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THURSDAY NEWSLETTER FROM ANDREA BATILLA
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GIANNI VERSACE?
When a tribute show was organized for the Spring-Summer 2018 collection, marking twenty years since Gianni Versace’s death, it seemed like a final chapter had been written on the constant rehashing of the work of the man often improperly called the Medusa designer. But that was not the case. For Pre-Fall 2022, this time in collaboration with Fendi, another best-of collection from Gianni’s legacy was presented, proving that his death has not yet been processed, neither personally nor collectively.
With death, geniuses are sanctified. The process of sanctification, especially when it follows a martyrdom, serves not only to preserve the memory but also to provide tools for the living. A memory on its own is of little use but a lesson, a discovery, a set of rules, or a collection of symbols can continue to be utilized long after the death of the one who created and popularized them, as long as they are understood and reinterpreted.
Gianni Versace remains very much alive, both within the brand that bears his name and in many other places. Eroticism, baroque style, decoration are deeply tied to his memory, activated by those who continuously draw from his work. Unfortunately, you cannot copyright an artist’s vision. Just as the world is filled with fake Andy Warhols, since 1997 fashion has been flooded with more or less interesting copies of Gianni’s work. Most of them uninteresting.
If the rumors are true that the Medusa brand will soon be leaving Capri Holdings for new ownership, now is the time to reflect on what this brand means today or could mean in the future. It is also time to finally come to terms with the fact that Gianni is gone.
Gianni Versace was a complex figure, one of the first Italian ready-to-wear designers to achieve international fame, a pioneer of dynamics that are still active today and an innovator who led fashion to deeply reflect on the female figure, highlighting its power and utilizing its attributes and contradictions. It is impossible to discuss Versace without acknowledging the questions, doubts, and even strong negative reactions that his work provoked. Nor can we forget how his personal life intertwined with his professional one, often chasing it, reaching it and even surpassing it.
However, the most important starting point for any reflection on Gianni Versace’s work should be that his professional arc began in February 1972 with his first consultancy for the knitwear brand Florentine Flowers, and ended in July 1997 when he was shot on the steps of his Miami home. This is a span of exactly 25 years. Yet, what most people remember of him are the collections between 1989 and 1994—the era of supermodels, prints, embroidery, and celebrities, what Americans called Va Va Voom. This narrow tunnel vision overlooks crucial aspects of his work, reducing it to something monotonous and one-dimensional.
After his death, Versace’s work was neither studied nor reinterpreted but simply reproduced endlessly by countless brands, including the one bearing his name. Maximalist orthodoxy, overt and vulgar eroticism and social exhibitionism were the only themes that survived Gianni’s death, feeding a collective perception of superficiality and empty glamour.
Contributing to this collective fixation were polished and artificial portrayals in popular media, such as Ryan Murphy’s The Assassination of Gianni Versace, which turned Versace’s personal story into a mix of 19th-century melodrama and crime thriller. The internet is filled with conspiracy theories involving the mafia, the CIA, secret services and global currency trafficking.
Donatella Versace, despite firmly leading the company, has not managed to bring in someone capable of observing the brand critically from an external perspective. For nearly thirty years, the brand has been trapped by its own heritage, unable to evolve. Gianni’s famous quote, “You dress the wives, and I dress the mistresses,” as reported by Armani, continues to define his legacy in a reductive, if not entirely incorrect, manner.
Gianni Versace began designing his namesake collection in 1978 with the help of Donatella Girombelli, for whom he designed at Genny, and the Greppi family, owners of Zamasport in Novara, for whom he designed Callaghan. Both brands were commercially successful during the formation of what we now call Made in Italy.
Versace’s expressive codes were already clear with the Fall-Winter 78/79 collection, having matured during nearly a decade of consultancy. Long cognac-colored patent leather coats were cinched with stiff leather belts and decorated with silver fox furs and animal print silk scarves. This image alone encapsulates a method based on layering contrasting and seemingly dissonant symbols, a universe where masculine and culturally feminine elements reconcile an age-old conflict.
For Versace, being literal was pointless. In the following season, palm leaves were not printed on elegant silk crepes but on sheer, seductive chiffon paired with black leather bomber jackets, creating explosive ensembles. These palm leaves would later be immortalized by the famous dress worn by Jennifer Lopez and had their roots in the disco club culture of the ’70s, which Versace adored and frequented.
Decorative elements entered his work with the Spring-Summer 1982 collection, marking a new expressive phase where Versace freely drew from Art Deco and Sonia Delaunay’s early 20th-century work—a period when Western art filled everyday life with meaning through color and form exploration. This wasn’t a coincidence but a manifesto.
The most iconic element of Versace’s language, chainmail, debuted in subsequent seasons. It perfectly fused the free, light eroticism of New York clubs with a material historically tied to heavy industry. On the skin, metal appeared as light as silk, capable of draping and flowing with movement. The ultimate symbol of masculinity was reinterpreted to serve the female body. No longer Joan of Arc’s armor, it became Cinderella’s gown, except this Cinderella needed no fairy godmother to attend the ball and capture the prince’s attention.
These were the years when Versace’s language became popular because it celebrated the power of femininity without adhering to masculine codes. While Giorgio Armani created the understated businesswoman’s uniform, Gianni tore down the barriers between day and night, work and pleasure, being and appearing, fearlessly mixing everything.
In 1980s Milan or New York, there was an apparently unbreakable division between the respectable domain of work and the chaotic realm of nightlife. Yet, the same people who worked on Wall Street during the day participated in drug-fueled orgies at night, the same people who adhered to bourgeois standards by day abandoned them at night, embracing their darker, animalistic, and irrational sides. Versace’s work is primarily about integrating these two aspects, privately and personally recognizing the possibility of having multiple dimensions, of being layered and complex.
It’s as if the nocturnal discovery of pleasure, fun and sex were seamlessly integrated into an upper-middle-class existence once they returned home. Versace magnificently represents the 1980s because he embraces its contradictions instead of hiding them.
The way this story is told is through social visibility. Everything must be visible, recognizable, exaggerated in textures, colors or proportions. For Versace, a garment’s message must be loud enough to be heard even by the distracted or unwilling. This rule, contrary to popular belief, has been modulated over the years in various ways, even leading to minimalist collections that no one remembers.
The extreme visibility of the object intersects with what is typically considered vulgar or trashy but is, in reality, the symbolic language of Southern Italy, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. His constant references to Magna Graecia are not empty narratives but stem from cultural proximity to the civilizations that, around the Mediterranean, created what we still call decoration today and imbued materials like gold with powerful social and emotional values. There’s Byzantium, and there’s a lot of Islam in Versace’s aesthetic.
With the Fall-Winter 92/93 collection Miss S&M, the nighttime aspect is no longer hidden and comes to light. The theme of the collection is not fetish, as many commentators of the time wrote, but the camp side of gay culture. It’s extraordinary to see how pistachio-colored good-girl suits alternate with pieces directly drawn from the leather and western imagination. Versace successfully made elements of a then-marginalized culture acceptable, which earned him significant criticism from the press and buyers.
When he reaches the period of extreme maximalism, it’s because he’s confident that, once home, his woman (or man) is untouchable and can blur the lines between night and day. They hold the power to control reality.
There’s an erotic practice called edging, which involves bringing a partner as close as possible to climax without letting them reach it. Versace built his personal paradise on this principle of sensory electrification, using many pieces of hell, much like Yves Saint Laurent did before him.
This metaphor stops making sense when the fashion world, facing a severe economic and political crisis, undergoes a drastic shift and embraces a ruthless, anti-bourgeois minimalism represented by Prada, Jil Sander, Helmut Lang, Martin Margiela, and many others. Versace responds by accepting the changes and even declaring himself inspired by the work of his colleagues.
The focus of Versace’s later work is not his successful use of a simplified or minimalist language but his exploration beyond bourgeois family narratives, fears and idiosyncrasies to delve into a dark realm where references are exclusively individual, personal, and solitary.
He achieves this perfectly with his final collection, the haute couture line for Winter 97/98, which charted a new course that he, unfortunately, did not live to explore.
This solid theoretical framework is supported by meticulous tailoring rooted in his mother’s craft, setting Gianni’s work apart from that of his contemporaries like Thierry Mugler or Claude Montana. For Versace, the object—the product—is the ultimate goal. No matter how extreme, it must have a life in the world, on the streets. I believe the best way to deeply understand one of the most brilliant designers of all time is to closely examine his clothes—something unfortunately rare due to the lack of recent exhibitions dedicated to him.
Gianni Versace’s journey is a dynamic arc that embraces and is deeply influenced by its era. So, what could be done with this legacy today? Or more precisely, what could this brand become?
First and foremost, we must shed the pity and over-glorification. Gianni Versace’s name was too quickly surrounded by an aura of sanctification stemming from the shocking tragedy of his death. Everything froze in that moment because grief pervaded every corner of his memory, not just for his family and friends but for everyone. The dramatic nature of the events made Versace untouchable, effectively killing his creative legacy. The gunshots that ended his life also halted the continuation of his work.
Neither Donatella nor anyone else has been able to overcome this. I’m not speaking of personal mourning but of the need to disentangle Versace’s professional life from his death. Whoever takes over the brand must first confront this enormous obstacle and can only do so by returning to Versace’s work.
The root of Versace’s work, as I’ve said, lies in bourgeois dressing, particularly its Mediterranean version, flamboyant and a meeting place of diverse signs and cultures, an explosion of contrasts and even conflicts. It’s an immense territory to explore because it’s not limited by what we call good taste or by any specific geographic indications. It’s where all the Souths of the world meet all the Norths. The bourgeois garment serves as a bridge of connection and unity rather than separation.
We live in a world where everything is expressed through visible signs. It’s not understated, whispered, or invisible. But it’s also not unnecessarily loud or decorative for the sake of decoration.
Parallel to this theme, and equally important, is the idea of physical, visual, tactile, olfactory, and even auditory pleasure. Everything in Versace’s universe must bring pleasure, first to the wearer and then to those who see the garments on others.
This pleasure, beyond visibility, brings a sense of power that willingly makes room for seduction and eroticism but does not make them the foundation. An orgasm can be achieved through an embrace or by gazing at a Caravaggio painting. The strong physicality of pleasure, rooted intellectually, descends deep into the instincts. Instinct, when not suppressed, is no longer something to hide or repress but flows through the garments as a fundamental human component—the truest and most sincere.
In these terms, this is a potentially explosive project because there’s nothing quite like it. Imagine Pucci designed by Pieter Mulier, Roberto Cavalli by Simone Bellotti, Ferragamo by Fausto Puglisi, or even envision Chanel under Matthieu Blazy. At this point, I think the idea is clear.
