August 30, 2014 |
When you think of Versace, first and foremost, you think of women. A plethora of women. You think of a phalanx of perfection mouthing along to George Michael’s Freedom – Linda, Cindy, Naomi and Christy – on the AW91 Versace catwalk. If God created woman, then Gianni created the supermodel. But enough. You also think of Princess Di in an asymmetric sapphire satin sheath, and of course, Liz Hurley in that dress[itals], the 1994 safety-pin-pierced punk number she pitched up in for theFour Weddings and a Funeral premiere and ended up overshadowing the film.
Above all else, in 2014, you think of Donatella Versace. You even thought of her 20 years ago – when she was dubbed Gianni’s muse by the press. “I ’ate the word,” Donatella declares disdainfully. She also asserts that Gianni never called her that. She was, however, the physical, gilt-encrusted, perma-peroxided incarnation of Versace womenswear. That’s a throne she’s never giving up.
However, we’re here to talk about Versace menswear – about Donatella’s Fellas, if you will. Our rendezvous takes place in Casa Versace on Milan’s via Gesu, in Donatella’s suitably baroque, bijou private apartment, which is sandwiched between the Versace studios (where the stylist David Bradshaw and the design team are putting the finishing touches to the AW14 collection) and the show venue. As we speak, workmen are noisily erecting a glistening arch of chrome-plated motorcycle parts, while the show music, opening with a roar of revving Harleys, reverberates through the entire building. Detecting a theme? Bikers, Donatella affirms, are the new cowboys. Both are set to make a cameo in the Versace menswear show.
They’ve made appearances at Versace before – Gianni created womenswear collections inspired by the very un-PC concept of cowboys and Indians, running rawhide fringe up and down evening gowns and offering his signature blousy, multicoloured silk shirts printed with cigar-store Indians in full regalia. But in menswear it’s been more about their spirit than their actuality. At least until today.
“Cowboys and bikers. We have no horses, so they have motorcycles. Renegade.” That’s how Donatella begins. I’m reminded immediately of the early-1990s American TV series Renegade, staring the polished himbo Lorenzo Lamas pointlessly roaming around on a motorbike with his fetlocks blowing in the wind. Versace’s counterparts are much more perfectly coiffed. And also a smidge more modern. Which was, of course, the point. “Cowboys and bikers are a very strong reference in Versace’s fashion,” Donatella reasons, “so I took those elements and tried to rework and make them contemporary. Lots of leather, lots of denim in different washes. The thing I like the most is the cuban heel – I like the cuban heel in every shoe. I was looking at a guy in a cuban heel walking – like a real man! Like a Marlboro man.” Donatella stops. In the past, she would have lit up an almost-postcoital cigarette to punctuate our conversation – and her passionate love affair with a man in heels – but today she sips her Evian water. Fittingly, for a collection about cowboys, Donatella is on the wagon. “Cold turkey – from two packets of Marlboro to zero,” she groans. “I didn’t mind for the first month. Now I’m ready to kill somebody for a cigarette.”
Donatella has a great sense of humour. You can see that in her clothes. Some people take them at face value, and get riled up when, say, she struts out male models in wrestling belts to the tune of We Will Rock You, or this season, when she sent out blushing blokes in arse-less chaps that exposed their bandana-printed underwear. Bad taste, some murmur. Crass. Lewd. Rude. Wrong. It’s fun, and funny, and light-hearted. And out of every designer in fashion, Donatella is probably the only one who can get away with it.
That’s not to say she doesn’t take her fashion seriously. She does – especially when it comes to menswear. Sales posted in January 2013 indicated an increase of 46%. “It’s incredible,” Donatella herself pronounces plainly. And Versace itself is buoyant – especially after a valuation of €1 billion (about £834 million) and sale of a 20% stake to the private-equity firm The Blackstone Group in February, injecting €150 million (about £125 million) of capital into the fashion house.
Of course, as we meet before the official announcement, Donatella didn’t let on about any of that. Nevertheless she proudly trumpeted the success of her new approach to Versace’s men’s division. “The fashion of Versace men is powerful, had been powerful with Gianni. It took a moment of down with me.” Donatella casts her eyes asunder, then shrugs. “That was a problem I ‘ad – I was confused for a while. I made a mistake.” Basta to mistakes, and basta to anything other than full-throttle fashion. Pardon the biker pun.
“The thing about my fashion, the Versace way of fashion, what you’re going to see – some things will be very pushed.” That’s how Donatella coyly describes the autumn/winter 2014 Versace menswear collection prior to its premiere. “Pushed” is putting it mildly. Besides the underwear-exposing butt cut-outs, Donatella straps codpieces on to her chaps in chaps, swathes them in chinchilla and baby camel, smothers them in neon paint and haute-couture grease, and encrusts them with crystals. They’re rhinestoned cowboys and bedazzled bikers.
However, rather than some kind of self-indulgent romp through The Mineshaft via Nudie’s Rodeo Tailor, Donatella is simply responding to her customers’ demands. Basically, they’re demanding the molto[itals] extreme from Versace – and she’s more than happy to oblige them. “What I discovered lately is that there’s a whole new world of young men who love Versace. That makes me so proud of my work,” she states. She’s beaming again, like the cat who got the cream. Albeit a cat in 7in heels and second-skin leather trousers. “The easiest thing to say about Versace? ‘Oh, it’s over the top.’ But this caught the attention of many young men in the world. It’s like a new demand for the style that people are asking for. I hate to talk about it, but you can see through the sales.” She frowns, gesticulates her enormous diamond with a tiny hand attached as if brushing away a fly. “It’s also a risk for me to do this.”
It’s evidently a calculated risk. While Donatella’s hardcore-himbo suiting is a tougher sell than most, it’s also utterly idiosyncratic. No other house dares to create clothes quite like this. Maybe that’s why a certain type of man flocks to Versace: to buy clothes that are luxurious and exquisitely made, but don’t see any need to be quiet about it. “It’s not apologetic,” Donatella emphasises. “It’s not shy. Unlike most of fashion. Oh, I don’t want to go there.” She stops herself before she dives into a delicious un-PC takedown of other houses who offer diluted, run-of-the-mill clothing to the masses. At least, before she does so on record.
What Donatella will go on record to state, however, is that Versace dresses as many straight men as it does gay. “Men like to be sexy. And not only gay men. I realise that heterosexual men like to be sexy more than gay men. Honestly! I have a lot of different men who wear Versace. The men who work in administration – they like the printed shirts – ‘Wow! The gay men try to be like this,’” Donatella, ever expressive, mimes a straitjacketed skinny suit – the type of suit Versace isn’t known for cutting. She brushes off that fly again. “What the fuck are you doing? Just be yourself!”
You wonder if, at some point, Donatella said something similar to herself. Certainly there was a shift about three years ago, when Versace suddenly stopped synching uneasily with the rest of the fashion machine and revved off on its own dirt track. Donatella went renegade. It never worked better. “I was a little bit – how you say? – insecure about how the young generation would see Versace. Cool or uncool?” That was, perhaps, Donatella’s hang-up. Namely, the fact that Versace was – and is – such a specific, distinctive look. Even Gianni shied away from his bolder flights of fantasy in the mid-1990s, when fashion turned away from opulence towards minimalism and grunge. But, in November 2011, Versace unveiled their masstige collaboration with H&M, including a clutch of menswear pieces. “For me, it was a revelation,” Donatella says boldly. “I have to thank H&M – well, they have to thank me, too! But the thing that really shocked me were the boys in the store – pulling the clothes off the racks. I didn’t want to lose this conversation with this young generation.”
What were these men after? “Versace style,” spits out Donatella. She runs the words into each other, until their caressing esses become a single serpentine word, like the snakes coiled around the head of the Medusa that forms the indelible, instantly recognisable logo that brands everything from Versace’s labels to their linen, to the porcelain cup Donatella and I sip our coffee from.
Sorry for the poetry in motion. But “Versace style” has become a veritable mantra for the house, moving into its fourth decade of business. It’s taking it right back to its roots. “The thing I do the least is look at what other fashion designers do, or read fashion books,” Donatella says. Why bother, after all, when you have a back catalogue like Versace’s? Rather than looking over her shoulder, then, Donatella’s past few menswear offerings have simply looked back to the true hallmarks of Versace’s menswear. “Gianni made Versace men very, very sexy,” Donatella attests. “He was very strong in everything he did. This raw energy he gave. Doing sexy clothes, about showing the sexiness, the sensuality. People around him tried to make him go the middle way, be a little bit safe, do a few sexy things. I was going crazy. I said, ‘Gianni, if you lose this, you’re going to be nothing.’ I was a bitch. ‘This is your power – raw sexuality!’”
I wonder who was Donatella’s “bitch” – who told her that the raw sexuality of “Versace style” was exactly what her menswear should be tapping? Maybe it was the lady herself. “I rethought everything,” she states boldly. “Now Versace men is really Versace again. I am surrounded by impossibly sexy men. Sorry, that’s my reality.” She shrugs, grins, winks. Ideally, there would be two bronzed Adoni flanking Donatella, fanning her with palm leaves, clad in little more than Medusa-mottled tanga briefs and gladiator sandals, like Brian Shimansky in the latest Versace fragrance adverts. He’s the pomaded, godlike Olympian (via New Jersey) who fires a phallic bow and arrow and grapples with a giant cerulean cologne decanter. Said fragrance’s name? Eros. What else?
Mr Shimansky is a prime example of the kind of men Donatella gleefully surrounds herself with. A few pad about the building as we speak – they’re broody and moody on the Versace catwalk, but in person they’re coltish, a bit shy, sometimes goofy, Australian, American and Dutch accents mingling with the Italian. Donatella takes me upstairs as a model takes a turn in a glistening caramel overcoat and turtleneck sweater glinting with touches of gold jewellery. “How can you think about not making them sexy?” she poses rhetorically.
Donatella may have barely clad her men in a memorable array of undress over the past few seasons – personal favourites include mesh boxing shorts, buckle-sided bikini briefs and a bevvy of lacy lad-lingerie last autumn/winter – but the sexuality doesn’t come just from flashing the flesh. “Sexy is also the power of the silhouette. And the power of the silhouette in Versace man is the V.” More miming: a whooshing slash of Donatella diamond, like two karate chops, denoting a torso broader at its apex than most DFS sofas. “It’s a big shoulder.” No kidding. But back to Donatella: “It was also that for Gianni. It wasn’t a different proportion. But we make again contemporary. Men like fashion and men like to feel great and to look great. The men’s business is growing faster and faster.” She shrugs, smiles. “I’m surprised.”
Donatella is characteristically frank when discussing the success of Versace menswear. It’s a hard sell – a strong look, ferocious even. It isn’t easy to wear, or even ready-to-wear most of the time. That’s not hinting at couture touches in the clothes – although Donatella’s alta moda[itals] seamstresses work on the handcrafted, one-off showpieces for her menswear presentation with as much intensity as the Atelier line she shows in Paris eight days later. It takes a lot of bodybuilding to carry off a full Versace look, both to haul the heft of all that adornment around and to ensure you bulge in all the anatomically appropriate places to show it off to its best advantage. It also takes plenty of money – and balls. Few blokes would have the cojones[itals] to wear it head to toe.
Then again, when you rifle through the racks, the Versace look can be abstracted: to a decorated leather jacket, an embroidered sweater, a sleek coat, even the gold-festooned high-top trainers that have become high-octane, highly visible rap-video fodder. The fact the racks of Versace are swelling, season on season, as retailers pick up the line and then sell it to the piece, demonstrates how successfully the label can disperse into an everyman’s wardrobe without diluting its overall message. “It doesn’t matter how decorated the clothes are, how over the top it looks – everything is worn with a pair of jeans, a T-shirt or a turtleneck under,” proclaims Donatella of her winter collection. She may be marketing muscle-bound fantasy fellas straight out of Roman mythology, but those leather-studded Tom of Finland chaps are (probably) just for show. Strip off the showpieces and there’s a throbbing commercial core, even if under some looks it’s just those eminently saleable smalls embossed with a Medusa head and the thick Greek-key ribbing around the waistband. Donatella leans in, conspiratorially. “Our underwear business, ees huge.”
Despite appearances to the contrary, Donatella Versace isn’t against conservatism. She has taken her catwalk bows in strict black suiting as often as bondage-bandage minidresses. And despite her railing against men in ties and skinny black suiting, she understands there’s a place for that type of dressing. It’s often overshadowed by the glitz, but Versace does a mean line in slick tuxedoes. “I fight against lying, not conservatism,” Donatella intones. “I’m against liars.” Maybe that’s what the new, 21st-century Versace renaissance is all about: honesty. Versace, and Donatella, are being true to themselves. Maybe that’s why people are responding so resoundingly. It echoes across all lines – the advertising, shot by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, is glossy and rich. The womenswear is preened and polished, the menswear machismo incarnate. The result? Versace is posting before-tax profits up 50% year on year. That’s a lot of a buck for that bang.
It’s easy to go slapstick around Versace: the clothes are witty, knowing. Donatella sends herself up, and send up our ideas of Versace style. In a sense, she always delivers what we expect – albeit pushed to the nth degree, sending eyebrows rocketing. Gianni, the same thing. However, it doesn’t mean they don’t have anything deeper to say – about fashion, about men, and in fact about society as a whole. When clothes are loud, it can be easy for the visuals to drown out the message. “The inspiration,” begins Donatella. I sit, poised, ready to spew out Brokeback Mountainand 1970s leatherman puns. “For me the most important statement is that men today are very liberated. In every way, also about their sexuality – Gianni, he had a lot of courage. Gianni came out and said he was gay when it was very difficult to say that. Thirty-five years ago. Even fashion, you wouldn’t say it loud. Gianni had the courage to say it loud. I’m very proud of that.”
I wish I could be a Versace boy. I don’t think it’s possible, though. Donatella trawls army barracks and docks for her models. “Ninety per cent have never done a show before,” she says of her beefcake cavalcade. They’re “gorgeous”, Donatella announces, pronouncing the word like it has 12 syllables. “The thing is, they don’t know, not one of them knows, they’re so humble, so totally different from the women’s world.” You get the feeling, sometimes, that Donatella allows herself to play more with her menswear designs. Not that her womenswear isn’t fun – but her menswear is so decidedly, defiantly tongue in cheek, I doubt you could get away with it in womenswear.
Back at the start of the 1990s, Versace not only delineated the bombastic curves of the supermodels, but also defined their male equivalents. Back then it was Marcus Schenkenberg and Mark Vanderloo prancing nearly naked alongside their female counterparts. Man as sex object – the same idea proposed by Jean-Paul Gaultier, although his vision was far less overtly sexy than Gianni’s. Today’s Versace is a different dynamic again: a straight woman designing clothes for straight men to make them look sexy. “I want to make men look good.” That’s Donatella’s simple mission statement. “My women look so powerful. Let’s give something to the men, too.”
Photographer: Maria Ziegelboeck
By Alexander Fury
