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 hour-glassy 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 modelled 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.
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