Versace: the label that has flourished against all odds
The red carpet, 1994; Liz Hurley poured into Versace holding hands with her beau, Hugh Grant. The street, 2019; Hailey Baldwin logo-a-gogo in Versace holding hands with her husband, Justin Bieber.
Donatella Versace herself, a Baby Boomer in her 60s, hits all the Millennial high notes. She is glamorous. She is steadfast, not least in never removing so much as a single sequin when all around her went minimalist. Then there's the face, the make-up looking as if it has come straight off a YouTube tutorial for "nude lip/smoky eye".
She has suffered – hell, has she suffered. She was forced to take up the design mantle after her beloved brother, Gianni, was murdered in 1997. Yet who else could possibly be portrayed in a TV biopic by – vavoom – Penelope Cruz and still have that performance look understated compared with the real thing?
From left: Hugh Grant with Elizabeth Hurley in "that" Versace dress in 1994; Hayley and Justin Bieber on the streets of New York; DJ Tasty Lopez in one of her fitting room photos; Michelle Obama wears Versace to her last State Dinner as First Lady in 2016 with Barack Obama; Donatella Versace at the Green Carpet Fashion Awards in 2018. Getty
Goodness, Donatella is even an eco icon. Eyebrows – plucked, inked and arched – rose in disbelief when it was announced last September that the company under her stewardship was being awarded the international industry's highest sustainability honour at the Green Carpet Fashion Awards in Milan.
As Cindy Crawford, a loyal friend over three decades, presenting the award, explained, "she is never afraid to dare, innovate and break barriers". That said, it was still a shock to discover that Donatella had such a commitment to the (hardly sexy) issues of "material innovation" and "supply chain fairness".
Less of a shock is that Versace has entered the gay pantheon. When it comes to sexual preference, the Versaces, Gianni first, then his sister, have always embraced gay, then queer, then LGBTQI+, and now gender politics, before and beyond any other major brand.
The baroque prints, still the core of the collection, challenged the mainstream ideal of masculinity when Gianni introduced them in the 1980s. Today, girls, boys, and those who identify as they wish, walk in solidarity in the same diamanté jeans and top-to-toe leopard print.
Mass appeal
It turns out Versace also possesses a rare cross-generational appeal. When I ask Tasty Lopez, an Australian-born, London-based 28-year-old DJ known for her gutsy glam, to check out current stock in Selfridges – the heritage London department store that continues to pivot brilliantly to new tastes – she immediately sends me a selfie wearing vintage sunglasses embellished with gold Medusas.
With it comes the message: "Worn all the time on the Groove Cruise", on which she DJ'd, as thousands of Millennials partied from Miami to Mexico. "My Mum wore these round [Sydney's] inner west when I was growing up."
Within an hour, she's snapping herself in a fitting room, matching her favourite accessory to black-and-gold baroque silk prints.
Not that Tasty is exactly alone in this rediscovery.
The strategic, intelligent, admired Michelle Obama chose a shimmering Versace gown to wear in October 2016 for her final White House state dinner as First Lady – conscious, surely, that the vision would sear into our brains not only that we were reaching the end of an extraordinary presidency but that the couple vacating the building were themselves still smoking hot.
The following October, Donatella sent her friends, supermodels Cindy, Naomi, Claudia, Carla and Helena (surely you don't need the surnames?), slinking down the runway in liquid mercury gowns.
Versace bustier, $1760, T-shirt, $760, shorts, $980, belt, $1100, bag, $1720, and sneakers, $1380. Natasha Schweitzer gold-plated earrings, $490. Silver earrings, model’s own. Styling: Virginia Van Heythuysen. Hair: Gavin Anesbury. Make-up: Desiree Wise. Cybele Malinowski
It reminded everyone how good a woman can look in a Versace gown. Of course, these gowns and the eye-popping prints are not for everyone.
Last September, Capri Holdings, which also owns Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo, bought Versace for €1.83 billion ($3 billion), a valuation almost double that when Blackstone took a 20 per cent stake in the then-exclusively family-run firm in 2014.
The family had done it tough: two years after the death of the eponymous founder, they were flogging his art collection (20 Picassos, a Cézanne); in 2003, the firm was believed to have losses in the region of €26 million; by 2009, of €45 million. Yet current predictions put Versace on track for 2018 revenues (not released at time of writing) close to €800 million. Everyone loves a comeback.
Vintage Versace
Back to Tasty Lopez, who has left the fitting room empty-handed, which is not to say uninterested. Now she's in a cafe on the store's fourth floor, direct messaging (DM'ing) me a picture of a beetroot and ginger latte as she bounces from IRL (In Real Life) to online vintage resale site Vestiaire Collective, searching for "genuine Versace baroque", because, being hyper-informed, she knows that the silk in the past, which was woven in Lyon, was of a finer quality than it is now.
The Fashion issue of AFR Magazine is out on Friday, April 5 inside The Australian Financial Review. Cybele Malinowski
Another DM comes at me: Tasty in an asymmetric figure-hugging black dress, emboldened with the iconic Greek "key" pattern picked out down the single sleeve.
"Go the body-con?", "Good for next week's set at The Ned?" (a scene-y City of London hotel). "Baroque better for Ibiza?" (where her DJ set accompanies live musicians).
These are not questions for which she seeks my answer. Anyway, she's already back downstairs, where the clever sales ambassador has something waiting for her just in case: the baroque silk twill in gold and white. And with matching pants.
Being a DJ-in-demand requires that thousands of people lock on to you simultaneously, both visually and aurally. Tasty knows this new combo equals hi-vis, hi-beat. "And you won't get head-to-toe silk at vintage," she's told "because they only did the shirts with a jean back then". She is sold.
The Fashion issue of AFR Magazine is out on Friday, April 5 inside The Australian Financial Review. Follow AFR Mag on Twitter and Instagram.