The pants were hiked above the waist and then belted tight, so they hugged the crotch. Some had their first button undone, like an invitation. The knit sweaters layered over collared shirts layered over white undershirts were cut to resemble extreme muscle tees rather than tops. The gold beaded skirts didn’t quite close at the side, gaping open just enough to give a glimpse of the cotton briefs below. The leather mini dresses didn’t close at all, except for a button at the neck.
Annie Lennox was on the soundtrack, Bianca Jagger was in the front row, and Dario Vitale was making his debut at Versace: the first nonfamily member to design the brand since Gianni Versace founded it in 1978. There was not a logo Medusa head or red carpet chain mail gown in sight, but sex — messy sex, furtive sex, back seat of the car and bathroom stall sex — was everywhere you looked. You could practically smell the pheromones.
The result was both notionally Versace and also refreshingly different. Cheeky, in every sense of the word. And the right way to go.
It’s a hard thing to update a famous brand, especially one like Versace that, as Mr. Vitale said during a preview, has become so much “a part of pop culture” that its archive essentially lives rent-free in everyone’s mind. Considering its signifiers — supermodels! Elizabeth Hurley’s safety pin dress! J. Lo’s palm tree plunge! — the enshrining of its own tragic back story in the streaming canon and Donatella Versace’s effective elevation to celebrity status (or at least global brand ambassador), it came close to being frozen in time.
Compound all that with the uncertain state of the business, which is still in the process of being acquired by the Prada Group, and it would have been easy for Mr. Vitale to get lost in the history; weighed down in the iconography. To play it safe by babbling on about brand “codes.” Instead, he avoided the trap of the literal in favor of trying to capture some of the libidinal. Instead, he got in bed with the brand.
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