Donatella Versace wore a cherry-red trouser suit for a preview of her collection in her design studio, and a minidress in the same colour for her catwalk show. She is almost never seen in any colour but black, and clothes have been Donatella’s channel of communication with the world ever since she started working with her brother in 1976, so this was a strong statement. “I feel like I need to bring positivity,” she shrugged. “This is a terrible moment. War is tearing the world apart. What else can I do but try and bring joy?
To locate that elusive joy, she revisited the late 1990s. “It was a very Versace time. I was smoking, all the time! There was not so much thinking, you know? Fashion can get very intellectual, sometimes.”
No danger of that at Versace. Donatella, determined to have fun, spiked every detail with party spirit. Models walked as if they had knocked back a tequila shot at the very moment their song came on in the club: heavy-lashed eyes fixed ahead, a fast shimmy to the dancefloor. Miniature crystal perfume bottles were worn as cocktail rings, and the liquid shimmered under the lights as they strutted past. A new “champagne” high sandal was finished with a flat disc at the base of a slender heel, so that it looked like the stem and base of a champagne flute.
On Versace’s mood board were images of a young Kate Moss, of a model on a Versace catwalk with her shirt unbuttoned to her waist, of beautiful young people posing with cigarettes. On the catwalk, mismatched separates looked deliberately thrown on. Colours were the sugary pastels of a time when Britney Spears was on the radio and Buffy the Vampire Slayer was on television. No sophisticated neutral colour palette here. The jumble of lemon with lilac, or coffee with coral, felt youthful and carefree.
Medusa-head prints clashed against tropical florals. The silhouette of a straight, above-the-knee skirt resting low on the hips, teamed with a tiny cardigan fastened with one or two central buttons, recalled an era when the wardrobe of Jennifer Aniston as Rachel Green in Friends was, for a still-young generation X, a primary power dressing reference.
The fluid metal mesh Versace party dresses, the Chanel suits of 1990s VIP-room culture, were revived in a new, sustainable fabrication, in 3D-printed nylon plated with chrome.
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On a still balmy late summer night, the show took place in the elegant central courtyard of Castello Sforzesco in Milan. The cobblestone square was dissected with an X-shaped catwalk, which was lit from beneath by jagged neon tubes, searchlight-bright against the 15th-century stonework. As Versace admitted at the preview, every season is different, but she always prefers “more, rather than less”.