GZIP compression / caching with NGINX - python-2.7

Question

I've tried various methods of implementing GZIP on my nginx server, running a python/flask script. I'm trying to compress and cache static content, but nothing has worked so far.
my /etc/nginx/nginx.conf file looks like this:
user nginx;
worker_processes auto;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
events {
worker_connections 1024;
}
http {
log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
'$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
'"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log main;
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
server {
gzip on;
gzip_buffers 16 8k;
gzip_comp_level 4;
gzip_http_version 1.0;
gzip_min_length 1280;
gzip_types text/plain text/css application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript image/x-icon image/bmp;
gzip_vary on;
location ~* \.(svg|jpg|jpeg|png|ico|css|js)$ {
expires 365d;
}
}
}
What am I missing?