In 1995, after Gianni Versace released his spring collection, Vogue decreed the definitive end of the grunge aesthetic. “The body is back and luxury is back,” the magazine pontificated, describing with admiration the floral corsets and cinched-waist suit jackets that the designer sent down the runway. Almost 30 years later, his sister, Donatella, has returned to that collection, but she doesn’t need someone else to announce the changing cycles. “Streetwear is over. That is not fashion. We need something elevated and powerful,” she says, laying on the white sofa in her office in Versace’s Milan headquarters. Donatella, who is fine-tuning the details on the new collection, is dressed in the imposing way that she describes: a purple zebra-patterned tunic, matching vinyl pants and sky-high heels. Curiously, two hours later, she will sheath herself in black jeans and a jersey to attend the runway presentation of her friend Kim Jones, creative director of Fendi, perhaps hoping not to steal the show.
For the first time in years, Donatella swapped Milan Fashion Week for Los Angeles, specifically the Pacific Design Center in Hollywood, to show her fall collection there three days before the Oscars ceremony. “It all started there. I perfectly remember the moment when Gianni told me: ‘We have to dress the stars because they will then trust us’. There was no one doing it, just him.” At that moment, in the late eighties, only Versace (and perhaps Armani) dared to lower their fashion from the pedestal of millionaire and feignedly discreet clients to get involved with show business and export an exuberant and unprejudiced “He saw the strategy clearly, he told me: ‘We have to be smart, reach the favorite actors of the moment.’ I wanted to go back to that time of change, above the show itself, and for that I thought I had to go back to Los…
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