India’s leading designers pay tribute to fashion legend Gianni Versace
Gianni Versace delighted in the collision of diverse ideas, creating flamboyant fashion spiked with thrilling sexuality. On his 20th death anniversary, Vogue and India’s most prolific designers raise a toast to his fierce, audacious and indomitable spirit that continues to live on.
Image: Getty
Gianni Versace with the supers.
Image: Getty
Elizabeth Hurley in the iconic safety-pin dress at the premiere of Four Weddings And A Funeral.
Image: Getty
Claudia Schi ffer in the Miss S&M collection.
If Gianni Versace, the prolific designer who became the touchstone of Italian fashion, were alive today, he would have been the most millennial-minded designer of our times, harnessing social media to share his full-throttled love of life, cross-fertilising ideas to keep himself abreast with the youth revolution. Imagine what social media craze he would have started with his iconic autumn/winter 1991-92 collection that glorified the cult of the supermodel! He sent Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington down the runway, mouthing the lyrics to ‘Freedom 90’ by George Michael. Break the internet? Nah. Annihilate would be more like it.
It’s been 20 years since the swashbuckling savant’s life came to an abrupt end, as he was gunned down by a deranged killer outside his opulent mansion Casa Casuarina in South Beach, Miami. It stunned the fashion and entertainment world. Versace’s funeral in Il Duomo cathedral was packed with fashion behemoths who had poured in from around the world, all stupefied at this senseless murder. Princess Diana attended, too. Who can forget the iconic Vanity Fair cover, shot by Mario Testino, that immortalised her in a white couture dress that Versace chose from his atelier?
Versace was the master of pop culture. And he had a penchant for creating extraordinary moments of pomp and provocation. When he dressed Elizabeth Hurley in a black Versace dress held together by several oversized gold safety pins for the premiere of Four Weddings And A Funeral (1994), the label “went viral,” to use today’s parlance, becoming a household name and catapulting Hurley onto the world stage. The dress became so popular that today it even has its own Wikipedia page.
Poetic Provocateur
Versace was the king of mash-up, forging an electric synthesis between couture and rock’n’roll. His leather evening dress from the autumn/winter 1992-93 collection worn by Naomi Campbell symbolised the mood of the moment, a time when he had Madonna, Elton John and Sting sit side by side with front-row fashion royalty, while outside the venue screeching fans created mayhem. He famously said: “In the past, people were born royal. Nowadays, royalty comes from what you do.”
“I remember watching, over and over again, the mesmerising show where Kirat Young, India’s first supermodel, appeared, draped in lace, satin and damask, a confection that was as spectacular for its construction and drape as it was for its high-octane glamour—something he infused as lightly as the Midas touch,” says Indian designer Tarun Tahiliani, who sees Versace as inspirational. “He was brilliant. Flamboyant on the ramp but understated in person; his joie de vivre expressed in LSD colours and Byzantium prints. But how terrible that he was suddenly silenced by a single gunshot! Who knows how much more his legacy would have created had he been alive?”
The three collections—Pop Art (1991), Miss S&M (1992) and Punk (1994)—pretty much summed up Versace’s voracious appetite for everything au courant, whether social, sexual or sartorial. The visual narrative was overwhelming: ‘Warhol dresses’, ‘Vogue dresses’, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe and the iconic Medusa emblem—the leitmotif of Versace that tied the collection together. His love for art, films and music marinated in a hedonistic mix of sexuality and individual assertiveness, all of which made his collections addictive to the public.
The Miss S&M show was particularly aggressive. His creation of a wild, fetishist’s dream triggered much debate about whether this collection was intellectually stimulating or shamelessly provocative. Says David Abraham, co-designer of Abraham & Thakore: “I’m of a time that remembers his early impact and how refreshing all that colour, sex and exuberance was. In a time of Armani’s minimalist greige Milano, he seemed to be cocking his snoot at perceived ‘good taste’. His imagery was full of impossibly glamorous models but all quite hard-edged.” The fact is, Versace was not only blurring lines between good and bad taste, he was also applying the strictest of couture techniques to bondage clothes or sneakily juxtaposing the light of lace and the weight of leather, to combust the strict binary of feminine and masculine energies.
Master of All
When he passed away, Versace left behind an US$807 million business, with 130 boutiques worldwide, with work ranging from US$30,000 dresses to US$50 jeans to china with the Medusa logo on it.
“What incredible marketing panache he wielded!” says Indian designer Rohit Bal of the fashion house that produced accessories, fragrances, make-up, home furnishings as well as clothes. Versace also designed costumes for the theatre and films like Once Upon A Crime (1992) and Showgirls (1995). He teamed up as production designer for his close friend Elton John’s Live in Barcelona Concert. “I have a fantastic relationship with money. I use it to buy my freedom,” Versace once said.
“I loved his boldness in the way he briskly trespassed different artistic boundaries, creating much more than just clothes,” says Bal. “But most of all, I loved how open he was about being gay, and his sensual portrayal of men.” Bal is bang-on. Versace was proudly and openly gay at a time when most famous people were not.
Versace was a perfect polymath, navigating pop cultural frontiers to excite not just the public but stellar designers, like Christopher Kane, Olivier Rousteing, Fausto Puglisi and Riccardo Tisci, among others. His call for creative showmanship has touched the sartorial choices of performers today—Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars and Beyoncé, from an endless roster of stars.
But at the core, Gianni Versace was a family man and a gracious and generous friend who opened his business to his family, and his home to celebrity friends who ran to him for refuge when they were brutalised by excessive public or media scrutiny. For him the business of trends was not important. What he advocated with sweet simplicity, 20 years ago, is what resonates with fervour today: “Don’t make fashion own you; decide what you are, what you want to express by the way you dress and the way to live.”
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