Inside 12 Via Gesù, the ornate Renaissance palazzo that houses the operations of the Versace fashion dynasty, preparations are under way for the label’s Autumn/Winter 2019 men’s show. Clothes are being edited into “looks” of acidic colours and rich patterns.
Rich is a word often associated with Versace: prints, comprised of photographs of Versace shoes and jewellery, laid over the house’s signature baroque prints, are hysterical in their decorative excess. Donatella Versace, the label’s creative director, family matriarch, major-domo and — apparently, today — dominatrix, strides between the rails of clothing in high heels. The dominatrix thing is fitting: another print in the collection cross-hatches the body with illustrated gold-buckled harnesses, a callback to her brother Gianni Versace’s Autumn/Winter 1992 “Miss S&M” collection, where supermodels were trussed up in high-fashion iterations of sadomasochistic fetishgear. Ms Versace is more conservatively dressed, bar the signature sex-shop shoes: a black silk shirt, strict skirt, two gold tie-pins, no tie. Her hair is poker-straight, platinum, incandescent; her smile is wide, Cheshire. She is dressed for business.
Well she might be. This Versace catwalk show is the first since the label was acquired by Capri Holdings, formerly Michael Kors Holdings Limited, on December 31 2018. The price was €1.83bn, approximately £1.66bn on the date of announcement, and the deal followed months — years even — of speculation about the sale of this gaudy jewel of Italian fashion. The house was steeled for an initial public offering in the autumn of 1997, but when the founder, Gianni Versace, was murdered in July of that year plans were shelved indefinitely as Versace — family and business — figured a way to cope with their loss. Donatella Versace has led the house creatively since then, through various twists and turns of fate, favour and finances. It has now hit pay dirt.