Versace (Q1802)
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Italian luxury fashion company
- Gianni Versace
- VERSACE
- Gianni Versace S.p.A.
- Gianni Versace S.p.A
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Versace |
Italian luxury fashion company |
|
Statements
1 January 1978
1997
Creative Director
2009
creative director of Versus
designer
2019
designer
2009
accessory department
1996
designer
head designer (women's ready-to-wear and haute couture collections)
1990
joint venture
The spring 1997 Versus show was Donatella Versace’s starting point for spring 2025. It was fashion’s pre-internet pre-history when elevated runways were still commonplace, as were the photographers who lined up against them. Can you imagine the clamoring today, if front-row content makers couldn’t get their iPhone shots?Versus was Donatella’s baby, a diffusion collection she designed in her own image, while her older brother Gianni took care of the main line. At a press conference, she said she was drawn to spring ’97, which was shown in New York in October ’96, because “it was a joyful moment.” In the ’90s, “there was freedom, happiness, not too much thinking, and being more casual [about] putting your clothes together,” she explained.Thatlong-ago seasonshe really lived up to Versus’s latter-day billing, clashing prints and patterns in energizing ways. Fast forward 28 years to a Milan night just balmy enough for the outdoor setting of the Castello Sforzesco, and she was at it again, with squiggly patterned knits and floral prints, some on silk and some on chainmail, which were near replicas of the originals.Versace has been revisiting past collections, with varying degrees of specificity, since the 20th anniversary of her brother’s death in 2017. Fashion’s reissue phase has proved remarkably resilient. Ironically, it’s probably because the internet has helped make young people—or young fashion people, at least—so curious about the past. It’s all at your fingertips, and, with the right budget, in your closet.This collection did feel quite youthful by Versace standards, more sweet than sexy with its baby pastels, slip dress and cardigan combos, denim and short-shorts, not to mention the perfume bottle and champagne stem heels. On the other hand, there was a deft and subtle use of color that that old Versus show could never match, nicely exemplified by a man’s caramel-colored camp shirt and lavender trousers, and a woman’s copper tank and lilac skirt. A men’s leather jacket in soft yellow and white worn with violet colored leather pants was another highlight.One significant upgrade since 1997 is technology. What looked like a gold sequin strapless dress on Anok Yai was actually 3D-printed; apparently built without seams, its famous Versace hourglass shape was programmed by a machine. How cool would it be to see an entire Versace collection developed in that way? What kind of free-thinking would that experimentation open up?
20 September 2024
Donatella Versace pivoted resort on a slender, tailored silhouette in a rich burgundy color—a rather unexpected choice considering the house’s codes. But Donatella likes to disrupt, and has a young audience on her mind hungry for newness. Men’s tailoring at Versace has a long history since the Gianni era; the famous 1995 Herb Ritts bookMen Without Ties(now impossible to find) traces the designer’s take on masculine fashion—provocative, uncompromising, and controversial. Although Donatella has carried the torch of her brother’s legacy with her fierce interpretation, here she went more nuanced, subtler, and lighter. “Sober” runs contrary to the Versace way, yet a certain equilibrium between exuberance and sobriety seemed what DV was after.Fitted and strict, the suit of the season leaned on the sartorial, interspersed with workwear and sporty elements lightening its rigorous construction. Pops of color—peridot, lime, and bright lipstick red—further introduced an uplifting vibe; the heritage Gallery motifs were reworked and printed on silk twill quilted boxy overshirts or on jacquard blousons. Always partial to hotness, Donatella went sheer with fitted shirts in see-through devoré, printed in a punch of fun micro florals, strawberries, and ladybugs. It wouldn’t be Versace without some sexy clash.
12 June 2024
That Donatella Versace is young at heart isn’t a secret; her audacity has shone bright since her days working alongside her brother Gianni. She has always drawn upon the energy and insouciance of the young—qualities she embodies herself, so much so that in 1989 she was gifted by her brother with the creative direction of the Versus secondary line, which mirrored her attitude of extravagant, sexy rock-chic rebel. Pictures from the Versus years were plastered on her resort mood board, indicating the gusto for fun and dash she wanted to pour into the collection.“I love the vibrant Versace gang,” she expressed. “Preppy punk, a little mod, sharply tailored with acid colors and prints, slashed and layered—this is the young rebel attitude I love, with clothes worn in an entirely personal way. Take Versace and make it your own.” Not overcomplicating anything, she proposed a clean silhouette with fitted tailoring, bursts of colors, a little fluff, and lots of high-octane playfulness.Classicisn’t a word that jibes with the Versace ethos, yet for resort Versace took traditional wardrobe staples and revisited them with pizzazz and glam. At the moment, apparently she’s into red. Recently awarded by Italy’s head of state with the title of grand officer of the order of merit of the Italian republic for her contribution to Italian culture and fashion, she received the honor boasting a bright red pantsuit. Here, a rather straightforward trench coat looked dazzling in a luscious lipstick shade, a fitted riding jacket worn with black stirrup pants looked racy in vibrant scarlet, and eye-popping vermilion amped up a cropped boxy jacket and miniskirt.Counterbalancing the streamlined daywear, fluffy borders in lilac shearling added a touch of softness to tweed mini suits. Elsewhere, slinky, figure-hugging black dresses with plays of slashes, draping, and knots just screamed “Versace!” Feeling playful, she riffed on fun archival prints—like dalmatian spots, ladybugs, and strawberries—for liquid slip dresses in see-through devoré, embroidered in crystals and sequins. Small silver Medusa 95 buttons and the infamous golden safety pins were used in rather unobtrusive ways, while patches of metal mesh peeked from the frayed slashes on denim cargos—a smart way to introduce Versace’s signifiers to the young crowd that’s getting DV’s attention.
12 June 2024
The Versace set was tricked out in black shag carpet and a white Escher staircase. If it wasn’t Milan’s biggest show, it felt like it, with models doing a giant figure eight through the crowd. With Tapestry’s acquisition of Versace’s parent company Capri not yet official, the company is in a liminal state, but this was Donatella Versace’s most definitive Milan show in a while: confident and powerful.At a press conference yesterday, Versace was talking about rebel girls and shy genius boys. Siouxsie Sioux, who was on the soundtrack, was a stand-in muse for the former, and for the latter she referred to her late friend Prince, whose Versace-made jacket, fitted through the waist with wide shoulders and designed to make him look taller than his 5’2” frame, was a template for the tailoring here.The models’ spiked hair and heavy eyeliner said “punk,” but there was nothing as obvious or overdone as safety pins (which are a different kind of reference here, anyway). A few holey sweaters aside, this was as polished as you expect from Versace, even more so because Donatella said she used Atelier Versace fabrics, first shredding them and then weaving them into tweeds dotted with crystals, which she cut into miniskirt suits or jackets that she paired with stirrup leggings and ballet flats for both genders.The dainty white swallow tail collars that decorated little black dresses and long ones were lifted from a 1993 Atelier Versace show staged at The Ritz in Paris. Undercutting the collars’ prim associations were the dresses’ inner corsets—an unexpected and potent juxtaposition. Other dresses were sexy in typical Versace fashion; see the cowl neck style whose side slit extended north of the hip nearly to the waistline. But the show’s most striking number—an hourglassy column with a sheer bodice and sleeves and a neckline encrusted with crystals that only partially obscured the shoulder pads—mixed demurral and provocation.Speaking of hourglasses, an off-the-shoulder red leather cocktail dress (also modeled by Anne Hathaway in the audience) and chainmail dresses were engineered to drape at the hips, marvels of construction. It’ll be a crime if the strapless long chainmail version doesn’t end up at the Oscars.
23 February 2024
The opening look at the Versace spring show was a 1960s shift worn with ballet flats—a fact that could’ve made headline news, as six inch stilettos are the norm in the universe of Donatella Versace. That svelte, dynamic vibe was what she picked up on for pre-fall. Her own way of dressing IRL—a luxurious cashmere coat in camel, cool cargos with a cashmere knit, a sharp-tailored blazer—served as a starting point for the collection.“This is a very personal reflection of the pieces I love the most at Versace and wear every day and the pieces I like most in the men around me,” Versace said via email. Catching up with the current mood for less flash, there was a slight shift towards softer colors, while key archival templates were given a lighter feel of ease.Strong tailoring anchored the offer from day to evening, with jackets cut cropped and boxy, often unlined for supple wearability without drawing away from the sexy vibe of Versace’s sharp construction. Skirts were kept short and sassy; volumes were also scaled down a notch to less oversized renditions, as in a greatcoat in Barocco jacquard curlicues, worn over a summer wool blazer and stone-washed loose denim pants. The coat looked straight out of DV’s (surely very capacious) closet.A Donatella’s favorite, cargos took pride of place, rendered in feminine proportions in a variety of fabrications; dresses were hourglassy and shapely, with revealing cutouts. Conveying the brand’s hallmark racy allure, the star of the show was a cocktail minidress crafted in the signature silver metal mesh, usually part of the Versace Atelier collections and proposed here in a lighter but no less glamorous version.Menswear focused on the same principles of strong construction: refreshed and lightweight. The denim offer was expanded, featuring sleeveless trucker jackets and slouchy cargos in washed denim. Since the skinny trousers moment is apparently over, wide pants were translated into a more formal silhouette. Voluminous trousers with a fitted jacket made for a new version of the powerful Versace suit.For the record, that fitted jacket was one of Prince’s favorite pieces. A close friend of Gianni and Donatella, the pop megastar used to ring her and play music down the phone asking for her opinion.
He attended several fashion shows over the years, composed the soundtrack for an Atelier Versace presentation at The Ritz in Paris in 1994, and also performed at the brand’s after-party in 2007, entertaining the crowd with fabulous nonchalance. Just imagine the thrill.
19 December 2023
The opening look at the Versace spring show was a 1960s shift worn with ballet flats—a fact that could’ve made headline news, as six inch stilettos are the norm in the universe of Donatella Versace. That svelte, dynamic vibe was what she picked up on for pre-fall. Her own way of dressing IRL—a luxurious cashmere coat in camel, cool cargos with a cashmere knit, a sharp-tailored blazer—served as a starting point for the collection.“This is a very personal reflection of the pieces I love the most at Versace and wear every day and the pieces I like most in the men around me,” Versace said via email. Catching up with the current mood for less flash, there was a slight shift towards softer colors, while key archival templates were given a lighter feel of ease.Strong tailoring anchored the offer from day to evening, with jackets cut cropped and boxy, often unlined for supple wearability without drawing away from the sexy vibe of Versace’s sharp construction. Skirts were kept short and sassy; volumes were also scaled down a notch to less oversized renditions, as in a greatcoat in Barocco jacquard curlicues, worn over a summer wool blazer and stone-washed loose denim pants. The coat looked straight out of DV’s (surely very capacious) closet.A Donatella’s favorite, cargos took pride of place, rendered in feminine proportions in a variety of fabrications; dresses were hourglassy and shapely, with revealing cutouts. Conveying the brand’s hallmark racy allure, the star of the show was a cocktail minidress crafted in the signature silver metal mesh, usually part of the Versace Atelier collections and proposed here in a lighter but no less glamorous version.Menswear focused on the same principles of strong construction: refreshed and lightweight. The denim offer was expanded, featuring sleeveless trucker jackets and slouchy cargos in washed denim. Since the skinny trousers moment is apparently over, wide pants were translated into a more formal silhouette. Voluminous trousers with a fitted jacket made for a new version of the powerful Versace suit.For the record, that fitted jacket was one of Prince’s favorite pieces. A close friend of Gianni and Donatella, the pop megastar used to ring her and play music down the phone asking for her opinion.
He attended several fashion shows over the years, composed the soundtrack for an Atelier Versace presentation at The Ritz in Paris in 1994, and also performed at the brand’s after-party in 2007, entertaining the crowd with fabulous nonchalance. Just imagine the thrill.
19 December 2023
After a couple of shows in Los Angeles and Cannes, Donatella Versace was back on home turf with her new collection, in more ways than one. At a preview in the company’s expansive new Milan headquarters the day before the presentation, she said she looked back at her brother Gianni’s fall 1995 collection as a starting point this season. “I thought it looked fresh and contemporary,” she said.As vintage Versace goes, fall 1995 was an outlier, as ladylike as the collections that came before (safety pins) and after (the J.Lo jungle dress) were dangerous. Having slouched our way through the pandemic and its aftermath, many of us are feeling more inclined to dress up; Donatella too, it would seem, by the fact that she chose this show to bring back.The 1990s have been a through line of the spring 2024 collections so far. A quarter century has passed—gasp!—and a new generation has come of age, one that considers the ’90s more or less ancient history. Though the fall ’95 collection predated internet coverage, it isn’t all that hard to find online now, and with the arrival ofThe Super Modelson Apple TV, interest in the era is only likely to grow.Making the most of those synergies, Versace orchestrated the return of Claudia Schiffer to the runway. The German model walked that show all those years ago and looked more or less unchanged tonight in a lime green damier check chain-mail bustier dress. The clothes themselves, however, got a thorough update, starting with Versace’s rejection of pants—this season shorts are the thing, in case you hadn’t noticed—and also including looser, more exaggerated jacket proportions and the dismissal of the original show’s little white gloves, a dated accessory if ever there was one.The most pronounced change between Versace now and Versace then is what constitutes “dressed up.” Where the show of old included a dozen-plus evening gowns, this one highlighted printed silk twill pajamas, beaded twinsets with matching bikini briefs, and almost bleached-out jeans and denim jackets embellished with pearls and crystals, for the girls and the guys. Fun factoid: The men’s five-button suit jacket worn over beaded boxers was modeled after a tour costume Donatella made for Prince way back when.
22 September 2023
The Cannes Film Festival certainly doesn't lack high-wattage situations, yet when glam and glitz are involved, Donatella Versace has a knack for setting the bar just a little bit higher. Proof is that she touched down amid the movie madness to launch her latest fashion collaboration, a hook-up with the British-Albanian pop star Dua Lipa. The project telegraphs that she knows pretty well how to leverage the power of über-stardom to get the Versace message across, to reach wider and cooler audiences. Lipa’s role in the upcomingBarbiemovie already has the internet spiraling into a frenzy, and for the cherry on the cake, her new track for the film is on its way this coming Friday. As the saying goes, better three hours too soon than a minute too late. Timing is everything.The see-now buy-now high-summer collection they co-designed, called La Vacanza, was presented via a private show, held at sunset in a very Versace-esque villa perched atop the hills surrounding the Cannes bay, with a view so breathtaking, a décor so vastly sumptuous, and lawns so immaculately manicured, it made you feel almost dizzy with too much fabulous information. The location came also with an impeccable cinéphile pedigree, as it was apparently here that some scenes of Hitchcock’s masterpieceTo Catch A Thiefwere filmed.At a press conference before the show, the two co-stars were full of praise for each other. “I’ve known Dua since the beginning of her career,” chirped Donatella. “What I saw was a super-talented young woman who projected passion, strength, and drive, truly inspiring for lots of women. And she knows about clothes.” Dua reciprocated: “Donatella really cares about how you feel in a dress, she wants to make sure that it’s right for you, it empowers you and makes you feel not only beautiful but also confident.”Versace opened the Maison’s archives to Lipa, an opportunity that was “creatively mind blowing” for the singer; the collection had no predetermined theme, “it was more about freedom and confidence,” she said. It actually evolved from a back and forth of ideas. Versace explained: “As we have a common language, it was work but also fun, and to hear a voice outside my team was so important for me as Dua represents the women of today.”
24 May 2023
The forecast rarely calls for rain in Los Angeles, but when it does, things tend to grind to a halt. It’s why the folks at Versace made the decision to reschedule their much-anticipated open air show from Friday to Thursday at the 25th hour. Mercifully that didn’t stop the house’s circle of Hollywood fans from showing up in Beverly Hills last night. The likes of Dua Lipa, Miley Cyrus, Channing Tatum, Anne Hathaway, and Lil Nas X all came out to support Donatella Versace, as well as lifelong friends like Elton John and Cher who sat front row with her record executive boyfriend on the roof of the landmark Pacific Design Center.“I mean I love this city, I love the people, the laid back vibe, the atmosphere,” the designer said in a preview interview. At this time of year in particular, the city is a home away from home for Versace—after all she’s spent many an Oscar weekend working with award nominees as they make the final touches on red carpet looks. The time around though, the spotlight was all hers.To set the tone for house’s destination show, Versace circled back to a pivotal mid-’90s moment. Easily the most prominent inspiration images on the moodboard for the collection were Richard Avedon’s 1995 images of Kristen McMenamy. The chic skirt suit that McMenamy wore in those photos was tailored close to the body and replete with the brand’s signature gold buttons.“I wanted to go back to the cut and shape of the clothes, to concentrate on the perfect little black dress, the perfect black suit,” Versace said. Gigi Hadid opened the show dressed in a look that echoed those elegant proportions. She wasn’t the only super in the house either: Versace favorite Naomi Campbell took her turn on the runway in an ankle-grazing black dress with an embellished bustier. Kendall Jenner, who like her friend Hadid was mostly absent from fashion week, stepped out to close the show in a teeny tiny LBD, glittering cropped cape, and classic pink satin pumps.For celebrities that were still shopping for Oscar dresses, there were options aplenty. Some of the standouts: a crystal-encrusted naked dress that called to mind a modern Marilyn Monroe, a slinky black chainmail number with sculptural floral embellishments, and va-va-voom interpretations of the cone bra worked into various hourglass shapes.Still, it was daywear that won the night, starting with Hadid’s neatly tailored black skirt suit.
Even the denim was cut with razor sharp precision—paired with a billowing white shirt, the slightly flared creased blue jean was easily one of the most covetable pairs of the season. There was a smart reinvention of the denim tuxedo as well, in the form of a funnel neck denim jacket with a sophisticated watteau back that was paired with a pencil skirt.After the show, guests gathered to enjoy cocktails and admire the view as the sun set over snow-capped mountains. Many of the models joined the throng, still dressed in their runway gear. With dramatic black swooshes painted across their eyelids and satin slingbacks on their feet, they looked especially glamorous even among this well-heeled crowd, some of whom were only just getting started for a weekend of non-stop events. For the fashion editors and buyers in the house though, it was an epic bang of a season finale.
10 March 2023
A steady stream of Prince hits pumped through the speakers as the crowd assembled at Versace tonight, and in the middle of the runway, scores of black candles glowed behind walls of glass. Reading the signs, it looked like Donatella Versace was going goth for spring. The first four models, who emerged together, seemed to confirm it. They slithered out in clingy black jersey with slash cutouts and multi-strap platform Mary Janes. Up next were another 10 black looks, from Adut in a fringed leather motorcycle jacket and micromini, to Binx in a matching bustier and hip-slung jeans.“I have always loved a rebel, a woman who is confident, smart, and a little bit of a diva,” the designer said via press release. She might as well have been talking about herself.Then came monochrome color: electric fuchsia and Princely purple, cut into a liquid jersey number or a sheer dress over satin flares, and teeny party dresses in many variations—strapless with more fringe at the hips or slinky with a cowl hood. A leather teddy was laser-cut like lace and embellished with thousands of little metal studs. This season’s prints combined tropical flowers, zebra stripes, and the label’s all-caps logo on repeat. Collaged together on soft-cut slip dresses with handkerchief hems worn on top of boyish cargo pants (a recurring silhouette this season), they vaguely evoked Biba, just this side of psychedelic. This section included a couple pairs of jeans. Shredded in precise diamond patterns, this was not your average denim, but it was a whole lot more casual than anything Versace has put on the runway lately, a sign of Donatella’s ambition to expand and diversify her offering.Before the end, the collection moved through the black-to-bright cycle again. Mariacarla’s black suit and sheer shirtdress mid-layer were sharp. The baby dolls, garters, and lace veils in pink, purple, and acid yellow looked torn from Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”–era playbook via Stephanie Seymour in “November Rain.” For the finale, Versace had another pop-culture blast from the past, none other than Paris Hilton in pink chain mail. Rebels of all kinds welcome here.
23 September 2022
Those in the know in Milan regularly attest that men’s fashion week—especially in summer—counts among the most entertaining moments in the city’s calendar. Then, inevitably, they will add: “but nothing compares to Salone di Mobile.” Post-pandemic, this 1961-founded furniture fair was moved from April to June this year, and it really is a blast. Italy has countless high-design furniture specialists, and many in Milan’s fashion canon, including Versace, long ago diversified to offer interior design as well as exterior design.Tonight the house imported a hefty dose of its long-running Versace Home collection into a revived men’s show held back in its Via Gesù home. Models walked carrying urns and vases, or sported saucer earrings and espresso cup belt fancies. You got the feeling that this styling twist was the serendipitous result of the new proximity of Salone to menswear, but it worked excellently against the mood of this classically-skewed collection.Going through the archives. Donatella’s menswear attention had been drawn to an archive print featuring the frozen-in-lava death masks of Pompeii—the Naples-neighboring Roman town that was frozen forever by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. This print proved the starting point to a kinkily intellectual collection that combined simplicity, sexiness and depth. Against these prints played the rigidly formal striping of regimental clothing—another out-of-time classical clothing code. Versace put them in her blender, added a pinch of powerfully colored python print, chucked in some lemon-hued latex for a twist, flipped the switch, and let the results erupt.Out onto the pebbled runway flowed a powerfully hot collection of lovable menswear. Forward-facing pieces including racerback onesies for men were placed against traditional items recontextualized, including double layered tailored jackets and overcoats recast in that lemon latex. Funny touches included the gold headpieces worn by certain models, among them the sons of key house models from the past, including Mark Vanderloo, Helena Christensen, Andre van Noord, Carla Bruni, Megan Douglas and Angela Lindvall. This was a cleverly deft collection that could have benefited from more organized communication from the house, yet was eminently readable nonetheless thanks to the quality of Versace’s menswear team.
18 June 2022
Donatella Versace embodies all that the label that bears her name stands for, and her celebrity status makes her a star on par with the many actors and musicians in the brand’s firmament. Resort was modeled around what is quintessentially Donatella—that is a fierce, fearless sense of fashion.According to the design studio guys, the label’s vast archive in Novara is neatly divided into Gianni’s oeuvre and Donatella’s repertoire. This season, they explored the latter, referencing her distinctive take on the fundamentals her brother established. Her use of color is actually less conventional and more gutsy, favoring an edgy palette of acidic tones mixed with pastels, and her silhouette is more sensuous and fluid, rendered in mermaid-looking bias-cut numbers. The quintessential DV look is that of a slightly disheveled, ultra-glamorous party lover—sort of “the morning after the night before.”Resort explored the tension Versace always lends her interpretations of the house’s codes. “Hard and soft, masculine and feminine, formal and playful, contrasts that I see the new generation questioning and ripping up completely,” she said via email. She played on the juxtaposition of oversized distressed hoodies or XXL brushed leather biker jackets with flowy floral chiffon dresses featuring 3D embroideries. And she had used square-cut tailored blazers and midriff-baring, low-waisted bell bottoms to frame sporty crushed-velvet tops inspired by Atelier Versace archival looks and vaguely Grace Jones-ish, whose Medusa-buckled belt was crisscrossed at the waist. Adding to the rebellious, grungy/clubby/festival vibe, full-volume cargo pants in distressed denim were inlaid with a laser-cut diamond motif called the Slash, which also appeared across leggings, knitwear, and on the open seams of formal horizontal-shouldered jackets.“This season feels very impulsive and energetic,” said Versace. Indeed. The collection looked designed with a focused, concise perspective, which didn’t detract from its alluring attitude. “Never underestimate the power of the Versace woman!” she summarized. The thought never crossed our mind.
16 June 2022
In New York we declared the suit was back, but after today in Milan it’s a lock. Donatella Versace’s new collection opened with a swaggering black pantsuit, the jacket’s midsection cinched with a boned corset that emphasized the fullness of its shoulders. Not only that, she also included a pair of satin top coats from her men’s collection, one in bright pink and the other in electric blue. That had to have been a first.Earlier this month when she revealed her men’s, she said, “this collection introduces Versace 2.0. It represents a next step and a move forward, not focusing on the singular but on multiplicity, progression, and diversity—exactly what I see valued by the new generation.”The flipside of this collection’s tailoring was an emphasis on corset dressing, a Versace signature if ever there were one. Corsets shaped micro dresses and ¾ length sheaths in lustrous satin, second-skin knits, and even glossy puffers. But most of the time they performed the role of layering piece under boxy jackets in blown-up checks and pied-de-poule, a fall 2022 replacement for the bra tops that young women have adopted in lieu of the T-shirts and tank tops of eras gone, Covid having loosened long-held dress codes.Versace doesn’t miss a thing, so she’s no doubt also clocked Gen-Z’s newfound affection for the mini. Hers come in denim, raw-edge tweed, and gray flannel pinstripes. Latex leggings pull the look together, cutting the length’s potential sweetness with a potent allure. Chez Versace sex is back too, though that’s less of a surprise. The contrast invigorated her, like “an elastic band pulled tight and about to snap back with a build-up of energy,” she said. “That feeling is just irresistible to me.”
25 February 2022
Donatella Versace is famously not afraid to shake things up anytime her antennae, which seem to be always on alert, signal that some m.o. fine-tuning is needed. That menswear is today the most interesting arena of radical expression in fashion isn’t lost on her. So after three years of co-ed shows, she thought it was time to give the Versace man his own stage with a dedicated collection and a powerful new look.Launching this “new chapter” with a video on 02.02.2022 certainly sounds talismanic. “This collection introduces Versace 2.0,” DV said. “It represents a next step and a move forward, not focusing on the singular but on multiplicity, progression, and diversity—exactly what I see valued by the new generation and the way they express their masculinity in so many refreshing ways.”Even if Versace menswear has made an upscale turn towards the polished and the tailored, it doesn’t mean that the now ubiquitous codes of streetwear and sportswear have receded into the darkness of a soon-to-be-forgotten background. Rather, they’ve been re-engineered and amalgamated for the complexities of the present. DV doesn’t shy away from transformative skin-shedding. That’s not only because of her fearless nature, but because the foundations of the house are strong enough that they allow for zeitgeist-inflected fashion shifts with no loss of identity whatsoever. When her brother Gianni launched his first men’s collection in 1978, he established templates of such confident modernity they’re still significant today for the diverse young audiences who embrace the power of individual, unfiltered self-expression as a way of defining new identities.Looking at Gianni’s tailored silhouette as drawn by the illustrator Werner Berskotter in the ’90s, Donatella and her recently beefed-up men’s design team contextualized it in a pertinent new frame. Grounded by wide-legged, high-waisted, fluid palazzo pants, the new suiting pivoted around soft, unstructured blazers and formal greatcoats, smooth and shiny in texture and lightweight in construction. Strong-shouldered bombers and precisely-cut leather bikers were layered over body-con twin sets in rich-textured wool jacquard, while the Barocco print and La Greca monogram went through a similar process of re-writing, rendered in fresh outlined, stenciled versions. A palette of lusciously dense colors—orange peel, coral, hot pink, cerise—just added high-frequency punch.
Dressed up in feel and sensitive in its approach to the house’s tailoring templates, the collection’s tone seemed to be pitched an octave lower from the loudness of recent outings, while at the same time rhyming with what DV called “a modern opulence”—which mixes deceptively casual swagger, powerful sex appeal, and unabashed glamour. That’s the Versace way, dialed directly from Gianni’s clarity of vision to Donatella’s instinctive understanding of modernity. Definitely, they’re cut from the same cloth.
2 February 2022
As far as haute collabs go, it won’t be easy to upstage the Swap, better known as Fendace, the stroke of branding genius masterminded by Donatella Versace and Fendi’s Silvia Venturini Fendi and Kim Jones, which landed to internet-crashing effect in September. Pirouetting across each other’s archives, the fashion trimurti traded off their respective fundamentals in a key-codes crossover which didn’t dilute visual identities or values.Back to planet Versace for a showroom appointment, pre-fall was given a toning down of the Fendace vibe, a catch of breath of sorts after the collaboration, fueled by Donatella’s inexhaustible energy. According to the design team, the Swap experience was fabulous but rather intense in its making: “It was incredibly amazing,” they said. “They drove us mad, but in a fun way.”Sitting in stores alongside the Fendace collection, pre-fall reads as a visual antidote to the bold impact of the show’s print overload. A magnified black and white incarnation of the Barocco motif was introduced, as proof of the vitality of the house’s archive. Explaining her take on the collection, Donatella hinted at the unapologetic embracing of challenges and reinventions that drives her work ethos. “Whoever said that it cannot be black and white? I see creativity as an opportunity and a way of looking at things you’ve known all your life from another perspective, transforming them into something new that, like a scent, reminds you of past emotions, but they’re now completely connected and rooted in the present moment.”Without softening much the sassy early 2000s vibe of the Swap, a sexy, slinky silhouette was the collection’s standout, with stretchy jersey dresses pierced by keyholes at the neckline, and flashes of lingerie strings peeking out at the hips from low-slung stretchy pencil skirts, or jutting out at the décolletage of plunging v-necks. Strict-tailored skirt suits and coats were nip-waisted, small-shouldered, and almost severe yet very sexy, a territory that Versace navigates rather deftly. And responsibly-sourced vegan Latex looked no less than luscious on a not-so-bourgeois baby pink trench coat, and body-hugging black midi dresses and midriff-baring top/skirt combinations, paired with matching boots/stockings hybrids.
Evening at Versace is always a glamorous affair played out to maximum wattage; cases in point here were the black numbers made in illusion net sparkling with bejeweled fan-shaped inserts and brooches, and further studded with a cascade of rhinestones and crystals in all possible shapes and sizes. The wallflower notion is lost chez Versace.The black and white Barocco print served as a visual binder between the women’s and men’s collections. It was treated imaginatively on classic tailored suits, where formal fabrics like flannel, Prince of Wales, houndstooth, and windowpane checkered wools were overprinted with curlicue motifs, highlighted with metallic outlines. On the same note, an oversized puffer and matching boxy shirt and surfer shorts were laminated in silver that was corroded and peeled off. Although it screamed Versace in all its peacocking glory, it highlighted a moving away from the streetwear and loungewear wave towards a more elevated, luxurious energy. What Donatella seems to be enjoying now is an unapologetic return to fashion à go-go, no holds barred.
20 December 2021
As far as haute collabs go, it won’t be easy to upstage the Swap, better known as Fendace, the stroke of branding genius masterminded by Donatella Versace and Fendi’s Silvia Venturini Fendi and Kim Jones, which landed to internet-crashing effect in September. Pirouetting across each other’s archives, the fashion trimurti traded off their respective fundamentals in a key-codes crossover which didn’t dilute visual identities or values.Back to planet Versace for a showroom appointment, pre-fall was given a toning down of the Fendace vibe, a catch of breath of sorts after the collaboration, fueled by Donatella’s inexhaustible energy. According to the design team, the Swap experience was fabulous but rather intense in its making: “It was incredibly amazing,” they said. “They drove us mad, but in a fun way.”Sitting in stores alongside the Fendace collection, pre-fall reads as a visual antidote to the bold impact of the show’s print overload. A magnified black and white incarnation of the Barocco motif was introduced, as proof of the vitality of the house’s archive. Explaining her take on the collection, Donatella hinted at the unapologetic embracing of challenges and reinventions that drives her work ethos. “Whoever said that it cannot be black and white? I see creativity as an opportunity and a way of looking at things you’ve known all your life from another perspective, transforming them into something new that, like a scent, reminds you of past emotions, but they’re now completely connected and rooted in the present moment.”Without softening much the sassy early 2000s vibe of the Swap, a sexy, slinky silhouette was the collection’s standout, with stretchy jersey dresses pierced by keyholes at the neckline, and flashes of lingerie strings peeking out at the hips from low-slung stretchy pencil skirts, or jutting out at the décolletage of plunging v-necks. Strict-tailored skirt suits and coats were nip-waisted, small-shouldered, and almost severe yet very sexy, a territory that Versace navigates rather deftly. And responsibly-sourced vegan Latex looked no less than luscious on a not-so-bourgeois baby pink trench coat, and body-hugging black midi dresses and midriff-baring top/skirt combinations, paired with matching boots/stockings hybrids.
Evening at Versace is always a glamorous affair played out to maximum wattage; cases in point here were the black numbers made in illusion net sparkling with bejeweled fan-shaped inserts and brooches, and further studded with a cascade of rhinestones and crystals in all possible shapes and sizes. The wallflower notion is lost chez Versace.The black and white Barocco print served as a visual binder between the women’s and men’s collections. It was treated imaginatively on classic tailored suits, where formal fabrics like flannel, Prince of Wales, houndstooth, and windowpane checkered wools were overprinted with curlicue motifs, highlighted with metallic outlines. On the same note, an oversized puffer and matching boxy shirt and surfer shorts were laminated in silver that was corroded and peeled off. Although it screamed Versace in all its peacocking glory, it highlighted a moving away from the streetwear and loungewear wave towards a more elevated, luxurious energy. What Donatella seems to be enjoying now is an unapologetic return to fashion à go-go, no holds barred.
20 December 2021
The confluence of Dua Lipa, Naomi Campbell, Emily Ratajkowski, and Lourdes Leon on the Versace runway tonight almost broke the internet. It definitely crashed Versace’s website momentarily, so heavy was the traffic to its livestream. The scene outside the Milan venue was just as frenetic, with young people lining up for in-person sightings. Donatella Versace knows how to capture the world’s attention, as her regal three-in-one look for Lil Nas X at the Met Gala last week amply demonstrated.Tonight’s show was a bright, shiny revival of Versace’s many hits, aimed straight at the heart of the TikTok generation—young people for whom Dua and Lil Nas are household names, but who may be less familiar with the supermodels who helped propel the brand to fame 30 years ago. Naomi Campbell, though, was in the house to help show the new-gen models how it’s done.Dua opened the show in a cut-out jacket and slashed skirt tricked out in multicolor versions of the house-famous safety pins, and closed it in the even more iconic chain mail, dipped hot pink for the occasion. In between, Versace kept things young and playful, showing basketball silks and pajama sets in the archival Medusa print and the new La Greca print, and using the patterns for accents: a handkerchief top here, a bikini top there, and as patchwork on baggy faded blue jeans. For the first-time buyer, there were logo tees. The color palette was pure pop: a long run of Miami neons was bookended by sections of black, with a brief segue into collegiate red that featured what might be Versace’s first varsity letterman’s jacket. These clothes would be right at home in Miami, not least of all Imaan Hammam and Kiki Willems’s vinyl bustier dresses.Yesterday, rumors circulated that Versace is planning a collaboration with Fendi’s Kim Jones and Silvia Venturini Fendi. Triggered by a mysterious emailed invitation for Sunday evening, the questions about what Donatella has planned could’ve threatened to upstage tonight’s mainline show, but that’d never happen. There’s no upstaging Donatella Versace.
24 September 2021
Like the rest of the world, Donatella Versace is ready to move on; for someone who lives life at high speed like she does, this is probably more an urge than hopeful thinking. Resort was telling of this sentiment: She seemed to be shifting gears, taking a journey into new territory—a joyful, upbeat place in flying colors. Obviously, she brought her beloved Medusa along.“I think there’s a renewed sense of optimism right now and I wanted this collection to speak to that,” said Versace via email. “This season is about having fun again and it feels right to put something positive into the world. We’ll never return to the old world or to the old ‘normal,’ there’s no going backwards. This is what the new now looks like to me.”Of course,normalisn’t a word in the Versace lexicon. If that wasn’t clear already, Donatella gave the Medusa a psychedelic spin, taking a sort of trippy turn through a kaleidoscopic tunnel of pop-bright colors and melty, distorted, lava lamp patterns—think: Summer of Love with a luscious twist. She cleverly kept the collection’s silhouette svelte and neat: A-line, ’60s mod-ish, and slashed short with conviction. Summer tweeds in acid sherbet colors looked fresh and luxe, signaling a desire for more dressed-up situations. Loungewear was out (it’ll soon be a relic everywhere, let’s hope) and even activewear options looked extra-polished. The same allure was given to the men’s line, with strong formal silhouettes and clashes of bold, mood-lifting print patterns.Riffing on the house heritage, Versace offered little tweed skirt suits in vibrant colors with hand-finished fringed hems. Nodding at the ones that her brother Gianni made for Claudia Schiffer in the ’90s, they looked smart, young, and full of pep. The archival work never looks nostalgic here. As the design team pointed out during a Zoom call, “there’s always that twisted perversion that we like to play with, like taking something and turning it on its head.” The primness of A-line shifts was sharply contrasted by doses of slick, liquid latex in a sort of ‘sickly bubblegum pink’ (as it was described) and a new baby blue shade, called DV. It was rendered into a couple of ultra-short bustier slipdresses that will be headturners wherever they go. The same can be said of a rather sensational translucent crystal mesh number with lace intarsia, its surface mutating into melty aurora borealis shades. It sparked joy and optimism to no end.
15 June 2021
In case it wasn’t clear, Versace is launching a new monogram. Named La Greca, it’s a take on the brand’s heritage Greek Key pattern turned trompe l’oeil in the genre of Balmain’s Labyrinth, Goyard’s Chevrons, or Moynat’s infiniteMs. In the film Versace released today, La Greca had been blown up into a massive wooden structure that framed a runway-style show. Here, models effectively walked through monograms wearing monogram clothes, carrying monogram bags, and accessorizing with monogram jewelry.Under the sea of monograms, the garments themselves were—in contrast—a viable proposal for a post-lockdown wardrobe: easy, smart, and real. Sci-fi fabric treatments and styling stuff like harnesses fused with 1970s silhouettes in a slightly retro-futuristic expression were backed up by sculptural streetwear shapes and little bionic dresses. It was unmistakablyyoung,if the wardrobes of the starlets of the social media age are to be believed: skimpy hemlines with top-heavy jackets, tone-on-tone dressing, and some very bright color moments. Also, lots of Hadid.Monograms, of course, are part of that youthful wardrobe. A step in Versace’s post-pandemic business strategy, La Greca could be a big deal for the brand, which—despite its many other logos—has lacked a monogram to compete with the canvas bags of Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Fendi, et al. It enters into the ongoing transformation of Versace from family-driven business into super brand, staged by Capri Holdings, which bought the company in 2018. A year before that, Donatella Versace had re-embraced the power prints of her brand’s early-’90s heyday to great success.Keeping things pattern-oriented, the new monogram extends that arm, but it remains to be seen if those who identify with Versace will welcome it like they did those authentic reissued prints—and invest in singleVs rather thanLVs. As the show’s casting suggested—a mix of top models diverse in every way, branded head to toe in the Versace emblem—the house is targeting the new youth with their values of empowerment, emancipation, and, indeed, authenticity. When it comes to getting young people to wear your monograms, a tribal symbol of belonging, the latter is key. Under Donatella’s reign, Versace’s authenticity has manifested in her personal story. The family values of Versace are well-documented beyond the borders of fashion, in TV series and film.
It’s the brand’s unique selling point, part of the reason Donatella’s once-reluctant decision to revisit those ’90s prints paid off, with both the company and retailers continuing to report growth.Now, Versace’s challenge is to translate that family soul into an ever-growing super brand, without looking too corporate. For new generations, authenticity is antonymous with marketing. More than ever, that means Donatella—who wasn’t made available for comment this season—is the heart and soul of Versace, the human connection that enables the emotional aspect so key to luxury. Where the corporate signifies coldness, luxury is activated by intimacy, and a sense of personal connection.
5 March 2021
The pantheon of Versace muses is a rather crowded one: Actresses and models and pop stars have all become part of the Versace family, fronting advertising campaigns and filling the front rows at the brand’s fashion shows. A celebrity herself, Donatella Versace knows well enough how to work the power of fame to get her message across. But the pandemic has her switching gears. What she had in mind for pre-fall weren’t the superstar regulars usually embodying the label’s high-octane glamour.“The collection is dedicated to all those men and women who are self-confident, aware of who they are, authentic,” she said via email. “It’s a celebration of individual identity and personality. Fashion and style become even more a way to express one’s own ideas. In fact, I believe that today, it’s not just about a fashion show or a campaign, but the extent to which fashion is shaping the way people dress and interact with one another by expressing their own ideas and values.” Then she concluded, “In a world that has gone through a drastic change, desires and needs have changed along with us and this collection is Versace’s answer.”Addressing a changed landscape with an eye to IRL needs, the collection was focused on dressing a broader spectrum of people with different personalities and characters. That said, Versace kept things simpler and cleaner here; after an energized, color-fueled outing for spring, she toned down her register a notch. Shot against a stark white background, the lookbook images signaled a cohesive, streamlined approach for both the men’s and women’s offerings. Although silhouettes exuded a strong and assertive appeal—tailored broad shoulders, precise yet sensual contours, powerful proportions—their design seemed to highlight a more considerate focus on comfort. Prints were scaled back, with only the Barocco-flage motif making a flamboyant appearance; the color palette was quieter, centering on black and caramel with pops of brights; and the use of logo was decidedly more restrained. Individual items looked smart and wearable, while retaining that powerful fizz of Versace glam.According to the studio design team, Donatella wanted to infuse pre-fall with a joyous spirit and a sense of warmth; she felt the need of a more tactile approach, which was in evidence in the choice of sensible fabrics—knitted textures, cashmeres, recycled and eco-sustainable light wools. “The gloss often looks untouchable,” she apparently said.
Which sounds utterly spot-on in our present situation. These days, the luxuries we crave are definitely closeness and heart-warming human connection.
15 December 2020
I spoke to Donatella Versace days after she had emerged from the quarantine she spent alone in Milan, kept company only by her dog. She’d just had her roots dyed (“I’d forgotten what color my hair was”) and was coming back to her very own amplified version of real life. Glammed to the nines and back in business, she sounded so happy on the phone, as if she’d experienced a rebirth of sorts. Four months on, in an email on the morning of her first show since lockdown, her words echoed that sentiment. “The world has changed and we have changed. We have been repeating this almost as a mantra for months, but at the end of the day, for a designer this means to start all over again.”Because there can be no re-emergence without prior submergence, Versace seemingly staged her live-streamed show—closed to the public and attended by staff only—in the imagined ruins of Atlantis, water currents streaming down its projected walls. This was the remnants of an old world long gone, its mythical citizens rising from the deep blue in an oceanic make-do and mend of starfish, coral, and seashell motifs from Gianni Versace’s ‘trésor de la mer’ collection for Spring 1992. They were ready to take on a new reality like the Rebirth of Venus herself (starring Adut Akech in the title role, of course). Versace, who described the collection as having “an upbeat soul,” said her challenge was to give fashion meaning in a historical moment like this.“I wanted to do something disruptive and to break the rules because I think that, what worked a few months ago, does not make any sense today. Creatively, that meant finding a way to bring the DNA of Versace to a new reality and to people who have undergone a deep change.” Under the archival sea, she found her ideal metaphor for a new world of diverse wonders, bringing them to life in a powerful co-ed cast that boosted her ongoing messages of body positivity and gender-nonconformity. Asked how she envisions Versace’s role in the post-pandemic landscape, she said as “an example of inclusion, of mutual support, and acceptance of what is different from us.”Sometimes, of course, you’ve got to be seen to be heard. Versace’s collection did that, and some, in a pumped-up zingy-colored mix of Malibu Barbie’s summer wardrobe and that of the Little Mermaid if only Prince Eric had bought them a house in Miami.
It was, on the women’s as well as the men’s side, high-octane sporty cocktail-wear for an optimistic future—hopefully only a few nautical miles away now. In all its sea-centric detailing, it also had its moments of ingenuity: micro-pleated dresses trimmed with twirly ruffles, which bounced like jellyfish in the waves walking down the runway; crazy cascading skirts layered like the lips of shells; and a bag constructed like a big fortune cookie. We could all do with some good luck these days.
25 September 2020
I spoke to Donatella Versace days after she had emerged from the quarantine she spent alone in Milan, kept company only by her dog. She’d just had her roots dyed (“I’d forgotten what color my hair was”) and was coming back to her very own amplified version of real life. Glammed to the nines and back in business, she sounded so happy on the phone, as if she’d experienced a rebirth of sorts. Four months on, in an email on the morning of her first show since lockdown, her words echoed that sentiment. “The world has changed and we have changed. We have been repeating this almost as a mantra for months, but at the end of the day, for a designer this means to start all over again.”Because there can be no re-emergence without prior submergence, Versace seemingly staged her live-streamed show—closed to the public and attended by staff only—in the imagined ruins of Atlantis, water currents streaming down its projected walls. This was the remnants of an old world long gone, its mythical citizens rising from the deep blue in an oceanic make-do and mend of starfish, coral, and seashell motifs from Gianni Versace’s ‘trésor de la mer’ collection for Spring 1992. They were ready to take on a new reality like the Rebirth of Venus herself (starring Adut Akech in the title role, of course). Versace, who described the collection as having “an upbeat soul,” said her challenge was to give fashion meaning in a historical moment like this.“I wanted to do something disruptive and to break the rules because I think that, what worked a few months ago, does not make any sense today. Creatively, that meant finding a way to bring the DNA of Versace to a new reality and to people who have undergone a deep change.” Under the archival sea, she found her ideal metaphor for a new world of diverse wonders, bringing them to life in a powerful co-ed cast that boosted her ongoing messages of body positivity and gender-nonconformity. Asked how she envisions Versace’s role in the post-pandemic landscape, she said as “an example of inclusion, of mutual support, and acceptance of what is different from us.”Sometimes, of course, you’ve got to be seen to be heard. Versace’s collection did that, and some, in a pumped-up zingy-colored mix of Malibu Barbie’s summer wardrobe and that of the Little Mermaid if only Prince Eric had bought them a house in Miami.
It was, on the women’s as well as the men’s side, high-octane sporty cocktail-wear for an optimistic future—hopefully only a few nautical miles away now. In all its sea-centric detailing, it also had its moments of ingenuity: micro-pleated dresses trimmed with twirly ruffles, which bounced like jellyfish in the waves walking down the runway; crazy cascading skirts layered like the lips of shells; and a bag constructed like a big fortune cookie. We could all do with some good luck these days.
26 September 2020
The nameVersaceis synonymous with sexy clothes and glorious, bold prints. For herSpring 2018tribute show, commemorating the 20th anniversary of her brother Gianni’s death, Donatella Versace included many archival prints, including some from this Spring 1992 collection. Their reissuing, it turns out, was a meta move, because all those years ago, Gianni had launched his Signatures during this Spring ’92 presentation (see the finale images in the collection’s slideshow). The main selling points of the line, which also featured lots of colored denim, were the printed silks he first designed between 1977 and the 1990s. Signatures was developed, Gianni explained at the time, not in service to the past, but to meet customer demands. “We cannot give in to nostalgia,” the designer said. “The challenge is always to look ahead and make clothes modern.”Versace’s self-set challenge this season was to pass 18th-century romanticism through a Baroque lens. One of his stated inspirations was Jean-Honoré Fragonard; the show opened with a long-haired Milla Jovovich perched on a flower-bedecked swing, a reference to the painter’s masterpiece,The Swing.The following look out, on Carla Bruni, was a short scarf-print dress, with a tutu-like fullness supported by petticoats, accompanied by a cropped denim jacket. This high-low look is so prevalent today as to be taken for granted, but in 1992, fashion “rules” and conventions still existed. “Some might call it fashion anarchy,” wroteVogueof the designer’s iconoclasm. “Versace calls it ‘romantic rock’ or ‘chic and shock.’ ”The designer combined a baroque swirl and leopard spots into a dramatic print, and developed his “trésors de la mer” motif beyond printed silk to include coral-beaded pieces notable for their workmanship. Still, this season’s stand-out looks were the simplest: bouffant ball skirts paired with denim shirts. Here was an unexpected yet felicitous mix. “Fashion is no longer about night and day,” the designer explained toVogue.“It’s about how you feel, what you are, and how you express yourself. Today women have the confidence to mix extreme opposites.”
21 December 2017
It’s rather difficult visualizing a Versace glamazon quarantining at home in casual loungewear and flip-flops—least of all Donatella Versace. But while her confinement uniform will remain forever a well-kept secret, the energy and chutzpah with which she confronted the pandemic was on full display for resort. Developed remotely with her team, the collection rings as Versace’s battle cry for post-lockdown self-confidence and optimism.Called Versace Flash, it’s a dual-drop coed collection, tightly edited and ready to hit the stores running in see-now-buy-now mode. The first capsule will be delivered in August, and the second will land in November. After months of lockdown, brands and retailers are hopeful that people will be eager to return to mood-boosting shopping activities.To whet her fanbase’s appetite, a cool lo-fi video was released during Milan Digital Fashion Week featuring a performance by the British rapper AJ Tracey and the American model Anok Yai, both clad in snake-printed ensembles from the collection. A cameo appearance by Donatella signaled that the pandemic hasn’t reduced her superstar wattage.Resort was inspired by young musicians’ attitude of rebellion and their unconventional style choices. During a showroom review appointment, members of the design studio praised La Signora’s confident lockdown direction, hosting constant Zoom chats and steering the team towards a daring, instinctual approach—fun, creative, more personal. Joyful colors, energy, and “nothing boring, people don’t want boring clothes right now,” was apparently what she recommended.Indeed, nothing says “I’d like to go out and have a good time” better than like a loud, strong mix of Versace acid brights, pyrotechnical patchworks of archival prints, and sexy snakeskin patterns. Versace likes a dressed-up vibe: Silhouettes were shapely, short, and structured, with powerful ’80s shoulders; gold rings and peep holes were cut into the fabric, revealing flashes of bare skin on glam, form-fitting black jersey numbers.The menswear was sportier, with sweats, surfer tees, wide-leg shorts, and tracksuits featuring a bold Medusa Amplified motif mixed with snakeskin patterns. Cropped-wide-pant suits in pastel colors—lavender, mint, baby blue—provided a tongue-in-cheek soft-tailored alternative to formal dressing.The jerseys and sweaters in the men’s line were crafted from responsibly sourced materials and dyes; in both collections, deadstock fabrics were upcycled and reused.
Making do with what was available under the circumstances felt right for the moment. Versace seems to be as committed to propagating sustainability as she is to delivering high-octane glamour.
20 July 2020
How do you top the Instagram-breaking Jennifer Lopez? If you’re Donatella Versace, you turn the cameras on your audience. A giant LED screen split the runway down the middle at Versace tonight. After the age-defying perfection of J. Lo, seeing ourselves reflected back at us was “a rather cruel joke,” as a seatmate put it. But then again it made the point: We’re all the stars of our own Instagram feeds. Further, the designer who can dress us best for a moment—or a life—in the spotlight is DV. So far Milan has mostly been a week of handwork and craft. Donatella remains the resident master of flash.That goes for both her womenswear and menswear—this season marked the first time she combined the two collections. At a preshow press conference she endorsed both “hyper-femininity” via exaggerated shoulders and hips and nipped waists and “hyper-masculinity.” While gender fluidity isn’t really Versace’s thing, equal opportunity flamboyance most certainly is. That meant girls and boys wore electric floral prints and zebra stripes, ditto the metallic pinstripes and traditional checks. The only distinction between a pair of hot pink pantsuits was that the men’s was single-breasted and the women’s was double.Since signing with Capri Holdings a year and a half ago, Versace’s collections have grown to include significantly more daywear. Here, Donatella adopted a glam-casual stance: Her jeans were pieced together in precise stripes and worn with leather jackets patchworked in a similar fashion—standard five pockets they were not. A bigger surprise was the rugby-stripe sweater. Its all-American sportiness was out of left field, even if the designer spliced it into sexy corseted shapes. A pair of oversize polos with the familiar logo treatment worn by two male models hewed closer to the house formula.Of course, evening was the main event. If pushing into new territory was the daywear plan, for after dark the idea was closer to revival. The safety pins that famously held together Elizabeth Hurley’s slashed LBD were replaced by engraved rings, like piercings, and there was an abundance of the house-signature chain mail. The material was mostly cut short, and, in the case of the show closer, it was trimmed with a 3-D band of crystals at the neckline and featured a curvy lampshade skirt. Naturally, its model, Kendall Jenner, put it on her Instagram Stories. At 123 million, Jenner’s got 9 million followers on Lopez. Who needs J. Lo after all?
21 February 2020
How do you top the Instagram-breaking Jennifer Lopez? If you’re Donatella Versace, you turn the cameras on your audience. A giant LED screen split the runway down the middle at Versace tonight. After the age-defying perfection of J. Lo, seeing ourselves reflected back at us was “a rather cruel joke,” as a seatmate put it. But then again it made the point: We’re all the stars of our own Instagram feeds. Further, the designer who can dress us best for a moment—or a life—in the spotlight is DV. So far Milan has mostly been a week of handwork and craft. Donatella remains the resident master of flash.That goes for both her womenswear and menswear—this season marked the first time she combined the two collections. At a preshow press conference she endorsed both “hyper-femininity” via exaggerated shoulders and hips and nipped waists and “hyper-masculinity.” While gender fluidity isn’t really Versace’s thing, equal opportunity flamboyance most certainly is. That meant girls and boys wore electric floral prints and zebra stripes, ditto the metallic pinstripes and traditional checks. The only distinction between a pair of hot pink pantsuits was that the men’s was single-breasted and the women’s was double.Since signing with Capri Holdings a year and a half ago, Versace’s collections have grown to include significantly more daywear. Here, Donatella adopted a glam-casual stance: Her jeans were pieced together in precise stripes and worn with leather jackets patchworked in a similar fashion—standard five pockets they were not. A bigger surprise was the rugby-stripe sweater. Its all-American sportiness was out of left field, even if the designer spliced it into sexy corseted shapes. A pair of oversize polos with the familiar logo treatment worn by two male models hewed closer to the house formula.Of course, evening was the main event. If pushing into new territory was the daywear plan, for after dark the idea was closer to revival. The safety pins that famously held together Elizabeth Hurley’s slashed LBD were replaced by engraved rings, like piercings, and there was an abundance of the house-signature chain mail. The material was mostly cut short, and, in the case of the show closer, it was trimmed with a 3-D band of crystals at the neckline and featured a curvy lampshade skirt. Naturally, its model, Kendall Jenner, put it on her Instagram Stories. At 123 million, Jenner’s got 9 million followers on Lopez. Who needs J. Lo after all?
21 February 2020
Donatella Versace does things her way. Just as the fashion system is backing away from the coed show format, she has fiercely decided to put menswear and womenswear together on the catwalk for her fashion show in February. If we needed proof that she is her own woman dancing to the rhythm of her own tune, here it is. But that’s why we like her, don’t we?Versace’s m.o. is forcefully unpredictable, aligned with the fierce sense of individuality the label stands for. For pre-fall, for example, she placed at the collection’s core not one of the usual sexy signifiers she favors, but a hyper-feminine red rose motif—a symbol of romance, purity, even of transient fragility. The red rose is apparently her favorite flower. What could be more unexpected? But the leopard can’t lose its spots, and the rose was given the Donatella treatment. Blooming for both collections on tailored coats and sharp-cut suits in Prince of Wales or houndstooth checks, it was distorted and twisted, with a slightly dangerous erotic flavor. No hints of fragrant innocence here; the Versace rose has thorns.Embracing contrasts is a hallmark of the house and it played out for pre-fall in its emphasis on the diversity of the vast Versace tribe; there were plenty of wearable choices for its myriad followers. Versace exploded the idea of urban uniforms in full, with elegant tailoring shown in many iterations, suggesting a less street-y, more sophisticated approach. It alternated with more unisex utility accents and a bold take on rock-and-roll black leather. Tough biker jackets, bustiers, and full pleated miniskirts were punctuated by gold zippers, metallic Medusa buttons, and safety-pin details.Yet the rose motif was definitely the strongest decorative statement of the collection, a new interpretation of the archival Barocco print. It was given a colorful Pop Art spin in tie-dyed allover prints and sequined embroideries, and it became a sort of floral camouflage rendered in acid hues. Mixed with acanthus leaves, the roses actually looked like hallucinogenic specimens blooming in a psychotropic garden.Cutting through the floral riot and counterbalancing the visual stimulation, a series of little black dresses (for her) and black tailored suits (for him) demonstrated Versace’s unabashed take on style contradictions.
She riffed with gusto on different silhouettes, constructions, and lengths, highlighting versatility without detracting from sleek glamour, keeping the sex quotient high yet widening the shape options. It was Donatella Versace in fine form: assertive and bold, experimenting with a tough, impactful sense of romance.
10 January 2020
Conjure, if you can, a time when runway images didn’t clog your Instagram feed moments after a fashion show ended. Picture an era before you could find any photo you wanted on the internet. It was at the Grammy Awards in February 2000 when Jennifer Lopez took her iconic red carpet turn in Donatella Versace’s jungle-print dress—the one that plunged precipitously a couple inches below her navel. So many people went hunting for that green dress, and a still nascent Google was so ill-equipped to handle the traffic, Google Images was born. It was a boon for the company, and the implications for Versace and co. were mega. You could argue it was the end of fashion as an insular industry and the start of fashion as entertainment.At a press conference before her show today, Donatella said, “We all follow technology; it’s at the center of our lives today, but 20 years ago it wasn’t. I’m proud that we inspired Google Images.” Her new Spring collection celebrated the milestone. Versace brought the jungle prints and Google provided the Tilt Brush technology that created the digital art projections playing on the walls of the makeshift Pantheon built for the occasion—and Lopez is what made it all click. After the final model made her circle, pictures of J.Lo in the iconic number scrolled by on the walls, then Donatella said, “Okay, Google, now show me the real jungle dress,” and out Lopez glided in an even more naked version than the original, as bronzed, buff, and gorgeous as ever. Needless to say, it was mere minutes before she was a trending topic and the new dress was near the top of a Jennifer Lopez Google Image search. On the runway the energy couldn’t have been higher. The crowd was on its feet for a better view—and a better camera angle—the moment she made her entrance.The surprise guest factor energized Donatella. This was the sharpest and sexiest she’s gone in some time. It was definitely less merchandised than last season’s outing, and in that sense it felt quite late ’90s. Go back and look at the original jungle-print show and what strikes you is how streamlined and unaccessorized the overall aesthetic is. There are other similarities. Though the prints were the ostensible story then and now—after all, prints are what register in images on a screen (that’s one small way technology has changed fashion; there’s plenty more)—the designer didn’t ignore black in either case. And here it was the black looks that really registered.
The tailored coatdress that opened the show was a killer outfit. Interestingly, a particular kind of ’90s sexinesss—heavy on the black and the stilettos—is trending in Milan. With this collection, Donatella confirmed that she has a more vital claim to the era than just about anybody. As for fashion as entertainment, the stakes have just been raised.
20 September 2019
For Resort, Donatella Versace went West, referencing rodeo queens—women with a sexy spirit of adventure and a fearless femininity. It’s a description which could actually apply to the designer herself, who embodies the powerful vitality the label stands for. No one lives and breathes the Versace lifestyle better than Donatella.The mythology of the American West was one of her brother Gianni’s enduring fascinations; in 1992 he made headlines with a collection featuring cowboys and cowgirls in studded black leather regalia, twisted with a transgressive nod to bondage. The frontier was an apt reference for his groundbreaking take-no-prisoners exploration of confident excess. “Fashion knows no boundaries or frontiers,” she said via email. More prosaically, this notion of conquering new territories could have something to do with the expansion the company is foreseeing, after having been acquired in 2018 by Capri Holdings.Versace’s house codes are powerful, instantly recognizable signifiers: the Medusa medallion and the safety pin; the studded cowboy buckle; the Barocco motifs; the sexy innuendo of the color black. They were all here in the Resort collection, filtered through a nod to pop culture and coalescing around an ‘80s-inspired structured silhouette.Versace tailoring is inherently assertive. For Resort, it was anchored by broad padded shoulders and accented with knotted bandanna-inspired printed-silk foulards. Elsewhere those bandannas morphed into a series of asymmetrical printed-silk slip dresses cinched at the waist by studded black leather belts. Sporty bombers with denim inserts were made in chocolate-color suede, introducing an element of tactile softness; a similar sensual feel graced a series of camel wrap-around blanket coats and ponchos with printed-silk lining and fringed hem.Prints being one of the house’s defining visual ingredients, they were lavishly displayed in tie-dye, animalier, or curlicued Western Barocco patterns on bodycon silk dresses and daywear separates. Counterbalancing this head-spinning visual abundance, black dresses were a standout, offered in a great variety of shapes from fluid, asymmetrical numbers to more structured and sexy versions, with heart-shaped necklines and ‘80s shoulders.On a touching note, Gianni Versace’s original handwritten signature was transformed into a new logo, which was either embroidered, all-over printed, or picked out with Swarovski crystals.
But there’s no place for nostalgia in the house of Versace; Donatella’s eyes are set on the present. “The Versace woman has her feet firmly planted on living the moment and in real life,” she said. She definitely practices what she preaches. Her recent appearance in New York alongside Lady Gaga to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the uprising at the Stonewall Inn was testament to her personal involvement on the issues that matter most today.
8 July 2019
As the awesome all-Prodigy soundtrack and the sometimes spiked and dyed hair on the models indicated, this show was part tribute to that band’s front man Keith Flint, who died in March. Before this evening’s show, Versace said: “I dedicate this collection to my old friend. He was disruption… and he performed right here the last time he was in Milan.” That was in 2004, when Flint told journalists, “Milan smells of sex and death. I like to bring the ugly to the beauty.” Not satisfied—at least in that second sentence—with sounding just like Miuccia Prada, he then proceeded to give a pre-show performance in which he simulated oral sex on one un-delighted audience member before licking the face of another.These are more sober times—call it the Hadid age—at the House of Versace, but while there may be less simulated sex on the runway, the upside is that there are arguably more really good clothes. The centerpiece of tonight’s Via Gesu show was a blackened sports car heaped with flowers made by ongoing Versace collaborator Andy Dixon—it was a little hearse meets roadside shrine, and unsettling. This was a nod to the sports car prints, knits, and Lurex, and stud-defined shirting and pants that featured at the back end of the collection.Versace went so big on cars because, she said, “when a man becomes a man the first thing he wants is a car.” This also seemed a quiet aside to the memory of when her brother Gianni, then aged 19, convinced Donatella, then aged 11, to dye her hair blonde for the first time (which it has forever remained) before sneaking off to a Patty Pravo concert in a car stolen from their parents—which broke down and was lost forever en route. This potential for willfully wild acts amidst boys just stepping into their manhood was reflected in the oversized suiting and fringed biker jackets—sometimes worn over suiting—that featured at the start of the show. The volumized silhouette ran through to a series of lip-smackingly tart acid tone Versace print jackets and silk shorts towards the end of it.Another lavishly classical Versace touch was the amphora prints and Lurex knits. Printed vintage Versace fragrance ads on t-shirts and denim were yet another archival flourish.
There was a fun, provocative sensuality in the slightly kicky jersey pants worn below tailoring which came in black or leopard print and floral versions in vertical rib-knit, and a carefully thought through—and Flint-inflected—riff on post-punk in workwear pieces that smashed check against denim. The complementary women’s looks—mostly legs-to-there Versace standard mind-melters—added extra turbo boost to this high energy Versace outing.
15 June 2019
In anticipation of the upcoming Costume Institute exhibition, “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” we’ve digitized collections from which pieces were selected for the show or catalog. This collection was presented on October 7, 1990, in Milan.“To use art in a flat way, without creative intervention, is in bad taste. I mix it up,” said Gianni Versace when talking toVogueabout his Spring 1991 collection—one of those that Donatella Versace revisited (and reissued parts of) forSpring 2018, when she commemorated the 20th anniversary of her brother’s tragic death.Part of this show’s resonance, then and now, is the way that Versace channeled his personal passions, which ranged from the high-brow to the populist, into his clothes. An avid art collector and a voracious consumer of news and pop culture, the designer made many references to paintings, including those of Sonia Delaunay, Victor Vasarely, and the Russian Constructivists (if you happened to miss the point there was a pair of sequined pants that readpittura).Versace’s palette was rich with primary colors this season. Also artful, but more accessible, was the designer’s homage toVoguemagazine. He reproduced then-contemporary and Deco-era covers on a series of playful catsuits that redefined the notion of being fit to print.
1 May 2019
Here are nine words no one ever thought they’d hear Donatella Versace utter: “A little bit of imperfection is the new perfection.” Speaking at a press conference before the Versace presentation, Donatella said she’d been thinking about how we live today on our screens—Instagram in particular—and how we’re all obsessed with perfection. She’s troubled by it, and that led her to grunge, the 1990s music genre associated with thrashing guitars and shredded flannel shirts.There was strategic thinking to Donatella’s hop in this way-back machine. The Versace label has been acquired by Capri Holdings Limited, and her new parent company has set its sights on growth. That means attracting new customers—younger customers who, as it happens, are really feeling the 1990s. Marc Jacobs recently reissued his 1993 grunge collection for Perry Ellis, and Anna Sui also put her Spring ’93 collection back out. Gianni Versace never really addressed grunge the way those designers did. But Donatella has always been in love with music, so this wasn’t as unlikely a fit as it sounds.DV grunge, to be sure, is a long way off from Seattle grunge. These moth holes weren’t made by moths, let’s just say. Also, Donatella loaded her looks with such familiar Versace staples as oversize safety pins and bondage harnesses. And let’s be real, these were not thrift store clothes, which is what Kurt Cobain, whose signature keening mixed with techno on the soundtrack, was wearing when he and Nirvana recordedNevermind. These were luxury clothes, with luxury prices, but certain outfits believably channeled the grunge spirit, among them the V-print minidress over a ribbed-knit sweater and lace tights; the kinder-whore combo of a bondage harness and schoolgirl tweeds; and the black slip worn with a white tee printed with a 1995 Richard Avedon shot of a glamorous Donatella, who was the face of the Versace fragrance Blonde. The T-shirts were a collaboration with the Richard Avedon Foundation.Donatella is über-glam in that Avedon photo, with eyes painted black and her blonde mane flying. That’s how we love her, and that’s why the pieces that resonated most strongly here were the ones made in her glamorous image. Adut Akech’s bronze crystal column with a blue and red slip peeking out was just about perfect.
22 February 2019
So this was the first Versace men’s show since the house was acquired by (the since renamed) Michael Kors Holdings Limited for just over $2 billion. Although Donatella Versace was not available to talk about the collection this Milan Fashion Week, she did grant an interview to formerly-of-this-parish Alex Fury inThe Financial Times. In it, she addressed the “Korsace” question that panicked fans of the house have been pondering: Would the deal dilute Versace’s Versace-ness? Her response: “I don’t know why people thought Versace is becoming like Michael Kors? A medium, lower line. I mean with all due respect to Michael Kors . . . .”Ha! Vintage Versace. This indomitable diva who once joked that her beauty routine is to sleep in her freezer tells it like it is. She also stressed that she would never allow Versace’s sneakers—which, for good measure, she added she would never herself wear—to be made in China, so as not to compromise on made-in-Italy excellence.For those who harbored further doubts that Donatella would take her hand off the tiller now the Kors billions have rolled in, tonight’s collection proved a convincing rebuff. Encompassing men’s and an expensively cast—Adut Akech, Kaia Gerber, Bella Hadid, Emily Ratajkowski—Pre-Fall women’s, this collection was riotously true to the supermodel-mentoring history of the house.The opening section dipped heavily into the early 1990s bondage iconography Gianni had such fun with. Printed harness T-shirts for men, leather pants, and open-backed black silk jackets for men and women tethered by more harnessing provided the slap and tickle. It was sexy and provocative, which was the point. Suits for both genders accessorized with safety pins looked back to another famous way-back-when Versace moment.Then the focus broadened. For men, fluoro knits with contrasting fluoro lace linings were future-kinky. More eye-watering color combinations dilated your pupils, softening the impact of the interesting coalescences between Gianni-print sportswear andgelateria-tone tailoring.The logo-heavy interaction with Ford was a little strange, especially in the context of an Italian thoroughbred asserting its aristocracy, but deals are deals. After a street style–heavy middle section, the collection reverted back to the ostentatiously violent black tailoring, lace, and print that was and forever will be Versace’s meat and drink. New era, same old Versace: On the soundtrack RuPaul sang “you better work”—and who could doubt it?
12 January 2019
“Versace’s vision,” notedVogueof Gianni Versace’s Spring 1997 collection, “is a sky blue wraparound dress of matte jersey.” Romance was in the air—and in the hair—at the Italian house, where models wore flower headdresses. The floaty lightness of this collection, full of wraps and ruffles, was a welcome reboot of theVersaceformula. Not that the clothes Versace showed were tame—far from it. Constructed from whispery chiffons, sheers, and jerseys, they revealed more of the body than some of the designer‘s more formal designs, but the mood was different. He evoked intimacy via dishabille, pairing cashmere robes with nightgown-like dresses, for example, in a tempered palette that included smoke and charcoal grays.Adding pop with a capitalPto the proceedings were colorful, abstract flower and heart prints on transparent stretch tulle, inspired by the works of Julian Schnabel, Jim Dine, Philip Taaffe, and Peter Schuyff, which the designer had assembled for his new New York home. “There has always been a connection between art and fashion,” Versace said. “It’s as if Peggy Guggenheim came back to life and said, ‘Dress me.’”
21 December 2017
This is the collection in which Gianni Versace showed the killer gold safety-pin dress worn to such eye-popping effect by Elizabeth Hurley. The actress’s gravity-defying number and others like it closed the show, but what came before it was a mash-up of references: Kate Moss in a navy pin-striped suit, one part banker, another part Catholic school girl. Christy Turlington in full-blown Lolita mode, wearing a pink gingham pinafore paired with short white socks and pumps speared through with a kilt pin. The extended offering also included tie-dyed laces and lace-trimmed biker shorts that made abbreviated shifts “decent.” But despite its many sub-themes, Versace’s Spring 1994 collection is rightly remembered as his most punk outing, and it’s closely related to his bondage collection of Fall 1992. Bondage shocked, this one titillated.Versacemade the source of his inspiration clear through his lavish use of pins and slashings. The cut-outs were the result of careful engineering, like a cable knit with open spaces among the twists. This was sexed-up gear designed to elicit not rebel yells, but mating calls.
11 October 1993
In the center of the New York Stock Exchange tonight, Donatella Versace built a replica of Lady Liberty’s torch, the oxidized copper replaced with the house signature gold. At a press conference prior to her Pre-Fall 2019 show, she said she saw the torch as “symbol of New York, but also a symbol of women, of empowerment and strength.” She continued, laughing, “Us women, we have to fight more than men usually.” Well, she’s certainly on top now.Since the last time Donatella stepped out for a bow, her company was acquired for $2.1 billion by Michael Kors. When the announcement was made in September, Capri Holdings, as the Michael Kors company rechristened itself, indicated it was committed to increasing Versace’s revenues from $850 million to $2 billion over the next few years. Though the deal is not yet finalized—it’s expected to be so in January—this energetic show marked a new era for Versace, and for Donatella herself.To set a foundation for the future, she returned to the topic of the house’s greatest hits. Her Spring 2018 tribute show to her late brother was a massive success, editorially and commercially. So much so that it’s precipitated a run of reissue collections industry-wide. The fact that today would’ve been Gianni’s 72nd birthday were he still alive gave Donatella more reason to plumb the archive.She landed on what was probably one of his most notorious and iconic collections, Spring 1994—the one that produced Elizabeth Hurley’s famous safety pin dress. Vittoria Ceretti was a knockout in her asymmetrically fastened number, with big gold lining the slits. But it wasn’t only Gianni highlights here. Amber Valletta came out last in a replica of the bare-down-to-there gown she wore at Donatella’s Spring 2000 show—the one where she found her mojo, in the wake of her brother’s tragic death. This time, the palm print was replaced by Jim Dine’s hearts, a nod to work Gianni commissioned from the artist for his New York residence. The Dine hearts were one print among a panoply, and they seem destined to be the collection’s stars, recognizable and collectible in equal measure—Adut Akech’s hearts on denim especially.Over the years Donatella presented Versus, the “little sister” line to Versace, in New York a handful of times. She feels a kinship with the place, and to make it clear she negotiated with the city for the rights to use Milton Glaser’s famed “I love NY” logo, which was mashed up with the familiar medusa motif on a see-now-buy-now T-shirt.
The front row was crowded with a long line of stars: Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, Bradley Cooper, Lupita Nyong’o, Uma Thurman, Mary J. Blige, and assorted other celebrities who will wear Atelier Versace on red carpets around the world. But to get to that $2 billion number, Versace is going to have to sell a lot more than big-ticket gowns; she’s going to have to engage and activate the kids. There were good signs here that she’s up for the job.
2 December 2018
Shalom Harlow’s finale walk around the carpeted quadrangle at the Versace show had all the surprise value of an apparition from heaven; a goddess from the ’90s pantheon of supermodels who simply chose to disappear at the height of her fame, returned to earth. Wearing a swathed micro-flower-print dress with a long, sheer black lace skirt, head held very high, walking with her dancer’s poise, Harlow projected a combination of power and amusement at the effect she was creating in her wake. At the end, she actually laughed.It was always fun, being part of the Versace gang. In 2018, it’s a different kind of a gang—far more multigenerational, its diversity a built-in Donatella norm, which is what her collection celebrated: something for everyone under the Versace sun. For those who didn’t register Harlow’s significance to the elders, there was a brace of Hadids, Binx, Iman, Edie Campbell, et al.The collective spirit centered on reworking Versace microfloral prints—unusually soft and fluttery at times—that were swathed and draped into club-worthy body-con shapes. It used to be that Amazonian Versace glamour dictated towering heels with everything. Now, not so much. Girls in teeny-tiny chain mail or leather dresses are just as likely to want to go dancing in trainers as ankle-strap sandals. There was something about the way Bella Hadid walked around in her one-shoulder fluoro-yellow leather dress—all legs and sneakers—which showed her genuinely at home with it, acting her age.Donatella is tuned into that reality. She also cut some incredible black satin dresses, plunging, slit, strappy, and asymmetric, to which only a grown woman can do justice. If it was a show which lacked theme, it made up for it in empowering variety.
21 September 2018
Sexyis absolutely not a dirty word, but it’s become a grubbily charged subject. In our post-Harvey world, even Victoria’s Secret pretends its brand is about wellness (ha!). Masculine sexuality (especially hetero) is treading softly in 2018. So props to Donatella Versace for taking a long, hard look at various masculine archetypes and attempting to skew the lens a little. To turn the hotness up again for those who want more to fantasize about than avocado toast. And just as importantly, to provide outfits for those who want to feel fantasize-able.This menswear collection was presented against a complementary women’s capsule—not Resort—the better to give a sense of the brand’s total world. Tonight, beneath a gabled roof of unseasonably late hothouse wisteria, Versace’s men and women ran through a suggestive riot of stereotypes. First came the power suit—oh cursed garment of our time—here refreshed by being placed oversize over denim and T-shirts printed with the season’s tabloid print (which I heard some historically challenged showgoer bemoaning for its similarity to Supreme’s box logo).Printed python (not real, folks) came red in shrunken denim-shaped casual wear, and monochrome in looser, skater-ish shapes. Oversize pin-striped denim-effect workwear was accessorized by women’s handbags—tiny little things—taken from the women’s mainline collection but here reused as a gender-confident cross-body fanny pack. Riotous florals and twisting-chain archive pieces were charged with a sense of bolero confidence: Apparently “feminine” decorations like ruffle-hemmed T-shirts and crystal-embroidered pants were presented with swagger—clothes that demanded testosterone to conquer.This collection was often more queer eye than straight guy, but it was never exclusively either/or. The white section—in which decoration was dialed down to zero, with the emphasis placed solely on silhouette and texture—plus the two fluorescent suits, were less about orientation than they were about confidence.In her press release quote Donatella Versace said: “These are men who do not care about the rules and that is exactly what I love.” Yes, well. Rules are actually pretty important for men right now. But by showing us a few rules weareallowed to break, Versace was doing all men a service this evening.
16 June 2018
It’s definitely a Donatella Versace moment. After cohosting the Met Gala in May, last night she was the deserving recipient of the CFDA’s International Award. The excitement around her and the brand began with her Spring 2018 Tribute collection to her late brother Gianni, a genius moment that put the company back on the map, upping its relevance with a new generation of young fans. Subsequent collections have been energized and more focused, featuring archival references recast with an eye on the future.So it’s not surprising that Resort should star Versace’s most potent and transcendent symbol, the mythological Medusa. She was given pride of place in the new collection, an embodiment of the feminine qualities that the house stands for: audacity, independence, a seductive attitude—which are also intrinsically Donatella’s and naturally resonate in today’s conversation about women’s empowerment.Explosive new prints dominated the lineup. In the new Tempio motif, Medusa shared the stage with Pegasus, Greek statuary, friezes, and swirls of neoclassical ornaments and hibiscus flowers, while in the Versace Alphabet pattern, the heritage lettering was treated to an extravagant baroque-pop spin. The clashing prints graced gorgeous, very-Versace ensembles; a profusion of patterns was mapped all over on tops, pleated miniskirts, ’80s-inspired draped pencil skirts, leggings, and stilettos. No surface was left untouched.To counterbalance the visual overload, the lineup was fortified with sporty elements filtered through a luxurious lens and further elevated with a strong dose of tailoring. The silhouette was powerful, with bold shoulders and a cinched waist. Black leather’s aggressive edge was somehow smoothed without detracting from its glamour, as in a buttery-soft, figure-hugging, one-shouldered number, its draping a nod to Gianni’s signature silhouette. The same luxe appeal was given to denim. Updated with washes or vintage finishes, it was emblazoned and coated with maxi logos on ’90s-workwear-inspired, oversize ensembles, or cut into tiny, leg-baring shorts, worn with matching scrunched-down thigh-high boots. The Medusa doesn’t shy away in a corner.
5 June 2018
Glamour’s back. The ’80s are being revered. Print and color are in season. Why wouldn’t Donatella be having a great time designing Versace? Coming off last season’s triumphant retrospective for her brother Gianni set her up for—if not a risk, then another mountain to climb. Well, no worries on that front: She wisely took the impetus and carried on in her own direction.Somehow that included a play on classics—a slick trenchcoat, a schoolgirl shirt collar, beige tailoring, super-platformed brogues. Then there was a riff on trad-punk tartans, all chopped-about, with multilevel kilts topped off with the odd beret. Silhouette-wise, what evolved were draped tulip-shaped miniskirts and bubbles, waists cinched in with broad leather Versace-logo buckle belts, and wide, wide shoulders. Where there were corsets, there were T-shirts crammed beneath them, DIY-club-style.The Versace archive is a fathomless source of brash, busy, primary-color, pop prints, which young designers revere. The trick here was that Donatella took that encouragement to go all-out with total looks—head scarf to body-con drapery to leggings to print-covered boots. That’s where it got interesting, because while the Versace sexiness is so much a house ‘classic,’ it was the head coverings which refreshed and reinforced the frisson of glamour. With just this one device, Donatella nailed something important. In the’80s and ’90s, the years of bouncing Cindy Crawford blowouts, such looks simply couldn’t have happened. Now, it was the tightly wound jersey scarves and dark glasses that rendered the trio of black dresses so visually impactful. Subliminally, they signaled a lot of things which are now up for consideration.Donatella said that to her, those pieces meant “mystery, which is always glamorous.” Then again, she’s always been a woman whose eyes are open to diversity. Today, inclusiveness takes in the fact that there are so many cultures in the world where modesty is a standard requirement—yet a requirement that does not necessarily preclude fashion-consciousness. During London Fashion Week, we have reported the parallel London Modest Fashion Week, just the tip of an emerging market which spans continents and millions of young women who relate. Elsewhere this season, we’ve seen head scarves, balaclavas, and the like beginning to turn up on runways, looking like edgy, geeky gestures. Here, Donatella Versace’s endorsement made much more of a thing of it.
You can take the hint any way you like—but in an on-point way, breaking down barriers and prejudice has always been integral to the house of Versace, and to some eyes, this collection fully honored the brand tradition.
23 February 2018
2 Chainz aka Tity Boi was in the audience at this show to see the first steps of a new Versace sneaker whose molded, interlocked chain sole is an ode to his nom de guerre: His tunes provided the preshow soundtrack, too. Then the first model walked and the Versace production team swerved into EMF’s “Unbelievable” via The Fall’s “Blindness” plus the briefest sample from “Versace on the Floor.”Here, there, everywhere: The musical breadth of this show reflected a collection that foraged far and wide within the Versace canon. Old-but-new logo pins glinted on the outerwear; there was animalia aplenty in zebra- and tiger-stripe overcoats for men and women; and Versace tartan, colored every which way, was cut into fringed-edge strips on men’s overcoats, used in women’s kilts and thigh-highs, and splashed in bold red and blue on suiting. The most abundant source material in this lineup, though, was Versace Home, the anything-but-minimal homewares division of the label. Bracelets were fashioned from twisted cutlery; the Amore e Psiche and Sipario house prints decorated velvet minidresses, women’s suits, and men’s silk shirting and velvet jackets; and hoodies for men and women featured print panels edged with cushion fringing.Silhouettes veered from gathered-at-the-sternum minidresses for women—sometimes in printed silk, sometimes in bead-punched black velvet—to rustically wide corduroy pants with padded and patched tartan work shirts for men. There was an almost ’70s emphasis (2 Chainz’s sneakers apart) on substantial footwear, delivered via gold-buckled black boots with gold-edged casa-shaped cutaways in the heel. Looks do furnish a room, especially when delivered with as much light-touch verve as here.
13 January 2018
How do you top a triumphal tribute show that will go down as one of the most spectacular fashion moments of this era? It isn’t easy, not even for a risk-taker like Donatella Versace. Having considered all of her options for Pre-Fall, the lady of the house decided to go home. Of course, home for Versace isn’t a two-bedroom flat, but a stately palazzo on Milan’s Via Gesù. The Versace siblings bought the noble mansion when they were basically kids—very young, talented, ambitious kids from Southern Italy. And the powerful Medusa’s head was right there, as if waiting, a decorative mosaic smack in the middle of the courtyard. Clearly, it was fate.Versace Casa was the home collection inspired by Gianni’s love of baroque statuary and mythological imagery. Who can forget Richard Avedon’s 1995 campaign featuring Claudia Schiffer and Nadja Auermann in a state of glorious undress save for their huge silk blankets covered in golden curlicue? Or a stark-naked Sylvester Stallone, hiding his attributes behind a bone china Versace dinner plate decorated with Baroque friezes? Let’s just say that Gianni never lacked guts, and Donatella has clearly inherited them in spades.She referenced the home collection for Pre-Fall as a kind of emotional coming-back to her family roots. Gianni’s legacy remains so powerful that it connects the label with a new generation of customers who weren’t yet born when he was alive. Next year, they’ll wait in line to buy the cool sneakers printed with a revamped Versace logo, and they’ll probably wear them with a full-on printed look: pleated miniskirt, men’s shirt slit at the shoulders, and leggings.Sharp tailoring is Donatella’s cup of tea. Here, she indulged in contrasts, mixing the opulent with the strict, the unruly with the controlled. Baroque and Neoclassical prints exploded on tight dresses, oversize sweaters, city coats, and abbreviated padded bombers, but she kept the energy surplus in check with streamlined, uncomplicated shapes. Black was a healthy counterbalance to such abundant chromatic stimulation; the sensuality of dévoré velvet gave fluid pajama suits a soft touch. Still, the collection was a decorative tour de force; swirls and curlicues were embroidered with Swarovski crystals on net tulle leggings and bodysuits that exuded a steaming sex appeal. Very Versace, indeed. To borrow a line from the press notes, “Lie back, relax, and cause trouble.”
11 December 2017
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the brutal murder of Gianni Versace in broad daylight in Miami Beach. This tragic fact has brought the late designer back into the public eye, most notably as the subject of Ryan Murphy’s nextAmerican Crime Story,set to air on FX next year. Versace’s horrible death has been told and retold ad nauseam. Possibly to redress this, this evening Donatella Versace chose to stage her Spring 2018 show at Milan’s Triennale museum as a tribute to Gianni’s inspirations and creations, to celebrate “a genius . . . an icon . . . my brother.” She wanted the focus to be on his life, not his violent end, but also his feminist leanings and the eternal relevance of his designs.And so, for the first time since assuming creative direction of the company, she pulled directly from archives the key prints and pieces from the years 1991–95, the period that saw some of Gianni Versace’s most iconic collections: Vogue, Warhol, My Friend Elton, Icons, Baroque, Animalia, Native Americans, Tresor de la Mer, Metal Mesh, and Butterflies. From each of these print motifs, Donatella Versace remade and reinterpreted the blouses, square-shouldered jackets, leggings, catsuits, corsets, trenches, mini sheaths, and maxi skirts. Not to mention high-waisted jeans, logo tees, fanny packs, and jeweled stiletto boots. Each thematic grouping was rendered in a full capsule collection so that one can, say, have a full wardrobe ofVoguecover girls to wear day to night, or starfishes, or the faces of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. One piece—a black-and-white ball skirt worn originally by Naomi Campbell in the Native American collection (Fall ’92)—was literally from the archives as the work on it was such that it could not be replicated in time for this show (where it was worn by Natasha Poly). Naomi did make an appearance in gold chain mail (Metal Mesh, Fall ’94), flanked for the finale by Carla Bruni, Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, and Helena Christensen, to the chorus of George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90.”This show is impossible to review in terms of the clothes because history has judged them at this point and they are winners one and all. Gianni Versace’s work was extraordinary for its out-of-the-box humor, sense of history, total hubris, and playful hotness. And here’s the thing: It holds up beautifully over time.
Which glam leisure hottie doesn’t want a baroque legging? Which mega babe new supermodel—Gigi, Bella, Kaia, Candice (all in the show)—doesn’t want a tiny black crepe dress with gold embroidery snaking over the shoulders and hips, or a fully beaded thigh-high covered in Warhol icons? The butterfly fanny packs alone scream,Buy me now, Kendall!The jeweled starfish belt? Winner. And there are strong-shouldered stretch-velvet dresses in the gentlest of pastels—mint, blush pink, sky blue—palette cleansing and immensely relevant, the colors and silhouette of this season (yet first shown 22 years ago).Gianni Versace knew that beauty and vulgarity were chic bedfellows—something his sister prizes greatly in his aesthetic legacy, along with his daring. And she is smart enough to identify in this moment the relevance of that synergy. “We got this,” she seemed to be saying to anyone who might cast her brother’s legacy otherwise. We got this.
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22 September 2017
No disrespect to the out-of-town edifice that has played host to Versace for the last few seasons, but ah, it’s good to be home. Donatella Versace today made a welcomed-by-her-audience return of her show to the family palazzo, on Via Gesu, that was originally acquired from the Rizzoli clan back in 1981. Why welcomed? Well, it is not only a brick-and-mortar embodiment of the House—Gianni took his Medusa logo from a pebbled fresco on the floor of the courtyard —but also a lovely place to watch a show.Immediately after her homecoming, Donatella left, nipping out and off as the applause and accompanying techno were still ricocheting around the walls of the courtyard. But in this 20th anniversary year of her brother’s still-shocking death, that was perhaps unsurprising: The deepest pain never dulls.This collection was part homage to the brother whose creative estate Donatella oversees and nurtures. It was also a pragmatic rewriting of his codes for a new generation of consumers who post-date them. The opening section of chalk-stripe suits and short suits not only recalled Gianni’s original disassembly of executive wear but also featured a jacket shape very similar to his. This one was freshened by the insertion of panels of jumbled secondary stripe—or elevated by the replacement of stripe altogether, with fine metal chain stitched through the fabric. The bound-to-be-bought logo T-shirts in the Miami shades of dusty pink and blue, plus the logo pins on a jacket and a work coat, were drawn from the late ’80s. The two prints, one reading “Opera Balletic Teatro Cinema” and the other some pretty, plumpputti, were both from the archive but—at least according to another source in the Donatella-less backstage afterward—never before used. These were, of course, featured in shirting but also patched onto denim or retooled as the fabric for quilted bomber jackets. And oh, that gold Lurex tracksuit.The collection was accompanied by a special womenswear capsule designed entirely to complement the men’s, separate to Resort. It featured some awesome pieces and, like the seldom-seen-again womenswear that often accompanies Prada menswear, seemed to merit a meaningful retail platform. The black headbands worn by each girl were taken from Gianni’s last-ever couture show.This collection wasn’t entirely retrospective. A few drawstring-gathered tracksuit pieces and the zipped two-tone sneakers were among the forward-facers here.
Overwhelmingly, though, this was a collection that looked back but stayed present—and that should attract future Versace-curious customers to the house of Medusa.
17 June 2017
Donatella Versace’s love of L.A. was on full display in her new Resort lineup, which read like a glam version of aLonely Planetguide to the City of Angels.Versacevisits often, and she always comes back inspired—she has a penchant for the city’s relaxed, sunny vibe. After a recent stay, she sent the whole design team on a research trip; they combed the city in every possible direction, from the cheapest vintage markets to architect John Lautner’s modernist homes. Looking at the collection, it seems like they had a hell of a good time.Donatella’saestheticis two-thirds sexy glamour, one-third youthful, rebellious streak, flavored with rock ’n’ roll vibes, street-culture energy, and a whiff of of-the-moment references. With fashion talk revolving around diversity, free style, and individuality, she offered her personal take on the topic, and L.A., with its many cultural communities, served as a fitting starting place to emphasize her point. Pinstriped power suits looked fit for the downtown Financial District, their tailored construction softened and sexed-up by abundant lace trimmings, bra-tops, and revealing slits on pencil midi skirts. Rock culture was referenced in a series of black studded biker jackets worn with pleated miniskirts, leather patchwork minidresses, or sculpted tuxedo jackets stitched and outlined with thin silver chains.Gianni Versace’s groundbreaking catalogues of the ’90s were often shot in Beverly Hills; and even if Donatella is not keen on delving into the archives, she paid homage to the joyful, sexy energy springing from those unforgettable pictures. Vibrant colors graced reworked baroque prints on short shirtdresses and ankle-length sundresses with lacy lingerie details. Embroidered palm trees (a nod to the famous wallpaper of the Beverly Hills Hotel), peacock feathers, and jungle flowers decorated distressed denim boyfriend pants, trucker jackets, and cotton bikers with power shoulders. Yet in L.A., all the roads lead to Hollywood. The cherries on top here were a few stunning column dresses, embellished and revealing in all the right places, exuding the trademark Versace glamour in spades.
6 June 2017
Should there be any questions hanging over the issue of whether it’s possible to show out as a full-on Nasty Woman while being sexy and compassionate at the same time, then Donatella Versace has some answers. Versace is a house which has glam female power set into its foundations, and Donatella is not about to go quietly into times which threaten the biggest setbacks to women’s rights and tolerance in generations.The first thing which hit you was the tribe of models’ serious look of intent—their punkish cat-eye makeup; their color-streaked hair extensions; their leggy, purposeful stride. The first out wore a short, black double-breasted coatdress and a white shirt. Peeking out from under her hem was a sheer black slip withequalityembroidered on it. Strong, black, uncompromisingly well-cut pantsuits, overcoats, little black dresses, boxy cropped jackets, and pencil skirts made a polished, precise argument for the comeback of tailoring.And then there was the messaging—memos to self and the world—spelled out large and clear in block capitals on beanie hats, scarves, and T-shirts:UNITY, COURAGE, LOYALTY, LOVE. A press release called it “A call for unity and the strength that comes from positivity and hope.”As vixenish as the Versace girls looked in their cutaway, fluttery slip dresses and giant streetwise orange-lined shearlings and puffas, the words Donatella is hoping to put out are noticeably nonaggressive. Womankind may enjoy holding the line in anything we choose, right up to the terrific slinkily draped chain-mail dresses, she seemed to be saying. It remains to be seen what good—if any—will come of wearing slogans out and about, but it is admirable that Donatella Versace is nailing her family company's label to the mast of liberty.
24 February 2017
Not so long ago the collections in Milan were dominated by suiting: You perhaps saw more ties here than on Wall Street at rush hour. So it was a bit of a shocker that one of the first truly suited-and-booted, office-ready (luxury) looks spotted this season were at Versace.The investor’s adage buy low, sell high applies to fashion too, however. By including the front half of this show with an undoubtedly Versace-fied selection of suiting teamed with topcoats, skinny ties, and brogued, Vibram-soled boots, the brand was reaching out to a fraternity once saturated with choices from Milan but now starved of them. The sliced-hem pants (to accommodate the boots), the studded leather and the patent backpacks, and the patent gloves with exterior golden rings acted as nonconformist fashion roughage to this salaryman pitch.There were many other tribes of man more overtly Versace-ish being played to here, though. Voluminous jacquard topcoats patterned with gently disrupted check worn over turtlenecks and chains looked both tough and sensual. Synthetically shiny black pants worn over a gray bomber with a fragment of antiquarian photoprint were austerely kinky: Every step emitted an unboxing video squeak of plastic under duress. Waistlines were extravagantly emphasized; outerwear fiercely cinched included a dark satin-shine mackintosh, a wide-hooded shearling, a lipstick-red leather coat, and two down jackets, one checked, toward the end. Apparently, Versace had been thinking about clans and their tartans, which is why check was a recurring theme through this show. Versace’s own tartan, its glorious archive of prints, was flown proudly at the last: A jacket featuring a vintage Luna Park–meets–heaven and hell design included Donatella Versace’s beloved dog Audrey looking up from a flight of stairs.
14 January 2017
Donatella Versace—or “La Signora,” as she’s called by her faithful staff—seems to be in particularly great form. Not that she’s ever been less than spirited. By the looks of her new bookVersace, a glossy tome published by Rizzoli, she has always celebrated a life of indomitable energy. Relentlessly driven, passionate, and with a fierce sense of cool, La Signora has achieved a celebrity status akin to that of the stars and First Ladies queuing up for her goddess dresses; now she’s definitely at the top of her game.Lately, her fashion shows have also gained momentum, showing a strong sense of modernity. Donatella has always been able to tap into the zeitgeist; and sporty being the vibe of the moment, she has translated it in her hyper-luxurious, sexy way. This winning mood continued to infuse the Pre-Fall collection, which played on an uptown-downtown riff, where a zest for street attitude was elevated with experimental glamour. New techniques and custom-made fabrics gave an edge to sporty, urban shapes: Tweed was laminated or woven with techno threads for a textured glossy sheen and fil coupé was printed with curlicued motifs, which were also embossed on leather detailing or embroidered on tulle mesh. An elaborate new print graced city parkas in silk jacquard or was knitted into formfitting dresses; it was aptly called “barocco-flage,” a very Versace blend of Baroque-inspired swirls, animal prints, and camouflage. The urban vibe was softened by more feminine silhouettes, as in elongated, fluid midi dresses, where the sporty feel was evidenced through ruched drawstrings. Tailoring was kept sharp and linear; urban bombers, biker jackets, parkas, and city coats were spiced up by the Donatella treatment: a good dose of sexy, empowering, take-no-prisoners allure.
12 December 2016
What are the ways of looking at women’s strength? At the house ofVersace, it’s always been posited as the power of glamour, the enjoyment of knockout dressing, in the context of nightclub and event entrances. But now,Donatella Versaceseems intent on moving beyond that. Being satisfied playing the role of arm candy, glitteringly static under disco lights, isn’t enough any more. Strength can be athleticism, energy, a sense of sisterhood. That’s the agenda Versace’s Spring collection seemed to put forward, to a feminist soundtrack written by Violet and Photonz, exhorting an end to passivity. “Living is better than dreaming,” went one of the lines. “Take the leap!”So Versace’s female crew—models of many ages and far more varieties of shape than per normal—strode out in a collection that majored on outdoor activewear. There were billowy nylon parkas; body-con leggings with tight sporty T-shirts; Teva flatform sandals. Not that this was exactly a camping collection. Versace techniques will out, and the nylon techno fabric was soon threaded with drawstrings, pulled and ruched into a couple of asymmetrically sexy dresses in green and navy blue. Beige rainwear came precisely chopped into a terrific roomy jacket and matching miniskirt diagonally bisected with snaps; leather was deployed as a cropped color-blocked motocross blouson with souped-up nylon track pants.The casting ran from Edie Campbell to Naomi Campbell, newcomers to Victoria’s Secret stars Taylor Hill and Stella Maxwell, and a class reunion of the likes of Carmen Kass, Caroline Trentini, and Doutzen Kroes. The inclusive casting was underscored by the inclusive variety of Versace specialties on display—not just curve-sculpted black dresses, but also a clutch of the house signature checkerboard and scarf prints, ending up with a few terrific examples of the house crystal chain mail. In the past, those finale dresses would have progressed forth as a tableau of elaborate floor-sweeping gowns. Today, they just marched off at high speed, with Gigi Hadid swirling a navy parka over a flash of darkly sparkly beading bringing up the rear—and that looked modern.
23 September 2016
Donatella Versaceshot a movie before she designed her latest collection. No, the blonde bombshell hasn’t finally taken to the silver screen—alongside Bruce Weber she spent four days in Chicago, photographing her Fall 2016 Versace campaign and shooting a 20-odd-minute film to go with it. A shortened version of said film played at the start of her Spring 2017 show—another example of fashion scrambling perceptions of seasons right now. And, oddly, the experience of shooting the Fall campaign inspired Versace’s Spring menswear show. “The four most inspirational days,” was how Versace herself described it. “I brought almost all my design team to see—because they’d never be able to see this. We came back, and we designed the collection in five days!”It’s probably difficult to hang around with Weber for that length of time and not produce a menswear show inspired, to some degree, by the vision of masculinity he has so decidedly fashioned over the past three decades. He’s contributed plenty to Versace’s own canon of male imagery, throbbing with sexuality, frequently undressed, rippling with muscle. Hunks in trunks. However, as opposed to Donatella’s frequent priapic predilections, it was the dancers of Weber’s film that inspired her—body-popping and gyrating in Versace workout gear, their mood translated to the runway in a focus on athletic shapes, featherweight fabrications, and plenty of movement. The billowing Versace silk shirts of yore were transposed to fluttering floor-length parkas—some slung over flesh-colored jerseys, some just slung over flesh. Old habits die hard. Look at those billowing coats long enough, rendered in the collection’s rich shades of blue, claret, jasper green, and Tyrian purple, and they began to resemble the airborne drapery in Renaissance paintings. Crossed with, maybe, a modern Olympian. They’re about to kick off in Rio after all. And Versace loves a Greek god—either on her clothes, or inside them.When there was skin on show, it was below the waist as opposed to above. Meaning leg. Lots of leg, bared by shorts wide-cut or cycle pants cleaved to meaty thighs. They were part of a new line of Versace Active performance gear, alongside knit leggings that left little to the imagination. They were teamed with everything, from sweaters to tailored jackets to more of those blousy blousons.
18 June 2016
Donatella Versacehas never steered clear of challenges; she always seems energized by new adventures, embracing changes and the occasional controversy with a free-spirited attitude. The label’s new Resort lineup was infused with an individual vibe very much in sync with the designer’s strong personality and with a feeling of positivity and lightness. Chalk it up, perhaps, to changes at the company. A new CEO has just been appointed; Jonathan Akeroyd, who was previously in the same role atAlexander McQueen, has been charged with taking the brand to the “next level.” A sense of anticipation about a journey was quite literally baked into the collection, which was inspired by the all-American road trip. This beingVersace, though, you can forget Greyhound buses and motels in the middle of nowhere; this road trip happens on a Gulfstream private jet.New York, a city dearly beloved by DV, provided the obvious fashion starting point. The pulsating neon lights of Times Square’s billboards inspired contrasting trimmings and embossed edges in primary colors on sleek, sharp black city coats, pantsuits, biker jackets, and minidresses. An urban-jungle feeling was further explored in protective yet light outerwear, as in a black leather parka with royal blue nylon detailing worn with a sexy pleated minidress. Micro-floral prints meant to evoke America’s vast prairies sprouted gently on mid-length pleated skirts, on straight pants paired with a masculine shirt, and on a jacquard blouson worn with a narrow pencil skirt. The prints had an unusually sweet, almost thrifty flair, yet the Versace touch kept the silhouette linear. Landing at last in the City of Angels, L.A.’s urban grid and artsy vibe inspired a pattern for a macraméd lace that graced a black paneled dress paired with a sleeveless leather biker vest, its edges sprayed graffitilike in a contrasting sun-bleached color. The final destination was the glitzy glamour of Hollywood’s red carpets, where DV feels most at home. A stunning selection of event dresses was on display in the showroom; they had a fluid, sexy allure.
6 June 2016
There’s a certain way a pair of kitten heels make a girl walk that changes a lot more than the proportions of the clothes she’s wearing. This not-so-esoteric point was ably demonstrated byGigi Hadid,Kendall Jenner,Adriana Lima,Karlie Kloss, et al as they strode down a very long runway atVersace. In distinct contrast to the forward-pitched high-heel strut, such low-styled stilettoes cause a rolling motion from the hips that, when combined with tight-fitting cropped kick-flares, skimpy minis, or dangerously curved jersey dresses, will provide some mesmerizing chassis action in retreat. Not that the front view offered by Miss Hadid wasn’t fully eye-popping too, particularly in the case of her bra-free demonstration of how to wear a scoop-neck slip dress.Allora!It is safe to say that sexiness is back at Versace, but—in keeping with the more hard-core, military, female-empowerment moodDonatella Versaceset out last season—it’s a different, more various kind of sexy, embracing models of a range of shapes and ages. “I love mixing the cool girls with the reality girls,” Donatella said backstage. “It’s about a woman’s power—for every kind of woman!”For Fall, again, Donatella made sure she paid attention to daywear, starting with black leather-trimmed suits and belted coats, moving into biker-jacketed tailoring, taut ski-pants, and a section of sporty crosshatched knit dresses, and one big chunky sweater in an abstracted alpine pattern on Natasha Poly. Then came the prints, some of them consisting of baroque curlicues designed byGianni Versaceand then “broken apart on the computer.” Still, it wasn’t so much the use of ice-blue, or coral, or the wavy and “stretched” lines that drew the eye so much as the general sense of energy radiated by this new, much more inclusive and individualistic band of Versace models. That and the other emergent trends of the season: lots more leg on show, and a comeback for the power of dressing in black.
26 February 2016
Space camp. That was the theme ofDonatella Versace’s Fall 2016 collection. At least it seemed that way, because it was undoubtedly spaced-out, and undeniably camp. The former was intentional. “Sports and space,” said Ms. Versace, explaining why half a dozen models didRunning Man–style sprints in fiber optic–threaded sports gear to open the show. They had batteries inside, she said. It wasn’t clear if they come included.As for the camp? It’s hard to be sure how much nudge-nudge, wink-wink is going on when Donatella is designing; how much she’s knowingly provoking her audience. For many men,Versaceis an acquired taste. That’s putting it mildly. There’s a great tranche of them who’d rather be shot into space than put it on their back. But—and, as anyone who’s ever tried to wriggle into a pair of the house’s pants will tell you, the “but” is all important at Versace—there are plenty of guys who wouldn’t dream of wearing anything else. Versace’s menswear business forms approximately half of its turnover, and it’s only going up.Perhaps those skyrocketing figures inspired Donatella Versace’s intergalactic trip. “I’m thinking of the future,” said the peroxided one. “This is the ultimate expression of the future: space.” For many, it’s the final frontier; for Donatella, it’s just another wardrobe option. It’s filled with flight jackets strapped and zippered like space suits; with suctioned leggings; buckled scuba sneakers; with square-jawed, heroic Himbos taking their giant leap for mankind onto the runway in jackets festooned with NASA-Versace space badges featuring the house’s Medusa head in stars andBruce Weberhunkologies. The cosmos was a loose influence, triggered by zodiac-inspired prints in the archives. And in a four-day period where fashion lost two key space-race style inspirations—not only Bowie, but André Courrèges—Versace’s sky-gazing felt prescient.It didn’t feel especially futuristic though, mired as it was, heavily, in both the boulder-shoulder silhouette and sci-fi fantasies ofThierry Mugler. The former isn’t a galaxy far far away from what the Versace man would want to wear, especially when the cosmonaut effect was given by a simple Perfecto with broad chest in silvered leather or snowy sheepskin. A sequence of models in all-white looked like stray extras from a nineties boy-band video and the arcane accessories—metallic badges, plastic-coated bags and belts—were Trekkie, techy, and a little bit tacky.
16 January 2016
Boosted by a successfulSpring ’16 show, a mood of focused optimism energized Versace’sPre-Falllineup. Taking an active approach,Donatella Versacereworked sportswear-inspired elements into a polished look with an urban attitude. She steered clear of the house’s signature hyper-glamorized eveningwear and focused instead on modern daywear. Tailoring and precise construction were the foundations on whichVersacebuilt coats and jackets of controlled proportions, paired with elongated, high-waisted pants or with short, sexy pleated skirts. Fabrics were dense yet malleable, giving the shapes a sculptural feel with a soft edge.A play of contrasts is always welcome chez Versace; here, the designer worked her favorite feminine/masculine motif by splattering a slim sleeveless column dress in houndstooth wool with a pink rubberized floral print, or by printing an elegant coat in sumptuous herringbone tweed with a brushstroke effect in bright lilac. Pink scratch marks decorated the distorted digital background on miniskirts and a zip-up bomber jacket with rebellious, irreverent results. Tailored pieces were influenced by their inner construction or by the asymmetry of paper patterns, and embellishments came in patchworks of bejeweled stitches, studs, and grommets. The collection was grounded by chunky heels, flat loafers, and sturdy Chelsea boots: Versace glamazons, for whom heels were once never too high or too thin, will have to adapt pronto to the new look.
15 December 2015
Just when you're feeling down, and a little bit battered and numbed by fashion in general, and perhaps thinking you've lost sight of the point of it all, along comesDonatella Versaceto put it to rights. Before we start talking about the way her collection grabbed so many women in parts of themselves they never imagined Versace could reach—even those who like a boyish pant suit and flats—we should refer you to her soundtrack. It was not just an added-on musical theme, but the massively inclusive, confidence-generating “Transition” by Violet and friends. You'll have to listen to it, but long story short: It's a call to all women to stop listening to our inner demons and outer detractors, and just get rid of everything which stops us from doing what we really want. “It was made for International Women's Day,” said Donatella Versace, backstage. “And when I heard it, I was so sure of myself. I wanted to challenge myself, to do something strong.”Which is surely the main reason she came up with the image of combat which marched through her show—a reflection of the all-too-many wars which are raging now, maybe, but also of the resolution of her battle with herself to throw away self-imposed restraints, and just get on with making Versace relevant.Relevant? We must now move toward thinking about what that oft-repeated, never-defined, and rather terrifying word means. Perhaps “relevance” is emotionally felt in fashion when it’s clear that it’s not just for one type of very thin, very young white girl; when it also represents on behalf of color, booty, and admirable women who are just a weensy bit more experienced than eighteen. And apart from that? When it comes to design, relevance in fashion also relates to where on earth the clothes are actually supposed to be worn. Can many people find things to put on daily? Or are we all going to continue to believe in the fiction that living in today's world is one long cocktail reception?Donatella Versace addressed all that by showing a collection which never ditched the beloved character of her family's house, but concentrated mostly on varying shades of daywear, shown on an inclusive cast of characters. The opening looks, all legs, with khaki tailored jackets cinched with webbing belts over micro shorts, above vertiginous platforms, were no surprise.
What came nextwas: TheVersacehouse print gone wild in punchy green camouflage tailored suits with slouchy boy-cut pants, collaged into knits and sweatshirts and swinging along in the form of backpacks—all (amaze!) walking out on clogs and sporty slides.It would not be Versace without an injection of sexiness—a quality which has been so out of fashion recently that many designers appear terrified of it. This time, Donatella Versacedidshow some of the requisite chiffon, fluttery, spilt-to-the-thigh gowns, but the little, curvy, slashed and knotted dresses which came before them were far more interesting, shown as they were on girls striding out on what amounted to decorated clogs. It was a triumph which turned boredom into excitement and alienation into a visceral desire to shop. Whatever forces Donatella Versace was fighting to reach this new point of clarity, she won.
25 September 2015
"I love drama," Donatella Versace announced backstage. "You know I'm a drama queen." So, with silk scarves billowing, sand underfoot, and a suitably dramatic quote fromLawrence of Arabiaprojected on the back wall ("No Man Needs Nothing"), the Versace show space on Via Gesù was turned into a vast and luxurious Bedouin tent. Against this backdrop, the clothes that paraded past were the familiar repertoire—blousons, leathers, firm-shouldered tailoring—cannily given an exotic twist to fit the theme. And that twist turned up on tops elongated to at least mid-thigh, more often to the knee. Even a button-down shirt was kurta-length, worn under a softly tailored suit. The proportion play emphasized the collection's sensual fluidity, especially when it was expressed in sinuous tie-dyed knits, which looked sun-bleached. Sand, spice, the purple of sunset, and the navy of night also riffed on a desert color palette.The longer layering didn't always work and the styling ran away with an outfit or two (one head-scarfed honey was all about the Axl Roses), but the air of elegant menace that Versace veteran Scott Barnhill projected in his suit andloooongshirt emphasized the formal potential of the combination. If no man needs nothing, then every man needs something and, from this collection, Barnhill's look was it.
20 June 2015
It might not have been a Versace first, but it definitely qualified as news today that the main shoe in the house's Resort collection was a plastic pool slide. Let's put it this way: It's not a Donatella shoe, although a company rep did report that she took the flatform version of the shoe out for a spin at home in Milan. The rest of the collection found Versace revisiting familiar terrain—acid colors, body-con fabrics, ultrashort lengths—in some refreshing new ways. Playful was the name of the game here. Emojis were woven into the body-con knits. A strong athletic theme coursed through the collection, in everything from a nylon tracksuit with Versace's signature Greek key motif detailing to hourglass dresses with sports uniform color-blocking. Even the lingerie-influenced pieces retained a fairly innocent allure, thanks to the poppy shades of orange and pink they were shown in. Versace also experimented with blush—"the new white," she's calling it—but it didn't resonate the way the brights did. What really set the collection apart from the take-no-prisoners tenor of most of her runway shows was a vivid floral print that she used for flippy, pleated slipdresses and one pair of positively epic high-waisted bell-bottoms. Now those are something we'd love to see DV in.
5 June 2015
Donatella Versace has been waiting for this moment her whole life. She's always been a go-fast girl.Nowmatters most. She doesn't pretend to be fluent in digitalism—that's what "people" are for, after all—but with her new collection, she managed an effective integration of Versace's past with the digital present, and a possible future in which, according to news reports, there might be an IPO for the company. You need to present a picture of glowing health in such circumstances, and the catwalk tonight certainly offered that. It was brimming with product: shoes and stockings and bags and sporty bits and pieces that spelled out V-E-R-S-A-C-E in crystal to the world.It's essential to remember that Versace created this fashion alphabet in the first place. When Gianni made his beaded James Deans and Marilyn Monroes at the beginning of the '90s, he was trading in what were still some of the most potent icons of that time. Donatella did the same thing tonight, but she was using digital symbolism: hashtags, @ signs, emojis, emoticons…. Ghastly though the prospect may seem, there is an unholy multitude of people for whom an @ communicates something more intrinsically meaningful that a Dennis Stock photograph of James Dean moseying through Times Square in the '50s. It is to Donatella's credit that she can surf that new wave (with the assistance of "people," of course).She did it tonight with searing jolts of primary color in coats and capes. The cutouts from Couture were carried over with spectacular subtlety in the random sheer slices on one leg of an otherwise sober black suit, but elsewhere cutout black coatdresses were played against a red or green thigh-boot in patent leather. The Versace Greek key, a classic graphic detail for the house, was transmogrified into #[Greek] all over pert little ribbed bombers, tucked as a metal plaque inside bags, quilted into suede jackets and coats.We may have reached a point where it is virtually impossible to conceive of Versace beyond the world that Gianni made and Donatella nurtured, but there was a flash of a crystal @ on a perfectly toned rear end tonight that hinted at a future where there is still some joy andhumorto be found in fashion. Long may she reign.
27 February 2015
"Versace stripped," Donatella declared dramatically before her show. "No decoration, no color, no print. Just the soul of Versace: silhouette and cut." She envisaged the collection as a kind of ground zero, leveling the playing field for the future. It wasn't quitethatradical, but it was certainly a step away from excess and ambiguity and gladiatorial camp, as Versace's menswear eases on down the rocky road to a stable identity.The color palette was a banquet of soothing neutrals. For all the designer's insistence on cut, it was softness that dominated. A hooded mink coat and a Mongolian lamb backpack were its most extreme manifestations. Otherwise, jacquard-ed blousons and parkas had the comfy look and feel of blankets. "Comfy…butsexy," Donatella insisted—though not as sexy as the body-conscious cashmere knitwear in long cabled cardigans and even longer rib-knit tops, layered over leggings. The look was lean and athletic with a touch of Peter Pan, but it took on an impressive masculine heft with oversize outerwear. And the tailoring was similarly balanced, between single-button jackets and Charlie Chaplin pants—utility and aesthetics. When there weren't buttons, the jackets closed with metal clasps, a futuristic touch that worked quite well with the slightly sci-fi quality of those layered knits.The hard edge that had been stripped from the clothes was off-loaded onto the set, with Versace's Medusa head deconstructed into an abstract industrial grid. Stripped and striking, but still you found yourself wondering: Whither Versace menswear?
17 January 2015
Words likegraphic,clean, andneatdon't always come to mind when thinking of the Versace aesthetic, nor does the oxymoron "controlled boldness." Yet that's the best way to describe the look of the Pre-Fall collection, presented today in the Milanese showroom. Moving away from her signature body-con silhouette, Donatella Versace embraced a masculine inspiration mixed with sporty references this season, injecting her new lineup with the typical Versace sense of luxe, but polishing the edges with a sleek, modern spirit. The results proved convincing. A restricted color palette of black, fire red, cobalt blue, and purple was the canvas for houndstooth-check patterns blown up to abstract proportions, or for block intarsia with a dash of a mod look. Patchwork was the thread that ran through the collection—different types of leather were embroidered, stitched, or "carved" into sweatshirts or the back of biker jackets; Mongolian lamb, mink, astrakhan, and suede were mashed up in a glamorous parka; and animal-printed jacquards were paired with bonded silk cady for dresses with full volumes, as well as swinging skirts—a bona fide first for Versace. Techno fabrics worked into lean shapes were another testament to the collection's concise, new direction. To cap things off, the infamous safety pins that launched Elizabeth Hurley into the limelight were given a makeover, redesigned in golden metal or in glittering Swarovski crystals. Piecing together asymmetrical slashes on red-carpet-ready, drapey cocktail dresses, they were a reminder that, after all, Donatella is still a wild child at heart.
15 December 2014
Knowing Donatella Versace's love of balls-out rock, thinking back to the Versus show in New York and St. Vincent's storming performance at the after-party, it's easy to assume that what Donatella did tonight was a direct reflection of her recent experiences. Straightforward silhouettes, bold color, and no embellishment added up to her strongest collection in a long time. She didn't need to fanny around with eveningwear. That's what couture is for. Instead, she offered a starkly modernist, color-blocked, crystal mesh take on cocktail dresses (the kind of cocktail that will carry you through till dawn—and a lifetime of regret). Isabeli Fontana's outfit was just one of a dozen that would, as Raymond Chandler memorably defined femmes fatales of another era, "make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window."True, the crystal mesh was a slam dunk in the vein of vintage Versace, but the real achievements of this collection lay elsewhere: in the comparatively quiet sophistication of the prints, the Warholian reconceptualization of the house's Medusa signature, the motif of rings artfully dissected with real metal. And in the hyper-athleticism of pared-back pieces bifurcated by angular graphic sashes. Or in the peculiar, naive energy of sharp black tailoring defined by oversize white stitching. It was like there had been some kind of overlay on Versace, a sensibility that was slightly to the left of the label's tradition. Slinky sexy, yes, but also fiercely don't-give-a-damn physical.
19 September 2014
On her trips to Cuba, Donatella Versace fell in love with the people. Hard done by, she acknowledges, but still with a sense of freedom that she relishes. Versace is a multimillion-dollar business, and it's not hard to imagine the responsibilities and restrictions that attach themselves to the figurehead of such a thing. So some of that Cuban freedom kicked into gear with the collection Donatella showed tonight. It was a steamroller of a show, driven along by Señor Coconut's Latin versions of Kraftwerk classics "Showroom Dummies" and "The Robots." A few of the models walked shirtless in ice-creamily colored crepe de chine suits, a vial of perfume dangling round their necks. One carried a picnic basket laden with Versace housewares. Another had a backpack filled with the same, including bone china cups ready for tea. (How'sthatfor product placement?) There was plenty of barrio fishnet, but there was also broderie anglaise in jackets and jeans, slumdog aspiration in loafers limned with gold link, a cardigan cabled in gold, and white jeans embroidered with gold leaves. The skyline of Havana was mirrored in a blinding white guayabera and an intricately detailed lace shirt. Leather jackets were artfully appliquéd with athletic forms, classical in appearance, but equally likely to be the football-crazed street kids Donatella saw on one of her trips.Cuba providing the spine of a Versace collection? It sounds like yet another self-indulgent high-low fashion incongruity. Still, it gave the show a coherent, celebratory, maybe even aspirational core. And the clothes at their best (those leather jackets, say) looked as vivid and fresh as anything Donatella has offered of late.
20 June 2014
Donatella Versace has traded in the sexy slink of her bias-cut dresses for Fall for something a bit boxier. The 1960s were a starting point for Versace's new Resort collection, but the designer tempered the innocence of sweet little shift dresses with mash-ups of archival Gianni-era prints. The Medusa and the signature Greek key both figured prominently, while polka dots and flags added an element of surprise. Other shifts featured patchworks of glossy, multicolor python skin. The geometric harlequin motif looked particularly sharp on a tiny miniskirt paired with a black leather blazer and peep-toe go-go boots. Versace made a point of addressing every aspect of her customers' lives. Believe it or not, there was even a hoodie destined for the gym that merged lilac performance cotton with a graphic silk print. No surprise, though, the evening pieces were best in show. The Greek key pattern rematerialized here in a Swarovski crystal and tulle insets circling the hem of a cocktail number and the waist of a smoking jacket. Best of all was a black one-shoulder column dress with a thigh-high slit bordered in thick bands of rhinestones.
5 June 2014
For all the figure-hugging her dresses have done, it was a surprise to learn that Donatella Versace has never used bias cutting before. It's such an effective way to embrace the body in a sinuous swathe of fabric, which means it offered an ideal solution to DV's search for sensual movement in her new Versace collection. It made even more sense because she was working in already slinky silk and satin. And she emphasized the diagonal still further with fluttering asymmetrical hems and aerated seams.This was daywear, mind you. There were only four evening dresses on show—bias-cut, naturally, intersected by those slashed seams. Very straightforward, bar what looked like the Lord Mayor of London's ornate chain of office slung across them. Donatella felt that she dealt with evening effectively in her couture collection, so she wanted to focus elsewhere. But Donatella by day is not your usual quotidian proposition. In the slipstream of bias-cut newness, she took up two intense colors she'd not used previously: petrol blue and a vivid red. Those tones aren't used to the bright light of high noon, so they were most striking in their more extreme incarnations, as a mink coat with military buttons and a big sweep of alpaca.The military buttons were actually more toy soldier, like the glittery epaulets that were another decorative detail. Maybe it was Guido Palau's swinging Julie Christie hairdos that cued the feeling, but the lean, long, buttoned jackets and pants (the show notes referred to them as "parade uniforms") had an echo of the mid-sixties London mood that's been bubbling under all season. But that echo lasted as long as it took Donatella to unleash one of her hyper-embellished, studded, latticed, fringed micro-sheaths on the catwalk. "Made in Italy," she reminded us backstage. She's been feeling that the imprimatur is supposed to imply the last word in luxury, but not enough people take it at its word. So she generously stepped up to the plate with a trio of those micro-sheaths to offer idiosyncratic proof of what Italian craftsmanship is capable of producing. And if they weren't enough, there were some extraordinary thigh-high boots as backup. Forday,remember.
20 February 2014
The satanic vroom in the room launched the latest Versace collection as a paean to the biker as the new cowboy, living life on the wild frontier, outside of so-ci-e-tee. Whoops! Nothing new in that notion. Just as there wasn't much that registered as "new" in the Versace show. But it sure was a hell of a ride."My CEO told me I had to show a lot of product," Donatella announced, a propos of a collection that was chockfull of stuff. Most memorable: a handful of boys who were basically bare-assed in chaps, bar the skimpy, hungry-bummed bandana-printed briefs they sported. "It was a way to show underpants," Donatella merrily declared. "Male lingerie!"That particular group looked like showboys from a Vegas review inspired by Kenneth Anger's underground biker classicScorpio Rising. Oil-stained denims highlighted by studded codpieces might have been costumes from the same production. And, once that seed was planted, even suits with horseshoe, cactus, and sheriff's star appliqués had a glitzy campiness that screeched Vegas.But subtlety has scarcely ever been Versace's calling card. There were so many moments of stand-up-and-be-counted over-the-topness in this collection: the red leather cowboy that looked like a New York Doll (circa the era of Malcolm McLaren's management); the bike-printed jacket and jeans that might have been lifted from a kid's duvet cover; the chinchilla hoodie…ahem, thechinchillahoodie!Donatella took her bow in a wrinkled white cotton blouse. Wrinkled! Cotton! "Very cowgirl," she said with a laugh. In fact, she was laughing a lot backstage, in a way that suggested a state of relaxation that is seldom allowed her by the gimlet-eyed world in which she moves. "There's a young Versace customer who is looking for these products," she insisted, eyeing the enthusiastic guys who clustered around her in their chaps. "I'm inspired by the confidence of the models."
10 January 2014
The house of Versace is on a roll. New investors are in the cards; a prime retail location has just been secured in the prestigious Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, a Milanese historical landmark; and with a little help from Lady Gaga cast as a Donatella doppelgänger in the ad campaign, the label is poised to reach a huge new pool of little monsters. Versace is reportedly the most tweeted-about Italian fashion company, ahead of Armani, Gucci, and Prada.It comes as no surprise, then, that Ms. V is seeing the world through rose-tinted glasses these days. Pink is at the core of the Pre-Fall collection, but Versace being Versace, Donatella strikes a bold conversation between opposites: pink/black, hard/soft, rough/smooth, street/glam. Provocation is the core of the brand. Here, though, shapes were fluid and feminine, shoulders were rounded, and volumes more generous. Among the key items: tough biker jackets with diamond studs, and draped minidresses in silk jersey, a house signature, but with a silhouette that looked less anatomical than usual, more sensual. Counterbalancing those feminine pieces were masculine tweeds in oversize proportions and the requisite glamorous minks.
15 December 2013
Drake's big up to Donatella closed the Versace show tonight, but it was Nine Inch Nails who soundtracked the rest of the presentation, and it was the sullen mean girls of hard rock, not hip-hop, who shaped the collection. Maybe that's why the whole thing worked so well. The Reznor situation was close to Donatella's heart. Beforehand, she was as excited as we've ever seen her as she waved around the Versace World Tour 2014 T-shirts that were standouts in the show (she wore one for her walkout). The gigs listed on the back of the tee ran the usual gamut—New York, London, Paris, etc.—but Jupiter and Venus were also named. Interplanetary Donatella? That sounds like a lost masterpiece from space-rock gods Hawkwind.The metal details came hard and heavy in the collection: studs on denim, mesh bandannas, chains round necks or harnessing torsos, hook-and-eye closings. Definitive: Lindsey Wixson in a shag cut, sheer blouse, black bandeau, denim pencil skirt hook-and-eyed down the front like it was stapled shut, and towering platform sandals bound to her feet with elastic bands. But if the clothes looked tough, they had a surprising softness (there was a lot of linen in the denim), or at least a richness. The hard, hip-slung, sheeny circle skirts that opened the show were actually raffia.To be perfectly frank, those opening looks—the collection's manifesto, if you like—threw major shade on the more traditional wrapped and revealing evening looks that closed the show.Thatmight be the Versace that Donatella imagines people expect from her. But how much better it is when she lets her rock 'n' roll heart run free.
19 September 2013
Donatella Versace has quit smoking! Overnight! This epochal moment in fashion was the perfect lead-in to DV's latest collection for men, which celebrated the extreme discipline of athletes. It was also a sufficiently dramatic development to warrant a burst of Wagner'sThe Valkyrieas the fanfare to her show. ("I'm a drama queen," she said by superfluous way of warning.) And, as if to draw an uncrossable line in the sand between past and future, Donatella opened said show with seven outfits that represented her own Versace icons—the way wewere—before unleashing her latest collection—the way wewill be."You have become my obsession," the soundtrack insisted, an interesting admission in light of the designer's surprising revelation about her own addiction to sports. She claimed that the discipline athletes must exercise in pursuit of their goals was something she felt she could relate to at this point in her life. It was certainly an element in the urgency of the new collection, with suit sleeves shoved elbow-ward and trousers ending in an athletic ribbed cuff. More specifically, there was the sports tape that detailed, almost tattoolike, the bodies and clothes of the Versace models. And they themselves were the very emblems of discipline. You don't get thighs like that from sitting around the house watchingJudge Judy.Their attainment of the body beautiful actually gave Donatella's men the unfortunate mien ofThunderbirdspuppets, even as it made them perfect clothes hangers for her silky tailoring and her knitwear, which featured an intriguing update ofalt-Versace: a Warholian interpretation of the portraits taken by Bert Stern of Marilyn Monroe just before she died. First the cigarettes, now this—DV is gratifyingly full of surprises.
21 June 2013
Sailor pants and swimsuits are Resort standbys, but trust Donatella Versace to put her unique spin on them. She started by swapping predictable navy and white (not a very Versace combo) for candy colors like lime, orange, pink, and aqua, and accenting the collection'smarinièrestripes with tiny floral prints. Vichy checks were also part of the lively mix. Next, naturally, she amped the sex appeal way, way up. Pants and skirts with double rows of Medusa-head sailor buttons were so low-slung they barely clung to models' hip bones, and sweaters were chopped well north of the belly button. Most of the jackets, too, had a squared-off, abbreviated silhouette. Their presence made a slouchy sequined "jean" jacket worn with a matching micro mini really stand out.Slouchy and Versace in the same sentence? It only happened once. After dark, Donatella was thinking, as she normally does, along body-loving lines. Micro-pleated tulle dresses came with strappy asymmetrical necklines, or with slashes on the torso. The long-sleeve version was a covered-up, if not exactly demure, surprise. A black napa leather sleeveless dress didn't make the lookbook, but it was just about flawless.
6 June 2013
Once the Costume Institute at New York's Metropolitan Museum latches on to a theme for its annual exhibition, you'll find that notion gets major traction in fashion. This year, it's punk's turn. There's something of a disconnect in all that ardent youthful disaffection being spun into a museum exhibition, but even in its brief, heady, transcendent moment, punk was turning. Its irresistible, iconoclastic beauty infiltrated the unlikeliest corners of pop culture. Divine safety-pinned into Zandra Rhodes at One Fifth in 1978? That was hardly what Malcolm and Viv had in mind when they dressed the Sex Pistols two years earlier. You can only imagine what they would have made of Elizabeth Hurley trolling up to the premiere ofFour Weddings and a Funeralin 1994, pinned into a Versace variant on the punk theme. But hey, however it comes, the house has a history with punk. And Donatella is fashion's original rock chick. So when those two threads were woven together tonight, you got one convincing statement. "Vunk!" she called it. The spiky edge of punk, the slinky sex of Versace.Like her friend Tom Ford's show in London four nights ago, Donatella's presentation was fearlessly over-the-top. One word: vinyl! Its beyond-the-pale fetish connotations made it ideally unacceptable in the eyes of proto-punks like Siouxsie Sioux. Which made it an ideal cornerstone for Donatella. She herself was wearing vinyl jeans. She said they made her feel sexy. But she was also taken by vinyl's stark contrast with the luxe of cashmere, or the plushness of fur. Such extremes drove the collection: a coat as elongated as a military officer's paired with a pelmet skirt; a sheath of pure white crepe bifurcated by a strip of lethal nails. Spikes and nails and bolts were all over earrings and chokers and bracelets. It was discombobulating to see the hardware of pain reconfigured as a fashion accessory, but that was, after all, what Siouxsie, et al., did back in the day. Reconceptualize! No compromise! Gianni was a master at it. And Donatella has learned. Sometimes, she is hesitant about what she's done, but tonight it felt like she was truly at home with the in-your-face-ness of her collection. And it's enchanting to think that she might have headed off home later on for a good old blast of Slaughter and the Dogs.
21 February 2013
"Masculinity is not something given to you, but something you gain."With that quote in her press release, Donatella Versace was surely the only designer to ever draw the late literary bruiser Norman Mailer into fashion's infinitely accepting web. But Mailer would have blanched at the way Donatella window-dressed his macho notion as a panoply of models in mad-funny parodies of ultra-butchness. She opened her show with a vision that evoked self-made man Jay Gatsby in his correspondent shoes and oversize Prince of Wales checks. Then she turned Jay into the twenty-first-century self-made man, running hellish riot in graffiti-ed suitings and skins.Donatella said she wanted to impress power on her audience. Hence the exaggerated volumes of her clothes. But a suit in a classic windowpane check that had been defaced with punk-style scrawls pointed to something stranger. When she showed jackets with sleeves pushed up, or baggy leather pants snapped at the ankle, or a motocross outfit outlined in gold zippers, Donatella was challenging the borders of taste. It was a small step from that to parading a studly young guy in black lace lingerie. He was also wearing an evening jacket and bike boots, which compounded the ambiguity. Challenging conventional notions of sexuality was something of a Versace signature in the golden days. Donatella just found new ink for her pen.
11 January 2013
Sensual rather than sexy—that was the edict for the Versace pre-fall collection. But something clearly got lost in translation, because the clothes had the usual second-skin sass. The design vocabulary of the house is so distinctive that it's a gold standard for the inspirational power of restriction. And here the gold standard was literally that—gold!—in the fringing, in the studs, in the jewelry, and in the gilded rococo embellishment that decked everything from jeans to eveningwear. Gold stars gave a naval flair to jacket cuffs. They were, in fact, from an old Gianni design. But the embroidery was cleverly flattened, so it had an appealing pliability.Another language Versace has always spoken with great fluency is animalism. The leopard snuck in to these clothes, in the tone-on-tone jacquard of black jeans, or in the print that collaged a whole mess of Versace signatures—baroque, japonaiserie, leopard—together.The mood of the collection was such a clear repudiation of Donatella's Coachella Spring thing that it was almost as if that free spirit had been ordered back to her urban reality by her purse-strings-wielding daddy. The silhouette was "important," the color palette had a sophisticated edge, and there was fur for days. But if there was some artistry in the tweezer-precise insertion of violet tufts into a mink, it looked dark and decadent, a mind-set away from Spring's feel-good.
7 January 2013
The Versace woman has always been a creature of consummate self-control, a perfectly polished testament to the craft of the makeup artist, the hairdresser, and the designer who clothes her. So it was rather wonderful today to see that woman cram herself into a pickup with a gang of her girlfriends and head for the desert, Queens of the Stone Age blaring, with a shoulder bag of crinkled tie-dyed silks and a pair of jeans. We'll also allow her a toothbrush, a hair dryer, and—because sheisa V-Girl, after all—some heeled gladiators and a grunge goddess gown. But only if that's tie-dyed too.Donatella's been riding a high/low wave since the coincidence of her collection for H&M and the reintroduction of Atelier Versace. Today, she remodeled Versace for the Coachella set. "Tailoring with a lingerie edge" was the anodyne inspiration claimed by the show notes. Yes, there were a few jackets, the oversize kind that are popularly known as boyfriend jackets, but they paled beside the lacy tops—and they were definitely more tops than dresses—which, with their crinkles and slashes and low-slung belts, had the carefree sensuality of festival gear. The casual almost-nudity of slashed 'n' laced skirts and slipdresses fitted right in. They demanded concentration, or luck, to avoid the kind of wardrobe malfunction that popped out at least once on today's catwalk.It wasn't just Stevie Nicks on the soundtrack that cued a West Coast vibe. Striated colors made you think of the desert sands of Zabriskie Point, or a tequila sunrise, or the deep, warm blue of night skies over Cabo. It was refreshing to see the Versace palette shift from icy to organic. Even the Medusa was tie-dyed. So was the eveningwear, slit high on the thigh and fringed with metal, like a hula skirt for a new queen of the stone age. After all that, Donatella struck an unusually sober note when she took her bow in a black pantsuit. But her hair was newly tousled, like she was just back from a top-down road trip. "No, I did that years ago," she said. "But I didn't drive." A meaningful look left the rest of that story to your imagination.
20 September 2012
"Pugilist." That's the strong man whom Donatella Versace saw as the pillar of her latest men's collection. In the year ofThe Hunger Games,a gladiatorial fight for survival is a timely reference (Alexander Ludwig, one of the movie's stars, was in the front row), and, beforehand, Donatella was laudably vocal about the need for the youth of today to be gladiators on behalf of their rights. But the pugilist defined by her show notes was "Part Rocky, part Elvis, part Mr. T," and that campy litany underscored the fact that the clothes she showed placed one right above all others. You can guess which it is. Yep,paaaarrrty!The opening tableau elicited gasps and cheers with its lineup of minimally clad manbots in full heavyweight-champ mode as reconceptualized by the House of Versace. Though it was all in aid of (re)launching the label's under- and swimwear, it set the tone for the extravaganza to come, which might best be described as a Roman orgy staged in a Miami discotheque. No, that's not fair. There was plenty of top-to-toe, layered tailoring, even if it too was infected by a gold-buttoned showiness and a disinclination to provide sleeves for jackets. But, in the show at least, it was relatively ineffectual against the power of bulging biceps and thighs.Still, sideline that fleshy excess for a moment, and there were some gems: a broderie anglaise blouson; another blouson in a coppery silk lamé; denim, silk, and voile printed in vivid florals; a canvas suit that turned the combat theme into a symphony of zips and pockets. In a surely unintended but entirely complementary way, it took a naturally pugilistic spirit to edit such items out of the over-the-top farrago of the show.
22 June 2012
Donatella Versace often celebrates the enduring connection between her family business and the princes and princesses of pop culture. It's a world she always felt comfortable in. Her Resort collection, for instance, combined Joan Jett's tough-girl stance (or maybe it was Kristen Stewart-playing-Joan Jett) and Prince's dandyism, frothy lace jabot and all. DV named the result Rockmantic, to seal the relationship.The emphasis was on short, sharp, and sexy in tailored jackets and pants and leather sheaths. The eighties are never far away with Versace. Donatella borrowed some key motifs of the decade, like Keith Haring's radiant heart, laser-cut onto lace, silk, and leather, or graphics drawn from the work of the radical Milanese design group Memphis, which she customized with flowers and guitars. Then she added a little heavy metal, in the form of copper beads trimming hems or copper snaps that allowed sleeves to be opened or closed, to reveal or conceal, as your heart desired.
17 June 2012
The couture collection Gianni Versace presented in Paris in July 1997 marked a new direction for the designer, a darker, more stringent, moremodernvision whose promise was brutally curtailed a few days after the show when Versace was murdered in Miami. Taking up his legacy, his sister had to live with the sense of optimism tragically truncated. Clearly, there were times when she could cope, times when she couldn't. But it was only with her show today that Donatella felt she could finally, as she put it, face her demons. That meant taking on the unrealized promise of her brother's last collection. A bold move, but everything about Donatella's momentum of late has suggested she's shed her insecurity and embraced her iconic status. She's ready to rock.Hence, a show that ramped up the gothic elements of Gianni's last collection—the crucifixes, the monochrome severity—with a hard-core energy that tapped Rooney Mara's crazily influential stint as The Girl. It wasn't only the high bang (that's what hairstylist Guido Palau called that fugly fringe) and makeup artist Pat McGrath's sepulchral eye socket. It was also the seamed, studded leather; the long-sleeve, throat-tight coat-dresses; the armorlike corsets; the chain mail clashing with opulent astrakhan—all of it shouting out protection and defiance. In the same spirit, Donatella hit hazmat orange and chrome yellow hard as accents that sparked in the dark.Reanimating her couture collection in Paris last month had obviously steered Donatella toward a heightened sense of construction. The built-out hip put in a reappearance, but it looked so much better as part of a vibe-y little dress, rather than an Occasion Gown. Donatella saved those for last with shimmering plasticized columns of paillettes. As much as the season has been dragon-tattooed to this point, it's also been in thrall to Fritz Lang's darkly dystopianMetropolis. Donatella certainly brought down the curtain on robotic retro-futurism.
23 February 2012
Blame H&M. Donatella Versace's collaboration with the visionary Swedish mass-marketers awakened a slumbering beast in her bosom by hot-wiring her into the kick-ass part of her family business' past. Backstage, after a runway show that was as in-your-face as anything we're likely to see this season, she agreed she felt liberated. "Nothing succeeds like excess," wrote Oscar Wilde, who could almost be the patron saint for the strand of fashion this season thatisn'tbent on sober suiting. Donatella was truly Oscar's handmaiden.One waggish guest suggested the riotous catwalk farrago might have been Donatella's response to the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Flower-powered paratroopers were the shock troops of a psychedelic army. And so it went that a sensible masculine-military reference would be subverted by a searing blast of color or print, like the officer's coat over an eye-poppingly patterned jumpsuit, or the trenchcoat in Chinese red topping a leaf-green turtleneck. One of the collection's building blocks was denim, but it was so jazzed as to be straight out of the Michael Jackson style guide. A studded jacket sported a chrome yellow shearling collar. Black leather jeans had a denim crotch, and an alligator jacket had sleeves in same. And a vest and jeans were so chain-linked they would have clanked if the soundtrack had allowed an aural.If the unapologetic crassness of such items compelled a memory-blessed segment of the audience to hark back to Versace's glory days in the eighties, these clothes weren't actually echoes of that era so much as an antidote to any suggestion of playing safe in the face of economic constraints. She who dares wins. Donatella knows this.
15 January 2012
Butch? Hardly, but therewasa surreal country boy subtext to Donatella Versace's pre-fall collection. The silhouette was tight up top and fitted all the way down to the kicky little flare the Italians callsvasato. So far, so femme. But then there were dungaree straps and jeans pockets on one dress, boots with metal toe caps and cowboy heels, fringing on bags, and a denim blue as the dominant accent in the collection, from the fox collar on a raccoon coat to the little blue Medusa head on the bags. OK, so the country boy connection is a little wingy, but therewasa suggestive co-opting of man style. The fabrics, for instance. Classic suiting stuff like pied-de-poule showed up as a techno silk trench. Houndstooth was exploded on navy and white silk mohair knits. A Prince of Wales check skirt was interrupted by a band of lace. And a duffel coat shrank to a tiny red jacket with red patent toggles and a detachable patent/sheepskin hood with a Courrèges visor. With its flared skirt and boots to the thigh, the outfit was utterly Poptimistic, which means it spoke for the whole collection.
2 January 2012
It's a Versace moment. The H&M collaboration is about to crush retail; designer kids everywhere are feeling the Versace vibe. But maybe the most interesting thing about the show today was that people left the house Gianni founded saying, "That was so Donatella."The mood was set by the luminescent glow that illuminated the garden at the Via Gesù show space. It was like the light from a swimming pool. And into that glow stalked the tawny-maned goddesses who have roamed the Versace landscape since time immemorial. "The meeting of old and new Versace," Donatella said. That meeting could mean something as elemental as neoprene and plissé in the same outfit. Or shorts where a pelmet mini would have once sufficed. And the gold studs were clearly something Donatella felt an affinity for, if the outfit she wore to take her bow was any indication.And that may be the collection's greatest plus. There is no way to judge it outside its own context—and that context is Donatella. Those Lucite platforms? Pure blonde. The fractured starfish that anchored Sigrid Agren's bifurcated gown? The plissé pastels? The Reggio Calabrian white with the Greek inflection? All of it an element in some way of Donatella's own design history. Which makes this collection a test of the power of personality in fashion. Cue the inevitable H&M madness.
22 September 2011
Donatella Versace has come to a critical realization: She doesn't have to re-invent the wheel, she just needs to remind the world what the wheel looked like in the first place. Her engagement with London's young fashion scene has introduced her to a posse of design-stars-to-come, all of them mesmerized by the Versace legacy. And she's been inspired by their devotion. That much was obvious from the very first outfit in the men's collection she presented today. It was a double-breasted suit in a classic Prince of Wales check, closing low to emphasize the torso. Its sleeves were insouciantly pushed up in the way that used to inflame the menswear establishment, back when Versace-wearing pop stars were injecting precision sartorialism into pop culture. Within seconds, another double-breasted suit in equally classic pied-de-poule came tootling along, this one accessorized with chunky gladiator mandals. By which point there were intimations that there was no top too over for this show.And that was precisely the case. Two words—baroque and buckles. The swirling curlicues that were a Gianni signature reappeared here in black and white, coiling across jeans and silky blousons, decorating the terry robes that were once every well-dressed pool's accessory of choice, and insinuating themselves as the tone-on-tone pattern on a sheer mesh shirt. The buckles were the decorative hardware that ran rampant down trouser legs, more successfully on leather than on wool. They also did the work of buttons as jacket closings.The palette rose to the occasion with a florid Miami symphony of chrome yellow, grass green, vermilion, cobalt, and hot pink (there were pink socks with the red patent mandals that anchored a pink suit). The color scheme was most intense with lacquered-knit breastplates in all of those shades.Gladiators? Breastplates? Donatella has tuned back into the campy classicism that once gave the Versace label its unique tang. There's no point in talking about a return to the eighties when the enthusiasm for these clothes will doubtless be derived from people who weren't even born then. To them, this will simply play as a new flavor of excess. But even they will be teased by the eighties dilettante dilemma—when is too much just enough?True Blood's Ryan Kwanten, perched in the front row, would probably have an answer to that.
19 June 2011
"I'm not a Versace girl, but I'd wear that" is a phrase that's been echoing through the label's Fifth Avenue store-cum-showroom all week. Donatella Versace's renewed embrace of the house's heritage—the grommets, the bustiers, the scarf hemlines, and the exposed zips that her brother Gianni knew and loved—has given her Resort collection a vitality that seems to be making converts out of nonbelievers. It could've been the easy, breezy cut of vacation dresses in a tropical print inspired by Matisse'sBouquet. Or maybe it was the couture-level workmanship on a cropped-below-the-bust jacket handmade from stamped leather, knit, and raffia. But we tend to think it has something to do with how right Versace's unapologetically sexy vision feels in a season that's been dominated by sport.Not that she can't do sportswear. Leave it to Donatella to give a button-down come-hither appeal (it was the cutouts). But it's her eveningwear that's going to be pulled for shoots and photographed on celebrities. We're talking about the black and white dresses with the ergonomic, body-enhancing insets on the bodice that could give curves to a girl who has none to speak of. If you have curves? Well, let's just say these frocks are designed to produce results.
14 June 2011
If Donatella Versace brought it all back home to Via Gesù for her men's show in June, it was always going to be the women's show that really underscored her refreshed commitment to the heritage of the house. Guests who remembered skirting security at this very location in her brother Gianni's heyday were positively misty-eyed when they walked into the tented garden where today's presentation took place. And, in keeping with her recent confident exploration of the family archive, Donatella plucked one of the most graphic elements from Versace's past to mark this watershed moment. But she did it her way. The baroque curlicues that were once a house signature were blown up into a single boldly colored detail—a vine, a flower—and dropped onto a shift in black wool crepe. It was simple and strong, exactly what Donatella wanted.The same boldness shaped a black sheath with a snaky strand of emerald green python coiling around Isabeli Fontana's body. And the snaky-ness was amplified in a python sheath. In fact, the collection reclaimed skins for the house, especially with a midnight leather jacket and matching box-pleated skirt. But what might look most seductive to customers next fall is the military influence. It loaned a short, sharp silhouette to a double-breasted black coat, a white coat-dress, and a gold-buttoned cadet jacket and matching skirt.These looks were so immediate that they had a curious side effect: The eveningwear that is a Versace mainstay came across as almost an afterthought, bar the final glittering silver column with its trail of white marabou and vampish silent-movie-queen oomph.
24 February 2011
With her latest men's show, Donatella Versace returned to Via Gesù 12, the spiritual—and actual—home of the label in the center of Milan. The move was very much in keeping with her refocus onVersace's iconic elements, an approach that is crystal-clear in her womenswear. That same focus has yet to manifest itself in the collection for men, however.Last season, the line's latest creative director, Martyn Bal, went rockabilly. This season, he opted for a mood he somewhat reluctantly tagged "new wave." The initial stern monochromatics—the leathers, the white shirts and skinny black ties, the pointy boots—definitely had the angular Teutonic edge of a particular moment in early-eighties Berlin. So did the gray-toned jacquards that cropped up later in the show. But the stated theme of the collection was in fact 3-D, which is about as 2011 as you can get. It manifested itself to a degree in the optical knits or the surfaces that were raised on knits and leathers by quilting. The 3-D leathers reminded Donatella of Versace menswear from another era, which was apt, given the setting. And, seeing as we were pondering the past, the cobalt blue double-breasted coat also sparked a memory of a time when the Versace man bestrode the catwalk like a fashion colossus. The blue-steeled modern counterpart on today's runway was a pallid simulacrum.
16 January 2011
Spring's revisiting ofVersaceicons has clearly set the house on an everything-old-is-new-again path. When Donatella was contemplating Vanitas, the new Versace bag collection, which manipulates elements of the house's history, it occurred to her that it was time to bring back the baroque, but obviously reinterpreted in a new way. Now the elaborate curlicues that were once so emblematic of Gianni's tenure are more abstract. They're printed on fabrics with a dry, technical touch. The color bleeds. It's an instantly striking departure from the past, much like the fluted volume of the skirts that echoed the influence of dance on the new collection, or the way in which those fluid skirts were played against superstructured jackets.In fact, the idea of opposites combined was at the collection's heart, most extravagantly in the treated silver python parka lined in red mink, and more subtly—if the word could possibly apply to clothes with such a future-pop impact—in a simple sequined shift printed with a leopard and baroque mash-up. Balloon sleeves—in the silk of a blouse, in the leather of a biker jacket—offered a new volume, while an old friend reappeared in a revamp of J. Lo's infamous jungle-print dress. The print was rather more adult and subdued here, but one thing had stayed the same: the décolleté was still all the way down to there.
13 January 2011
Not for Donatella Versace, the feminine floor-sweepers that are floating up and down Milanese runways this week. "Rigor with sensuality"—that was her focus for Spring. And the focus was absolute: A handful of elements combined to create a statement that was limited but strong. The models' hair cued a new strictness. Gone the supermodel mane, to be replaced by a tight topknot wrapped by Guido Palau and his team in PVC. Pat McGrath's makeup emphasized a strong brow at the expense of other features.The look had a my-way-or-the-highway fierceness, but it was subtly realized. There was a kind of fetishistic tug to an outfit like the blue apron dress with the harness back; you felt it, too, in the severe silhouette, whose focus was alternately a pencil skirt that ended just below the knee or a fitted mid-thigh length. This looked best in a trim coat-dress, which came in white piqué or black leather for maximum all-styles-served-here effect. As Donatella pointed out, the longer skirt could be paired with a midriff-baring tank or a top scissored into an asymmetric racerback—not somaîtresseafter all. The cutouts were carried over to the footwear. The athleticism in such detailing gave the collection an energetic charge.The strong, clear colors played a role, as well—Mediterranean blue, orange, shades of red, combined in a strong, summery stripe. Donatella also revived the Greek key, the decorative border that is a classic Versace code. It was traced in vinyl on a white jacket or combined with the stripes in a collage-y print on a sundress. All of this was played against a white that was as stark as the houses on a sun-bleached Greek island.Donatella extended that slightly classical notion into cocktail and evening dresses, adding fringe for movement, then weaving and draping it so it looked like something plucked from a Parthenon frieze. The goddess dress has been a house specialty from the beginning, so here it seemed like a perfectly logical conclusion for a Versace collection that drew its strength from the label's roots.
23 September 2010
The eighties hold a powerful sway over the house of Versace, and Martyn Bal, new man on the company's menswear block, certainly didn't resist their appeal in his debut collection. Inspired by the photos Bruce Weber took of rockabilly boys at the end of that decade and drawing on references from old Versus and Jeans Couture collections, Bal offered up a Stray Cats version of the Versace man. It was a universe away from where this guy had been heading of late (when Alexandre Plokhov last had some creative input), but Bal said after the show that he anticipated a new, younger customer would see the appeal of his proposals.These included faux-bib-fronted shirts, a drape jacket with a shawl collar in black leather, jackets and trousers in sheeny tonic fabric, low-slung leather pants with fringes trailing from the side seams, and a big cream overcoat, also bedecked with showgirl fringe. A donkey jacket in red leather looked grown-up by comparison.Bal is an alumnus of Dior Homme, and the new-wave leanings of that label clearly informed his work here, in items like jackets with a cutaway, crossover closing. But the collection's clearest successes—the optical silk shirts, the graphic section of swimsuits and silk robes in a black-and-white Vorticist pattern—were those that were most "Versace."
18 June 2010
If the original purpose of a Resort collection was something to make you want to play, Donatella Versace gave her customers clothes that might make them want to playact. There was a vibrant early sixties sex-bomb pulse to many of the looks (yes, that orange cocktail dress would live on Christina Hendricks). The clothes had a sleek, kittenish spirit with all the oomph and optimism of Pop art before the decade went to pot. The Lichtenstein dot was the key motif, lined up in various sizes to trick the eye and define the body, sometimes in combination with strips of the kind of ribbon you might have found in Donatella's mother's sewing box. That proper little retro echo resonated in a sundress and jackets in safari and Panama styles—imagine them trimmed and cropped for a sixties spy girl, and the image comes into focus. Even more so with an abbreviated pink trench. If only the girl from U.N.C.L.E. had access to such finery.Versace wanted an emphasis on ease. Though the silhouette was scuba-streamlined and short, stretch fabrics let the body move, as in the white leather safari dress, which had a sort of body gusseting in a combination of cotton and nylon. But it was ultimately the color scheme that gave the collection its kick. Orange, pink, mint, pistachio, and lilac run in the Versace veins. Cute accessory alert: a knapsack looky-likey that broke down into four bags, just perfect for mum, teen, and two tweens. Now that's home economy.
17 June 2010
Donatella Versace's Fall collection took a very different route from the pastel-colored goddess drapery that looked so pitch-perfect and confident in last Spring's drop-dead glorious incarnation. This time, maybe in reaction to general fashion talk about discretion, minimalism, pragmatic daywear, and longer lengths, she switched to dealing with tailoring. In the house of Versace, that's a trickier proposition, and now that body-con feels like it's on the way out, she committed herself to a tough task.Her solution? Slicing and dicing fabric in geometric, asymmetric planes; zippering the pieces together; and coming up with half-short, half-long skirt lengths. It had the feel of an experiment only half realized, because before we were very far into the show, Versace had switched to pants in biker mode, and then into the familiar house territory of short-and-tight dresses. Along the way, there were great jackets and even a camel coat. Nevertheless, those aren't really the kind of visuals to get the adrenaline pumping at Versace. Even in times when all the fashion chat is about calming down and pulling back, there's still plenty of room for designers whose natural instinct is to fly in the opposite direction.
25 February 2010
Style.com did not review the Fall 2010 menswear collections. Please enjoy the photos, and stay tuned for our complete coverage of the Spring 2011 collections, including reviews of each show by Tim Blanks.
17 January 2010
Like the rest of the world, this house has been buffeted by the winds of recession, but design-wise Donatella Versace is staying true to her course. The Spring collection she showed in Milan back in September was a winner—young, confident, and drop-dead sexy—so why mess with a good thing? Like its predecessor, pre-fall is super-leggy and supertight. The designer apparently looked to Japan for the colorful prints on a pair of body-con minidresses that seem destined for the red carpet. The neon lights of Tokyo must've inspired the electric orange, lime green, and sky blue of the collection's other thigh-baring numbers. A crinkly patent-leather jacket and grommeted jeans are more covered up, but the waist-gripping, take-no-prisoners silhouettes aren't for the faint of heart—or anyone with a body that's less than perfect.
2 December 2009
Vivid pastels, geometric prints, baroque curlicues, short-short skirts, and slinky, sexy chain mail: Where else could this be but Versace? For Spring, Donatella Versace was telling everyone who went backstage that she'd been inspired by Tim Burton'sAlice in Wonderland(which comes out next March). "I loved the idea of that fantasyland," she said. Really, though, you didn't need to know that to appreciate the fact that this was Versace redux—the Gianni heyday of the early nineties retooled in a gloriously confident way. Good timing for it, too. Donatella might have spent the last few seasons concentrating on making her collection look grown-up, but now that so many others are making the most of thigh-skimming lengths, busy prints, and glittery glamour, it's an opportune moment to drop all that and show them how it's done her way.She did it classily, seeming for the first time to have overcome any tentativeness about reveling in the territory her brother famously carved out. In their tiny pelmet skirts, jazzily printed dresses, and super-fitted suitings, the girls were all legs and glossy hair—quintessential Versace women (though, it has to be said, still quite a lot thinner than they used to be in Gianni's day). That's a powerful sight to see on any runway, but somehow none of it came across as too slavishly reverential or in any way vulgar. Part of that is down to the Versace way of making things, in an atelier that is as superb as it's always been. When she sets about adding silver metallic embroideries, using perforated and studded leather, or draping a pink chiffon evening gown, Donatella has the technical effects completely under control. The result: a sure-footed, happy collection guaranteed to pique the interest of her daughter's generation.
24 September 2009
There might be turmoil in the Versace boardroom, but it wasn't present in the house's straightforward, if bite-sized, Resort collection. There were two stories here: prints and embellishments. Classic tailleurs, offered in solids and color-blocked combinations, were given some oomph with the application of shimmery faceted gemstones, oversize buttons, or the more humble silvery snap—used decoratively rather than functionally. Additionally, an archival jewel-pattern print from Gianni Versace's day was cut into cheerful summer-bright separates and a swingy little dress. Whatever the back story behind this return-to-basics collection, it was a welcome palate cleanser.
17 June 2009
If one person in Milan could have gone back to the eighties with full credentials—massive shoulders, Day-Glo, disco-mania, and all—it would have been Donatella Versace. Full marks to her, then, for refusing. Her collection, like the woman herself, has long moved on. These days, she still drapes a slinky, liquid dress with much of the mastery Gianni achieved in his time, but any real compulsion to look back at the good old days has evaporated. There was, it's true, a quick flash of neon somewhere in there, but mostly Versace concentrated on working around metallics—silver, gunmetal, dark gray, and midnight blue—and palest neutrals. Decorated trenches, super-skinny cargo pants, and the odd biker jacket appeared for day, the only embroidery subtly streaked onto the hemline of a coat. No bling, no gold, no logos in sight.Restrained wasn't quite the word for it, though. Daywear out of the way, Versace dealt out dress after dress, long and goddess-y or short and covered in plastic paillettes. Best in class were the one red dress and a nude, bugle-beaded gown, fit for a thirties movie siren. It all went on a bit too long, but funnily enough that gave time for the eye to observe some changing aesthetics. Noticeably, it was the girls who could fill out the dresses who looked best in these clothes—and knew it. To see Carmen Kass, Coco Rocha, Isabeli Fontana, and the newly (slightly more) curvy Lily Donaldson work these dresses with visible confidence was an encouraging reminder that, yes, some things can get better with age.
1 March 2009
Donatella Versace mined her brother's couture archives for the star prints that decorated her pre-fall collection, but the silhouettes—graphic little coats with contrast piping and even tinier cocktail dresses—were all hers. Everything was strictly above the knee, save for a handful of not-for-the-faint-of-heart awards season gowns, the best of which came in black lace with a slit up to there and a star detailed in peekaboo mesh on the torso.
14 December 2008
In a season when many designers have been hedging their bets with practical daywear, Donatella Versace took it short, young, and just a little sweet—for her, that is. The cute part was a 3-D heart shape formed by an open zipper; it nestled in the neckline of the first dress and turned up strategically placed in other spots throughout the show. Otherwise, though, the collection was for the most part graphic and above the knee, with one or two examples of the faceted, angular cutting that's been picking up since Francisco Costa showed it at Calvin Klein.If it wasn't particularly themed as a show, it was no particular letdown either. What came through more than anything was the palpable quality of these clothes—the days of tacky Versace are firmly behind Donatella. Still, the most memorable impression was left by the pretty, summery prints of starfish, shells, and girl faces, hand-drawn and painted by Julie Verhoeven.
24 September 2008
The relentless enthusiasm of the Ting Tings provided the soundtrack for the latest Versace show. In their native England, they've been branded "the new Blondie," which wasn't such a bad place to start when it came to the clothes. Under the auspices of ex-Cloak maestro Alexandre Plokhov, Versace's menswear has taken a turn toward New Wave pop precision, as in the diagonally closing storm flap of a trench, the white piping on an angularly shawl-collared black silk suit, or the double lapels of an evening jacket (open-necked shirt, white silk scarf replacing tie—it's a Christophe Lambert moment!). But such precision also translated in a way that was entirely true to the heritage of the house: a sheer lilac shirt, for instance, with sun-ray seaming, or a silk tuxedo shirt with a wet-look effect.Technology turned to sensuous advantage—that's the Versace way. Just like the collection's single graphic—a heavy coil of smoke printed on tees and tanks. This season in Milan is already shaping up as an affair between the ultra-sporty and the ultra-formal. Versace offered its obvious offspring: a graphic pairing of silk suit and flip-flops. The wide-ribbed waist of an ice-blue suede jacket was a more subtle expression—and the militaristic tinge of the parachute detailing on a butter-yellow leather blouson was too Plokhovian for words.
20 June 2008
That diminutive powerhouse, Donatella Versace, was in town today to present a vibrantly colored Resort collection in which safari elements mingled with Indian influences. Long, tailored jackets—some with puffed sleeves—were paired with slightly bubbled (and slightly odd) button-front minis. Dresses and statement gowns kept to a clean silhouette, save for the draped pleats curving around the side; these pieces had an instant, uncomplicated appeal. For long-term fans of the house of Versace, it should be noted that simplicity went out the etched-glass window when it came to accessories—each look came with enough clinking, ethnic-style jewelry to fill Ali Baba's cave.
1 June 2008
Finally, at the last gasp of Milan, it fell to Donatella Versace to rush to the rescue of the imminent Sunday-night Academy Awards. And who better, in a week when there was scarcely a floor-sweeping gown on a runway (unless it was made of, er, tweed)? There were no apologies for a drop-dead dress from DV, of course. There were 11 of them, in fact, with two liquid nude-colored bodice huggers running neck and neck for outstanding achievement. (Arguably, Carmen Kass won by a breast.)The fact that Versace can turn it on like that is a surprise to no one. More of an eye-opener is how far she has moved away from the bling-vulgarity stereotype that dogged this house until a couple of years ago. Mostly, this collection was about carefully considered structure—short dresses and coats with flying volumes in the back—rather than front-loaded sexiness. Some of Versace's most glamorous—and on-trend—cocktail dresses even hit to mid-calf (a one-shouldered draped midnight-blue number and another in a combination of matte and wet-look black were stunning).Though most of the pieces were single-colored and unembellished, there was also a breakout of print along the way. Versace had commissioned the Dutch artist Tim Roeloffs to work on a photomontage of urban cityscapes, musclemen, dogs, Versace china, and the house ad campaigns, and then collaged the results onto violent purple, fuchsia, and yellow dresses. Result: very Versace. You couldn't help thinking the late, great Gianni would have loved it.
20 February 2008
To view Donatella's latest work for Atelier Versace, you had to book an appointment to visit the back room of Versace's Paris boutique. It was a low-key, un-hyped presentation of 15 gowns, but what was on show proves just how far Gianni's sister has progressed in terms of sophistication, taste, and command of materials. Simplicity and Versace sound like mutually exclusive terms, but there is something confidently new in her striking use of solid colors—pale copper, geranium red, vivid turquoise, deep berry-brown—and streamlined shape. Not everything is shorn of bling—what would Versace be without a sparkle embroidery here and there?—but the collection now puts more emphasis on the intricacies of cut and volume than smotherings of embellishment. Particularly impressive were a bias-cut goddess dress with a puffy caped sleeve swooping around to frame a deep-scooped back; a strapless chiffon siren gown with micro-ruching fanning to a mermaid tail; and a piece of virtuoso draping in red, spiraling in pleats around the torso to burst into extravagant skirts. Donatella may not have made a show-off statement about these dresses, but wait—when they appear in public, they're bound to garner a loud round of applause.
21 January 2008
We sat and we waited while Beyoncé and Jay-Z wended their way through Milan to Donatella Versace's latest show. What better couple to test the claim that we were about to see a collection that offered "a male wardrobe to warm the heart of women"? And what fun it would have been to learn what Ms. Knowles made of clothes built on superhero detailing like shoulders of surpassing strength and capelike volumes flowing from jacket backs. But it wasn't Superman Donatella had in mind for the mannequins on her catwalk. She was actually thinking about the way that the cult Art Deco artist Tamara de Lempicka (beloved of Madonna and Jack Nicholson) painted the men in her life. Those pictures offered an image of brooding, haunted males in dramatically oversized coats, suits, and decadent little add-ons. And—presto!—Versace presented a modern take on the same. Her proportions were so extreme that resistance was futile. A duster in chocolate-toned shearling was a TKO. A monk's habit collided with a duffel coat to produce one of fall 2008's must-haves. A monochromatic evening look (black tux, black shirt, black bow tie) spectacularly drowned under a huge black officer's coat. Get the feeling the show was all about outerwear? Well, if the Russian Front ever had time to mount a fashion show, here were the key pieces: a shearling poncho and a black leather greatcoat. The color palette was mostly about de Lempicka's deep, velvety darkness—plum, mulberry, imperial purple. Perhaps that's why the jet-black bugle beading under a jacket lapel stood out. Subtle but extreme—it's a tricky balancing act.
11 January 2008
Count Donatella Versace among the growing ranks of designers who found pre-fall inspiration in the 1960's. Short, swingy A-line dresses and coats in bright shades of orange and fuchsia stood out among the more soberly sexy black pantsuits and knit dresses. In keeping with her strong Spring collection, the clothes had a pared down, unembellished simplicity. The only nod to over-the-top luxe came in the form of a trio of furs, the most dramatic being a shaggy black swing coat worn over a cocktail dress boasting a cascade of sequins from the waist to the hem. It wouldn¿t be Versace without a little flash here and there, now, would it?
17 December 2007
Versace for Spring was one of those idea-confirming shows where a designer picks out a latent trend and coheres it into critical mass before your very eyes. This season in Milan, it took Donatella Versace to get hold of drapey, flowy, goddessy dressing and make it look hot, easy, and believable. Her beautifully constructed silk jersey dresses—from short togas to open-backed draped shifts and full-on drop-dead gowns—ran the gamut from day to night in a rainbow of colors, with each piece gorgeous in its own right.In days gone by, she might have loaded bling and busy prints onto dresses like these, but if there's one thing Versace has discovered in herself in the last couple of years, it's that she can also make glamour radiate from restraint. So for day, she balanced the collection with a vaguely safari-esque sequence of structured tops with floppy satin puffy-pocketed shorts or hybrid pajama/jog pants. Somehow, all this looked luxe and sophisticated—and in these clothes, the models radiated classy sex appeal. When a girl walked out in a drapey beige jumpsuit, the photographers—normally indifferent to wan, blank models—suddenly went nuts. This male form of accolade hasn't been heard on any runway for longer than most people can remember—and for a beige jumpsuit? No, it doesn't sound feasible. But click to the photo, and there you have it: proof that Donatella Versace is at the top of her game.
26 September 2007
Resort is a season made for Donatella Versace—she of the perpetual tan, white-blond locks, and, now that she's in such excellent shape, a less-is-more style of dressing. As she did for Fall, Versace kept her silhouettes sharp and clean (think A-line coats and dresses or nipped-waist safari jackets and cocktail numbers), adding visual pizzazz with eye-grabbing colors. For resort, that meant shocking pink and lemon yellow. She also played with prints, but not of the scarf-print variety favored by her big brother in the nineties. Her see-through florals—bold, oversize lilies and pansies that she called "X-rays"—decorated bikinis, terry cover-ups, blouses, and one must-have cap-sleeve mini T-shirt dress.
8 July 2007
Let's float a theory: The last few seasons of Versace's menswear have seen a paring-down of the clothing—a purification, if you will—as though the ground were being leveled for a major new design statement. Is recently employed consultant Alexandre Plokhov, designer of the late, lamented New York label Cloak, the deliverer of that statement? The first Versace collection in which he had any say certainly hinted at changes afoot, starting with the portentous blast of Mussorgsky'sNight on Bald Mountain, which opened the show. And if that didn't bear enough weight, there were also show notes that expounded on the concept of duality. "Nothing is as it seems," they proclaimed. Hence, a trenchcoat chicly trimmed down to jacket size.In his own collections, Plokhov often leaned toward new-wave flourishes, and there were plenty here: polo shirts with dress collars; a high-waisted, deep-pleated pant; a jacket with lapels scissored away; suits that closed low with one button; a clutch of belts, buckles, and straps; and an occasional (but judicious) stab of red. But other items had an innate glamour that reflected the Versace legacy. A black coat shone like sharkskin, and the black-on-black eveningwear had a sinister elegance.
22 June 2007
Donatella Versace was the first person to find a good name for the elusive chemical-bright turquoise that has shot through the best collections of Milan: She called it litmus-paper blue. Her use of it was spot-on, as was a startling red and a single bolt of sulfuric green, as well as chic contrasts of black, camel, and white. Is this the most important news to come out of Versace? Maybe: Bold color innovation combined with a pared-down, superprecise shape can make a collection jump this season. It cross-references with both Prada and Jil Sander. Perhaps this is becoming the twenty-first century's first run at making minimalism exciting—and who would have guessed that Gianni Versace's little sister would be involved in that?But she is. Donatella Versace has stripped off the gold Medusa heads, canned the scarf prints, and set about cutting a strong, feminine silhouette. "It's about a bell shape. Controlled volume. Black and white—and color to put the life in," she said. The "bell" is actually a kind of molded hourglass, emphasizing the waist and hips, but constructed in a demi-couture manner that neatly avoids constricting vulgarity. Versace used it in techno-fabric dresses, jackets, and tailored coats, and in one amazing dyed red fox that had been shaved into that shape in the midsection.Not that Donatella has fully restrained herself from channeling the more-is-more essence of Versace. You still see it at full vent in her varnished gunmetal crocodile coat with short flared mink sleeves, the hilariously excessive white powder-puff fur-and-patent bag, and, of course, the chain mail and draped, slit evening gowns. Still, the picture of what Donatella has to say is becoming clearer by the season. It's a cleaned-up image of a strong, expensive woman completely in charge of herself, and though there is eye-poppingly luxurious technique involved, the most striking development is just how wearable most of the clothes are beginning to look.
22 February 2007
On the sound system, Lou Reed was deadpanning his way through his Velvet Underground classic, "I'm Waiting for the Man," but Donatella Versace's young men were waiting for no one. They sped down the catwalk in a flurry of urgency; there was no time for detail. The color palette was essentially black and white, with a secondary group that offered shades of brown. Textural interest showed up as strips of shiny patent on gloves or across the shoulders of a black suede blouson. Patent piping also bisected one leg of a pair of trousers, a graphic touch that was amplified in a black mock turtleneck carved on the diagonal with a slash of scarlet. There was something eighties-ish about such flourishes, equally so for a big, black leather military coat and another one of those diagonal bisections, which looked like a signaling flag. The show notes did mention the military parade ground as a possible venue for such items, but more intriguing was the reference to clerical garb. (Presumably that meant the black dog collar on a white shirt.) The same style appeared with tails in the finale. Rejigger it as a Nehru collar, and it was almost as though Donatella was thinking ahead to what the menfolk might need to wear for the upcoming Rajasthan nuptials of her friend Elizabeth Hurley.
13 January 2007
Donatella Versace has a thing or two to teach the youngsters—and a few of the oldsters—about how to bring back the eighties. She hit that spot with a tour-de-force performance in the corsetry department of her show. First came a high-waist girdle-bikini, then boned basques set into liquid jersey, followed by shiny full-metal dresses with sharply faceted bras.There's a difference, though, between flagging up a trend for the sake of a showstopper and making clothes a woman can put on without excruciating agony or ridicule. Versace solved that with technology: The robo-woman metal shards are actually plastic. On the body, they weigh nothing. With that, she sealed the collection with a well-wrought Versace stamp, glancing at the past, but reflecting forward into the now.The rest of the show—which steered clear of eighties theming—reinforced the feeling that Donatella is moving things on. Having personally reached a point of clarity and good health, she is working Versace toward a new sense of reality. The daywear dealt out the current short cocoon shapes and Empire dresses in a pared-back way. Even the prints—wavy, oversized seventies graphics—seemed relatively restrained. Compared to the scattered and sometimes slapdash performances of past seasons, this looked like another step toward reclaiming authority for the house founded by Gianni Versace. The figures concur, and that's credit to the emergence of his sister's womanly point of view.
28 September 2006
The Versace show began on a triumphal note as a giant screen inside the venue relayed Italy's last-minute victory over Australia in the World Cup knockout round. When the clothes finally took to the catwalk, it was as if Donatella had anticipated her countrymen's sigh of relief. With its relaxed slouchiness and crumpled sensuality, her latest collection suggested that the designer has found a way to ease the pressure she's been under for years. Gone was the he-man structure that has long typified the house's Adonises. "No more eighties," said Donatella after the show. "Now I prefer mind over muscle."At first glance, the new Versace man certainly came across as less hard-bodied than usual, so at ease was he in his deconstructed jacket, baggy, hip-slung trousers, tie at half-mast, and sandals. But appearances can deceive, because, in their own way, these clothes were as body-conscious as any Versace has presented in the past. As loose as the jackets seemed, they emphasized a broad, athletic shoulder. Short-sleeved shirts featured deep, chest-baring V necklines. Fine-gauge T-shirts offered their own definition.The softness of the fabrics—silks, glazed linens, washed leathers—and the sun-bleached color scheme underscored the laid-back new mood. For all of that, though, there was still an undercurrent of old-school Versace glamour, visible in an inky linen parka and pants, for instance, or a silvery shawl-collared tux, also in linen, or an evening ensemble in anthracite silk.
26 June 2006
At a time when young designers are worshipping at the shrine of Gianni Versace, Donatella glanced around at what's happening and seized the moment with a flick of her hair. If anyone knows about glam-rock and eighties bedazzlement, it is, of course, D.V. As if to gesture toward that point, she opened her powerfully focused collection to an astonishing mash-up of Jimi Hendrix and Michael Jackson. No literal rehash of the past, the rigorously graphic parade of short A-line shifts and navy, purple, and bottle-green patent-and-fur coats strode out on shiny, violet-soled boots and long matte legs, glinting with sharpness of intent.Echoing a sentiment expressed by her friend Miuccia Prada earlier in the week, these were clothes "for a woman who stands up for her opinions." In other words:Basta, girlie. Instead of plunging cleavage, Donatella focused on shape and ultraluxe contrasts of texture, sending out the most-wantable, fiercely chic coats Milan has to offer. She cut volume into an extraordinary black caban with patent piping and an astrakhan lining, implanted V-shape patent strips into matte jersey and knits, and banded deep ridges of chinchilla into cuffs or wrapped them into weightlessly wicked chevron cocoons. These ideas, along with some glamorously oversize chunky sweaters that flew like ponchos in the back, put Versace once again at the forefront of fashion.Even the house's elaborate gowns have been stripped of excess. Shorn of embroidery, their colors—magenta, peacock blue, pearly gray, shell pink, and gunmetal—and technical feats speak for themselves. Never mind if there was a few too many. This collection revealed a new Donatella Versace, in charge and sending sparks on a creative level she's never reached before.
23 February 2006
Last season, Donatella Versace resuscitated the South Beach stud of the early nineties. For fall 2006, she stepped back to the previous decade, showing an array of eighties prints and colors to a front row of New York socialites who looked too young to remember them from the first time around. It was, according to the show notes, a deliberate evocation of "the male icon" her brother Gianni created in that decade, a notion reinforced by the revolving trademark Medusa head that served as a backdrop.According to the house of Versace, blue is the color you'll want to wear, but it's a hard techno-blue, which means it paired well with the leather that was the accent of choice. Skins were writ large in jackets (some dyed with an ombre effect), trousers, and a shearling-collared car coat, but the use of leather didn't stop there. It showed up as small diamond patches or stripes on some shirts. On another shirt, it was used to bind the blue silk, and it trimmed the seams of an elongated double-breasted coat in burgundy wool. Stretch pads on elbows gave the impression that blousons were designed for significant movement.There was a similar pared-down urgency to the tailoring—sleek, one-buttoned suits in pinstripes or a Prince of Wales check. Another coat and jacket, also in Prince of Wales wool, came pre-wrinkled, recalling Gianni's own experiments with the look—back in the eighties, of course.
15 January 2006
Donatella Versace has recently spent some time in Palm Springs. "It was a reflective moment," she said. "The colors and the landscape inspired me a lot." Judging by the collection, the holiday did her good, not just in her choice of sandy, ombréd shades and cactus prints, but in her resolve to smooth out lines and turn down the bling several notches. Donatella's girls, groomed to perfection and purposefully powering forward in groups, made by far the slickest vision of glamour to be had in Milan.She dealt with day by sending out lean pants cropped at the ankle, neat leather biker jackets, shorts, and a perfectly proportioned narrow ostrich coat with bracelet-length sleeves. Her notion of a day dress has shifted from leg-flashing and breast-gripping to—for her—a relatively eased-up cut that still expertly outlines curves but ends 3 inches below the knee. A couple of the best were in plain navy, too complexly pieced to be called understated, but exuding a new, classy kind of sexiness.At night—especially with her reworkings of the classic Versace beaded gowns—she really shone, applying a delicacy of touch she's never attained before. Dispensing with her former reliance on corseting and cantilevering, she let shapes flow along a more natural bodyline. A black-to-navy degrade gown, subtly shaded like the midnight sky, was the highpoint of a strong show.
28 September 2005
Donatella Versace recently declared that she'd been drawing inspiration from the menswear her brother Gianni designed in the early '90s, when the house managed to marry exquisite technique to exuberant vulgarity. There were certainly elements of that union in her collection for spring 2006, particularly in the revival of the rococo silk shirts that were a Gianni signature. Their pastel tones (pistachio, pink, blue, lilac) suggested the sun-bleached Art Deco palaces of the late designer's beloved South Beach, an association that was compounded by jackets with sleeves pushed up in the manner favored by Don Johnson asMiami Vice's Sonny Crockett.Those jackets—and their accompanying trousers—were the tailored crux of the collection, so much so that Donatella's focus on them bordered on the repetitive. But there's no denying the potency of the Versace vision of male glamour. In their nipped-waist monochrome suits and spectator shoes, with skin bronzed and hair oiled, the models were the very embodiment of celluloid fantasy—and for good measure, they were accompanied down the catwalk by a vixen or two. "It's always about sex," Donatella hissed after the show. But at the house of Versace, it's also always about celebrity: Usher and Brooke Shields made a typically incongruous front-row pair.
26 June 2005
Donatella Versace's quest to reenergize her company began in a great place for fall; whatever spirit had gone missing over the past few years was symbolically retrieved by the fact that she made her models look like modern goddesses. The aura of glamour that sparked off the flying hair and luminous faces of Carmen Kass, Daria Werbowy, Eugenia Volodina, and Karen Elson was a strong reminder of what once made Versace electrifying. And that a show can be something more exciting than watching a few wan girls walk listlessly up and down a runway.As the world knows, Donatella is back from rehab, and the effect on her work is visible. In a mood to clean up and face reality, she's pared down the clothes and focused 85 percent of her collection on daywear. That essentially means a streamlined version of Versaceclassico, with most of the clanking Medusa gilt stripped off. Not that the sex factor has been censored out altogether. Versace coats come with a nipped waist and a voluptuous shawl collar, and swingy skirts and boot-leg pants are seamed to present a rock chick's back view in the most provocative way on earth. Apart from a couple of tightly draped jersey print dresses, the plain colors (white, turquoise, lime, and fuchsia) let the quality of the cut and fabric do the talking.The usual mind-numbing lineup of Versace gowns was confined to five stunning dresses from the Atelier collection, each outstanding—especially the one in fluid black and dark-green chain mail patterned in whorls, on Daria. It was a worthy reminder of the great old days that would have made her brother proud.
23 February 2005
After a season of upheavals, both personal and corporate, Donatella Versace seems to have found a new focus—evident in a fall presentation that featured neither superstar DJ nor eardrum-pounding musical guest. In their place was an unrelenting emphasis on sharp, all-black tailoring and a preponderance of black leather, giving her latest men's show a no-nonsense, we-mean-business toughness. At the same time, there was a liberating message at the heart of the collection. Taking a cue from the idiosyncratic sartorial style of Warhol sidekick Fred Hughes, Donatella claimed that rules no longer apply: If you feel like it, why not wear a tux to the office, or a leather jacket to a black-tie event?As easygoing as that may sound, it came across as anything but casual on the catwalk. A parade of severely tailored pinstripe suits—two-button jacket, flat-front pant—was 007 sharp. A black leather trench also suggested secret-agent men, as did an insouciantly angled trilby or two. Black shaded into charcoal gray in a three-piece suit, finally giving way to a shot of color—a purple turtleneck under a zipped velvet jacket. Leather pants had motocross detailing, while the accompanying jackets ran a seductive gamut: either long, belted, and multi-zipped or lined in black shearling. A handful of silk shirts in rich Klimt-like prints, and a fur-lined biker jacket in white leather, provided a counterpoint to the prevailing tone; further light relief came in the form of guest glamazon Raquel Zimmermann, in a crystal-drenched wisp of eveningwear. She got a hearty round of applause.
15 January 2005
Looking gloss-lipped and makeup-free, and with their blown-out hair whipping behind them, Donatella Versace's women made a brisk, clean, confidently polished entry into spring. Whatever the seasonal notion—the program notes insisted there was an "underwater" inspiration—the most vital point to bubble up from this presentation was its focus. This was Versace concentrating on what she and the house have always done best: sexy, draped jersey dressing, racily classic pantsuits, and red-carpet paparazzi stoppers.Casting her mind back to her brother Gianni's heyday, Donatella revived the bold, multicolored silk scarf prints that he used chiefly to make into shirts. For spring, she reframed them with vivid coral patterns—not just for shirts, but also for playful leather-trimmed bags and deep-pile terry dressing gowns (excellent ammo for maximum poolside impact).For the most part—save a couple of meanders—this was a high-powered performance that retrieved something of the force of the old Versace days. Dropping the eternal rock-chick stance in favor of a more reserved, upscale womanliness is—at least for the moment—looking like a good way to go.
1 October 2004
Only Donatella Versace could start her show with such a surreal juxtaposition—Catherine Zeta-Jones politely smiling from the front row, and Keith Flint, ex-wild man of raver's fave Prodigy caterwauling from the catwalk. Then Brit rave made an uncertain segue into New Wave, as the Versus collection paraded past in a march of eighties-style flourishes: a polo shirt paired with a skinny tie, bleached jeans, a profusion of candy stripes, and pointy patent shoes liable to ignite Joe Jackson flashbacks.After another interlude with the prodigiously perspiring Mr. Flint, the signature collection opened with an immaculate array of earth-toned linen tailoring. A sharkskin sheen glossed elegant playboy suits in pale gold and oyster, before sophisticated subtlety surrendered to an orgy of color—mauve jacket, orange polo, lime pants, and so on. Monochrome black eveningwear offered a brief respite before Flint's noisome return, with Donatella in tow. The patch on her jeans read "chaos couture," but this collection's highs suggested less chaos, more couture might be in order.
26 June 2004
Donatella Versace can relate to the cross-generational appeal of punk. Her brother Gianni frequently referenced it (remember that famous safety-pin dress), and for fall, she revisited the 30-year-old style as a kind of house classic. Strangely enough, it worked as a perfect medium for dressing the chic modern mom. As proved by the soundtrack—Chrissie Hynde at her gritty best—age cannot dim the spirit of the hardcore rock chick, and this show translated that attitude into some great daywear.Donatella is not the first to try shredding the edges of tartan, but her plaid suits, in combinations of red and white, purple and black, or yellow and white, had a fierceness of cut that was pure Versace. And with their back-combed chignons and dark glasses, her women can throw a cashmere cardigan over a houndstooth sheath (complete with sparkling brooch) and make it look a million miles from frumpy. That in itself was a cheering sight in a season that poses many potential styling problems for the grown-up woman: classy, but just sexy enough to show you ain't retired yet.By comparison, Versace's eveningwear was more predictable, with the photo-op possibilities ranging from several slashed black dresses to the anatomically sliced red finale. Though these will be much in evidence on the red carpet in coming weeks, it's the strong daywear that's likely to pull in new customers for the house.
25 February 2004
Donatella Versace returned to the couture runway in svelte form—ironed blonde hair whipping to the waist, body trimmed and trained. That is the way the designer made her entrance at the end of the show, and that is the way every other girl on the runway was made to look, too. It drove home the point of the first Atelier Versace runway presentation since fall 2002: confidence in the high-glam, knock-your-eyes-out dressing this house has made its signature.Daywear? Forget it. Even a white suit comes worked in satin with a bedazzling, crunchy crystal belt and super-flared pants, then turns to flaunt a back in paper-cutout lace. Something described in the program notes as a “mini trench” is sliced and pieced in such a way that at least 50 percent of the action is sheer. A generic rock-chick leather jacket—shredded into strips, braided and knotted like macramé, and molded to form a second skin—gets upgraded to superstar status.And for evening? Tiny minidresses that appear to be nothing more than fine bead necklaces. Lashings of pastel satin and chiffon, slashed with cutouts and edged with sparkle. In short, everything you need if you equate the wordsphoto opportunitywith another chance to go in for the kill.
18 January 2004
With Beyoncé and Mariah Carey lined up as her front-row celebrity focus group, it came as no surprise when Donatella Versace trotted out an eye-popping spectacle of color and print. Versace’s multihued petal power overflowed with hothouse citrus, turquoise, pink, and violet—all those shades that look best in the sun, on utterly bodacious bodies.Using a combination of stretchy draped tops, thigh-hugging pedal pushers, and a huge rush of floral gowns, Versace reprised something of the exuberant eighties optimism for which her brother Gianni was known. (Linda Evangelista walked the show as a reminder of those high old days.) There were halternecks, bra tops, and flouncy rumba blouses. A turquoise suit—if a jacket and a pair of micro shorts qualifies for such a description—came printed with magenta daisies. Tiny chiffon ruffles trimmed everything from plunging necklines on trailing evening gowns to provocative bikini bottoms. There were some calmer moments, like white suits and a couple of tooled leather, frill-embellished jackets and coats. But as the models strode up and down, big hair bouncing and curves outlined to the max, this looked like a collection aimed directly at divas.
3 October 2003
“For so long Versace couture was identified with celebrities and music, which I love,” said Donatella Versace. “But at the same time it could overwhelm the clothes. I want to state the difference between couture and ready-to-wear, and to appreciate that, you have to see the work close-up.” Thus she presented fifteen light-as-air fall outfits on transparent dressforms in a room facing onto a terrace in the Paris Ritz.After couture customers and press jostled to gain entry, they were at their leisure to inspect the house’s handwork in detail, inside and out. The tightly edited collection summarized all the elements of Versace vision: the short, the ultra short, and the trailing, torso-cinching cutaway zingers. In shades of aqua, pale yellow, ice blue, powder green, quartz pink, and gold, everything was whipped up in barely there plissé chiffon and glinting embroidery. “The new strength is lightness,” quipped the designer, who appeared before guests looking considerably lighter herself, after a regime she puts down to “Just eating less. No gym, no weights. Boring, but it works!”Although the fashion police were able to check off the correct positioning of every feather, diaphanous pleat, and sequin, there was still something to keep them guessing. By holding back her designs from the runway, Donatella reserves the full impact of her couture dresses—what happens when they are put through their paces by a heavenly body—for her clients. Take the lacy, cream-colored gown that Kate Hudson wore this year’s Oscars: it seemed to have come from nowhere, and it seemed to belong only to her. Restoring some of the mystique and sense of privacy to haute couture seems a well-considered move in a time when value-for-money factors into even the wealthiest calculations.
6 July 2003
Donatella Versace's strong suit is just that: her slim, mean tailoring for the rock-star wife who has graduated to a more sophisticated phase of her life. She's moved beyond road trips and hanging around backstage; now she lives uptown and drops the kids off at school in the limo, on her way to a day of lunch and shopping.Maybe she’s settling down, but she still wants her style with some attitude. Versace knows how to do that. She loves a wild Western fringe or a big, mad dyed fur, but she can also take care of the more quotidian needs of the rock and celebrity aristocracy. She cuts a fine beige pantsuit, a white pencil skirt and a belted caramel coat with distinction, and throws in an oversize squashy ostrich bag as an enough-said status accessory. About-town daywear can also include an amped-up couture-detailed biker jacket, maybe in pink leather or black satin, with patches of ribbing and crisscross lacing on the sleeve and up the back.At night, of course, there's bound to be a red carpet or two. Versace's solutions came in multiple variations of the knockout corset dress. In strong color, like absinthe or red, or more muted ivory and lingerie pink, they were boned and fitted like a second skin, trailing cascades of chiffon in the skirts. Still, even her dresses couldn't distract from the impact of another idea: a definitive tux, lean in the jacket and with the skinniest possible pants. It's the kind of simple, powerful statement that separates the women from the girls.
3 March 2003
What does Versace couture look like when the celebs, the models, and even the runway are subtracted from the equation? That was the question foremost in the minds of the audience invited to view a static presentation of ten Spring gowns, shown on mannequins, in the house’s Paris store.As it turned out, the exhibit—inspired by the powerful staging of a Gianni Versace retrospective at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum—offered a rare opportunity to scrutinize the workmanship of the atelier close up and in the round. Taking “evening” as a literal theme, Donatella Versace made up for the absence of pounding music and paparazzi with a different kind of after-dark drama. Most of the dresses were in shades of night—black through deep gray and inky blue, ending with bursts of moonbeam white and silver done in crystal and tulle. The designer worked signature elements of the house’s style—corseted torsos, rivulets of chiffon skirts and finely worked jet beading—for maximum impact, creating a sense of mystery and glamour that could easily have been lost in the flurry of a runway show.It was a smart point to make. In times like these, designers need to demonstrate the full value of what they can do for their clients. And understanding the dynamics of the red carpet is one of the things Donatella does best.
19 January 2003
What’s Donatella Versace to do when the whole world seems to be going shorter, brighter and more colorful? Do it shorter, brighter, louder and, of course, better. If anyone is perfectly at ease with lime green, magenta, turquoise, yellow and pink, mind-blowing prints, and cuts that go flip-va-boom when a woman moves, it’s Donatella. All that is her birthright, and with this collection she showed the amateurs how it’s done.When Amber Valletta came out in a hot-pink short skirt edged with grommets, the hem twelve inches above her knee, it was an iconic blast from the house’s past. But worked in fluid fabrics, the suit had a new feeling, and it was carried throughout the collection. Her brother’s influence is always present, but Donatella has her own confident point of view, which can even mean spelling out her name or adding her initials in gothic lettering on the backs of suits and dresses.She evoked Gianni’s traditions with myriad bright, color-blocked-baby-doll and multi-print dresses, and paid him homage with grommet-studded dresses that recalled his great punk collections of the early ’90s. She took the chain mail that he loved for eveningwear and made it into hip camisoles, paired with great-looking skinny, rumpled linen combat pants.Beautiful lingerie dresses were shown in the subtlest nude colors, as well as a black-lace cutout dress that looked like a second skin. The best moment, however, was when the models hit the runway in graphic, paneled cutaway swimsuits and jewel-toned satin cavalier boots. It was a parade worthy of Gianni himself.
30 September 2002
Madame de Pompadour meets Prince: That’s the fantasy tryst Donatella Versace arranged for her winter couture extravaganza. Mixing the delicate bois de rose and pistachio green of 18th-century Fragonard paintings with hard-rockin’ croc and leather, Donatella said, “It’s romantic and hard at the same time. My feminine side, and my stubborn side, too.” The show delivered an eyeful of full-on Versace decadence—and remarkable craftsmanship—to an audience that included P. Diddy, Elizabeth Hurley (in plunging floor-length gold lace), George Michael and Chloë Sevigny.A haul of priceless fabrics—including brocades rewoven from eighteenth-century patterns and extraordinary antique lace found in Venice and Florence—was cut and spliced and molded to fit the world’s most beautiful bodies to perfection. The Prince influence was in the wide-lapelled coats: nipped at the waist, gorgeously patchworked or embroidered with jet leopard-spot beading and with rich linings of silk and lace cuffs trailing from the sleeve. As for Madame de Pompadour, she was down to her skimpies in a second, frolicking in flirtatious thigh-high corset dresses smothered in silver antique lace.Evening gowns had all the traditional Versace hallmarks—long, plunging and clinging to every curve for dear life. Heralding a comeback for the all-woman hourglass silhouette, this was a collection full of killer style for all those deluxe dates in the lives of twenty-first-century rock royalty.
7 July 2002
The video walls exploded in a kaleidoscope of color, and Amber Valletta, grown-up and gorgeous, strode onto the runway in a swinging psychedelic print cashmere coat shrugged over a white turtleneck and pants. It was the opening shot in a collection in which Donatella Versace proved herself in supreme control of a powerful new classiness.Color and sexiness are to be expected—even demanded—at Versace. But the surprise was how Donatella delivered on that while showcasing outstanding, couture-standard clothes with a five-star wearability rating. "I wanted to do quality and tradition—but with fun," said the designer. Versace coats are some of the most gorgeous of the season, impeccably cut and with embroidery, quilting or edgings and inserts of leather expertly deployed to emphasize shape. There was casually luxurious fur, sheared inside and out to look like corduroy. Some of the best looks were the collection's most spare: a neon yellow cashmere tank with black flares and a huge black bag, a candy pink double-face coat paired with a tank and lilac pants, even a restrained, oversized black coat, its buttonholes edged in satin, thrown over a plain black pantsuit. There were great bright micro-flower print dresses and the obligatory slit-up-to-there red-carpet evening gowns. But Donatella's knockout punch was putting glamour, color, excitement—and, believe it or not, simplicity—into an adult woman's day.
4 March 2002
A cool, clear night. A glimmering Eiffel Tower. Madonna next to a strapless Gwyneth Paltrow, next to Chelsea Clinton sporting her new blown-out bob and smoky-eyed look. All the ingredients were in place for Donatella Versace’s “circus of color and crystal,” as she described the Spring 2002 show that opened the Paris couture collections.Daywear announced itself in the form of Day-Glo quilted silk georgette minidresses and pantsuits featuring square scooped necklines and rainbow piping. Then came acid-green and lilac dresses embroidered with galaxies of rhinestone stars, followed by frisky holographic sequin skirts and dresses woven from an intricate web of purples and greens. Teeny-weeny trapeze-artist outfits came sequined in pale pink and blue, finished with powdery tassels around the hem.For evening, hems dropped to the floor, as the girls, big hair scooped back off their rouged faces, vamped out in vibrant citrus bodices ending in waves of chiffon. Gauzy, long-sleeve rose and orange gowns dissolved in a riot of tiny feathers. A blood-red sparkling backless sheath cascaded in long silk fringing. If couture is a circus, Donatella has once again proven herself its ringleader.
18 January 2002
Newlywed Jennifer Lopez caused a major paparazzi meltdown at Versace as she wafted onto the multihued runway in a pearl-gray goddess gown that clung to her every curve.Versace's collection could have been designed specifically for Lopez and her fellow members of the red-hot diva society. Severely form-fitting silhouettes in striking blues, violets and reds were the norm. The focus was on sensual details like rows of circular cutouts, lace-up closures and deep-plunging backs; fire-engine-red skirts were dotted with minute eyelets, while leather tops and grommet-trimmed dresses laced up provocatively in the back. Several eggshell suits and dresses provided a momentary chromatic respite before Donatella plunged into a series of pop-print floral dresses that could have sprung from a Warhol canvas. For evening there were low-waisted skirts with shimmering net overlays, embroidered tops, and a no-holds-barred beaded pink column.To celebrate Lopez's wedding, Donatella threw a dinner bash at her Lake Como house, half an hour outside of Milan—the perfect conclusion to her high-octane presentation.
1 October 2001
Don't even think about uttering dirty words like "daywear" and "sensible" in Donatella Versace's presence. In her star-spangled universe, there is only room for round-the-clock sexiness and extravagant glamour.Donatella's couture romp was a hit: brash, bold and confident, like the celebrities that lined her front row. Kevin Spacey, Naomi Campbell, Christina Ricci, Heath Ledger, Rupert Everett and Sean Combs, escorted by a dozen or so of his closest bodyguards, all went crazy for the super-fitted bustier dresses, diamanté-trimmed furs, feather-lined coats and tall, beaded boots. Using lilac, deep violet, nearly fluorescent pink and golden honey, Donatella experimented with tiger and leopard motifs as well as anemones, wisteria and all sorts of printed, embroidered and stamped flowers on her sculptured body lines. Poufed skirt overlays complemented super-tight leggings; glittery spider-web dresses clung seductively to the models' every curve, while organza gowns blossomed into substantial volumes with fringed flounces shaped into petals.After the presentation, Donatella's sizable entourage followed her to the newly refurbished Cabaret nightclub on the Place du Palais Royal, where P. Diddy manned the turntables and soon had the dance floor filled. Like everything else about this event, his raps—"Put your hands together for Naomi! Let's hear it for the Hilton sisters!"—were pure Versace.
6 July 2001
Gray Milanese skies greeted the tired fashion flock with marked disdain, unleashing a snowstorm of biblical proportions upon their arrival. But by the time Donatella Versace’s show began, all talk of delayed flights, traffic jams and mud-splattered Manolos had given way to the usual game of celebrity spotting as Sting, Trudie Styler, singer Goldie and a diamond-and-fishnets-clad Signora Russell Simmons made their way to the front row.Versace played up many of the themes she explored recently with her couture collection. Graphic prints, fitted hips and corseted waistlines were all at the core of her collection, though she managed to stray from the old-school diva allure; Trompe l’oeil–denim leather jeans and fitted blazers, wide-wale corduroy blousons, plush parkas in cashmere and sable, and several blue-tinted knockabout furs all looked sensational yet casual and easy to wear. The same could not be said for a couple of cocktail dresses with leather derriere huggers and an inexplicable inability to contain the bust; fortunately, Versace offered plenty of other after-5 options that included long, flared and belted satin gowns, flirty mini coats and show-stopping lacquered lace dresses that should be turning up on plenty of red carpets in the near future.
27 February 2001
Haute couture is the opportunity for designers to try out new concepts, indulge their most extravagant fantasies and create exquisite clothes for a lucky few. For Donatella Versace, it is also the perfect excuse to flaunt her hyper-sexy, celebrity-mad vision of fashion at the highest decibel level. As usual, Hollywood A-listers lined her front row: Lil’ Kim turned up in platinum, logo-ed hair extensions and a mottled fur; Salma Hayek dazzled in copper paillettes; Pamela Anderson, barely contained in a sequined tube top, drove the paparazzi to a frenzy.It was a fitting prelude to a feisty and flamboyant collection based on the structured, highly tailored silhouette of a ’40s diva: pinched waistlines, strong shoulders, strict pencil skirts and tight corsets. Versace updated her pinup girls with Afro hair,Blade Runnermakeup and striking chromatic combinations—witness her black feather bolero jacket with high-waisted skirt and matching bumblebee top.Other highlights included Oscar-ready see-through lace dresses with visible boning, a striking tortoise-shell shirtdress and several racy harlequin-print cocktail numbers—a must-have for those on the hunt for a new and improved husband. Dizzying two-tone stiletto mini-boots, geometric evening bags and enormous, interwoven circular totes added to the over-the-top mood of outrageous elegance.
19 January 2001
A sudden downpour did not keep anyone away from Donatella Versace's high-powered show, including guests of honor Courtney Love, Christina Ricci and Bruce Willis.Lou Reed's "Vicious" was an appropriate theme for the skin-hugging white leather skirts, draped chiffon dresses with corset-like belts and bloused boat-neck tops that opened the show. Donatella's mood was relentlessly sexy: Clingy jersey dresses followed, ruched, bat-sleeved or off the shoulder, sometimes hanging on for dear life from a single strap. Black patent-leather coats and dresses, metallic-heeled pumps and nude backs screamed for a night of sin. Less conspicuous looks included Grecian floor-length gowns and brick, magenta and cobalt paint-splattered cocktail dresses that will surely be a spring favorite.With her adrenaline-pumped vision of glamour, high-energy shows and talent for cutting perfect little party dresses that attract paparazzi by the flock, it's no wonder Versace's show has become the social event of the season in Milan.
5 October 2000
Versace's requisite ingredients were all present: sex, bright colors and rock-hard attitude. The volume on the runway was cranked up to 11 as an assortment of Hawaiian prints (not your traditional beach shirts, mind you), Grecian-front slinky dresses, mischievous handkerchief blouses and draped evening gowns flashed by under the strobe lights. Cleavages were deeper than ever, and a jet-set look imbued everything from the strappy bathing suits to the glittery heels and tie-collar blouses. Versace's daring cut, wild use of color and uncensored drama continue to be the label's strongest assets—and Donatella shows no signs of slowing down.
30 September 1999
“I’m moving more into the reality of things,” Gianni Versace said of his Fall 1997 collection. “It’s time to step back and show clothes.” The opening looks—abbreviated black leather toppers paired with black leather boots—immediately signaled that the dreamy romanticism of his Spring ’97 season was gone. Though hemlines were high and some necklines were low, with unexpected cut-outs here and there, it was easy to imagine many of these pieces fitting into a working woman’s wardrobe. Colorful pieced shifts were at once playful yet neat; cashmere cardigans with dyed fox collars were luxurious but not OTT.In an interview, Versace explained his new mellow mood: “I think our role as designers has changed,” he stated. “In the ’80s, I show[ed] myself. Now, I want to show clothing. We all want more quality in our life; I’m human, too.” IfVersaceincreasingly had his feet on the ground, his heart still beat for fantasy and fun, especially when it came to evening. For after dark, he showed sparkly dresses, some draped with Lurex shine, others with rhinestones and glitter, and one red-hot Le Smoking.
8 March 1997
The taking-stock nature of Gianni Versace’s Fall 1996 outing was perfectly in tune with the zeitgeist, reportedVogue.“Designers are thinking about the future,” the magazine argued, “but in terms of reaffirming and perfecting the classics. Luxury is the name of the game. This fall, fashion is not trying to change the world.” While Versace stuck with tried-and-true silhouettes here, he made news with audacious color experiments including dresses in sky blue topped with cherry red, and unexpected material mixes like lace trim applied to leather and rhinestone-studded mesh.
21 December 2017
Despite the fact that his scribble print landed onVogue’s March 1996 cover, Gianni Versace’s Spring collection that year is arguably the most minimal he ever showed. For the most part, the designer stuck to a neon-bright palette—orange, red, yellow, green—and focused on a monochromatic look, from sunglasses to shoes. Hip-hugging pant and skirtsuits were paired with midriff-baring tops; elsewhere, skin was semi-exposed through sheers.For evening, some modicum of modesty was provided by maillot-style bodysuits worn under floaty chiffon, some of it embellished with crystal beading. Their lightness contrasted with the front-closing metal mesh goddess dresses that added the expected glitz to the other after-dark looks.
9 October 1995
Every designer seems to have a favorite decade, and Gianni Versace’s was the swinging 1960s. Despite the surface glitz, a deep vein of classicism ran through this work—and not only when he was draping. Versace’s tailoring and cuts were precise and well suited to the cookie-cutter shapes popularized by the likes of Mary Quant and André Courrèges. For Fall 1995, models strutted down the catwalk in white patent Go-Go-style boots. Miniskirts and sheaths in a checkerboard pattern nodded to mods, while satin coats, short white gloves, and structured bags were representative of whatVoguedescribed as the season’s “uptown aesthetic.”Versacedressed the models as ladies for day and sirens for night. His “grown-up and glamorous heavy silk satin dress,” wroteVogueof a chartreuse number Steven Meisel photographed on Linda Evangelista for the July 1995 issue, “recalls the glory days of Sophia Loren.” Its seeming simplicity belied the flawless, body-skimming structure. The designer had no time for gimmicks; fashion, he said, is “about cut, quality, and construction.”
7 March 1995
“The body is back,” declaredVogue,thus sounding the death knell for grunge. Of course,la bella figurawas never, ever, out of fashion at this Italian house, a point Gianni Versace drove home by making corsetry his focus for the season. When models weren’t wearing stays, they were in slips of dresses featuring ribbon lacing or structured, nip-waisted suits trimmed with hook-and-eye detailing. Luxuriant Veronica Lake hair lent retro appeal to the styling, “proving once again” thatVersacewas “king of sexy nighttime dressing.”There were floor-grazing slips, some with delicate drapes; wiggle dresses; and floaty empire-line nightie styles. Novelty prints featuring butterflies and ladybugs added a sense of winking playfulness to the whole. “I want to make people believe in fashion again,” the designer said. In conversation withVogue,he expanded on his approach: “It’s the body-consciousness of today’s women that gives the return to glamour a real current attitude. It’s all about basic forms with wonderful shapes and a great attention to the cut.”
21 December 2017
There was little gray area in the reaction to Gianni Versace’s Fall 1994 show, which reviewers liked and reviled in equal measure. It wasn’t so much that the clothes were revealing—the silhouette followed a short 1960s shape—but Versace’s use of PVC and plastics, with theirPretty Womanconnotations, seemed to rattle some cages.Voguewas in the pro camp. Designers as a whole were taking a “playful, ultra-sexy approach to the season,” the magazine noted. “Who says ladylike and high tech don’t mix? Certainly not Gianni Versace, who marries the prim shape of an Empire-waist dress with the funky edge of black-plastic-coated silk for a look he terms technoglamour.” Mixed in with the shine was sharp tailoring that nodded to André Courrèges, whose workVersacewould reference in one of his couture collections. In this context, the shine can be read as futuristic. For the sparkling finale, Versace looked back, back to ancient cultures and back in his own catalog, reviving the draped metal mesh dresses he first perfected in the ’80s.
21 December 2017
Seattle’s slept-in, thrifted grunge aesthetic was at its core antifashion. Nonetheless, it held appeal for trend-savvy designers who liked to rattle the status quo. While it’d be incorrect to label GianniVersace’s Fall 1993 collection grunge per se—he championed a flashy, expensive look that was the movement’s polar opposite—the show did nod to the look’s fashion iterations. Crochet squares went from granny to glammy when Versace applied them to a sheer minidress, while tweed miniskirt suits were layered—a rare sight indeed at Versace where the skin was always in—over printed maxis, leggings, and combat boots. Versace called the look “the new working uniform.”Grunge-isms aside, the main story was knits. It was signaled from the moment the lights went up and a cadre of models in pastel sweaters worn with long satin skirts paraded down the runway. Zen moment established, the designer was soon exploring the reveal/conceal properties of stretchy knitted fabrics and how they could be combined with novelty hosiery, from striped to fishnet. “We don’t have time for rules anymore,” Versace toldVogue.“Knits are just as appropriate for evening as they are for the office.” Some of his closing looks proved the point.
21 December 2017
Bohemianisn’t an adjective often ascribed to Gianni Versace’s aesthetic, but it could and should be used in conjunction with about half of his Spring 1993 collection. The same month that this show was presented, Madonna appeared onVogue’s cover in a newsboy cap, striped pullover, and studded suede flares; fashion was in full-blown hippie-revival mode, and this Italian designer wasn’t going to be left behind.Printed tops exposed bare midriffs, maxi skirts flared, leather vests revealed prettily printed silk backs, and tropical motifs mingled with peasanty ones. The talking point of the collection, though, was its exaggerated, take-no-prisoners bell-bottoms. Many of these were multilayered, and the designer used prints and ruffles to ensure they caught the eye.Versacewas in the swing of a ’70s revivalism—read: escapism—that was then à la mode. “Because of all the problems we are having in Italy,” Gianni Versace said at the time, “I feel it is good to go back to a period when we had freedom without caution.”
21 December 2017
Gianni Versace’sFall 1992 collection, provocatively titled Miss S&M, had people taking sides. The boundary-pushing photographer Helmut Newton loved it; critic Suzy Menkes, not so much. “I don’t want women to be sex objects or any of that,” she said postshow. “But, after all, women have a right to choose.” Well, at an AIDS benefit in New York not long after the show, they opted for the racy look en masse: “Last night, there were 200 socialites in bondage!” the Italian designer crowed hyperbolically toThe New York Times.On the runway, where Versace’s fantasies came to life, fetishistic elements were worked into glamorous eveningwear, and with no small effort:Voguesaid, “Getting strapped required eight hands.” These high-maintenance looks were meant to be seen, not in a dungeon somewhere, but on the red carpet, where they absolutely dominated.
5 March 1992
If there was a collection that crystalized the supermodel moment, this was it. For the finale of his Fall 1991 show,Gianni VersacesentLinda Evangelista,Cindy Crawford,Naomi Campbell,andChristy Turlingtonarm in arm down the runway, mouthing the lyrics to “Freedom! ’90” as they went. It was a reprise of the David Fincher–directed George Michael video that they all starred in and it was an instant sensation. Where was Instagram when you needed it?Read stylist Camilla Nickerson’s recollections from the show here.
7 March 1991