in Gucci’s overall brand strategy, which, owing to Centra’s position on the executive committee comes ‘straight from our CEO and creative director’. Centra states that the qualities the team is driven by are ‘innovation, creativity, disruption, ethics and speed’. Being represented on the executive management team, the legal department is able to play a defining role in corporate strategy and business plans, the result being that the legal function could be ‘immediately receptive’ to the Gucci brand’s “renaissance” which focused on the adoption of a new, ‘innovative and disruptive’ approach to business. Centra details how Gucci’s in-house legal team contributed ‘significantly’ in the achievement of these new corporate objectives by ‘playing a crucial role in leading and implementing key projects across functions’, showing not on their business savvy but ability to reach in and be cross collaborative with other business units. Able to recognise business opportunities even in times of challenges, Centra explains how a potential trademark infringement case was avoided and turned into a marketing opportunity. Typifying its reputation as business-minded function, Centra’s leadership doesn’t solely focus on the amount of transactions they preside over, but in fact creates and implements ideas and methods that ‘support our design office and business teams in order to avoid disputes that may arise’. That said, due to the nature of the fashion and clothing market and the prestige with which the Gucci brand is held in, recent cases fought against retailers who infringe on Gucci’s trademark and design portfolio have been ‘fought vigorously’ and successfully by this outstanding legal function.