Versace Catalogue

GIANNI VERSACE
GIANNI VERSACE
RICHARD MARTIN
PHOTOGRAPHS BY KARIN L. WILLIS
THE METROPOLITAN MusEUM OF ART, NEw YoRK

DISTRIBUTED BY HARRY N. ABRAMS, INC., NEW YORK
This volume has been published in conjunction with
the exhibition "Gianni Versace," held at The
Metropolitan Museum of Art from December 11,
1997, through March 22, 1998.
The exhibition is made possible by CONDE NAST

and The David H. Koch Charitable Foundation.
Additional support has been provided by

Fairchild Publicatioos and VHl.
Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art,

New York
John P. O'Neill, Editor in Chief

Barbara Cavaliere, Editor
Design by Matsumoto Incorporated, New York
Gwen Roginsky and Rich Bonk, Production
Copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art,

New York
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Martin, Richard
Gianni Versace I Richard Martin.
p. em.
Catalog accompanying an exhibition at The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dec. 11, 1997, to
Mar. 22, 1998.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-87099-842-0.-
ISBN 0-87099-843-9 (pbk.).-
ISBN 0-8109-6521-6 (Abrams)
1. Versace, Gianni-Exhibitions. 2. Costume
design-Italy-History-20th century-Exhibitions.
3. Fashion designers-Italy-Exhibitions. I. Versace,
Gianni. II. Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York,
N.Y.) III. Title.
TT502.M3713 1997
746.9'2'092-dc21 97-32249
CIP
The photography in this volume is by Karin L.

Willis, The Photograph Studio, The Metropolitan
Museum of Art.
All the costumes in this volume are in the collection

of The Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, or Courtesy Gianni Versace Archives.
Color separations by Professional Graphics,

Rockford, Illinois
Printed on Consort Royal Silk 150 gsm
Printed by Julio Soto Impresor, S.A., Madrid
Bound by Encuadernaci6n Ramos, S.A., Madrid
Printing and binding coordinated by Ediciones
El Viso, S.A., Madrid
Cover: Detail of page 18
Frontispiece: Detail of page 44

CoNTENTs 7 SPONSOR's STATEMENT
9 FOREWORD
BY PHILIPPE DE MONTEBELLO
II INTRODUCTION
BY RICHARD MARTIN
I6 THE LANDMARKS
62 HISTORY (CLASSICISM/BYZANTIUM/THE EIGHTEENTH

CENTURY/THE I920S AND I930S)
I IO MATERIALS
I40 WoRD AND IMAGE
I50 MEN
I68 THE DREAM
I89 AFTERWORD
I9I SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

SPONSOR'S Conde Nast and VOGUE magazine are privileged to honor and celebrate
STATEMENT the late designer Gianni Versace's remarkable legacy to the world of
fashion by co-sponsoring The Costume Institute's 1997 exhibition "Gianni
Versace" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The exhibition, which had always been a dream of Gianni's, a
longtime supporter of The Costume Institute himself, traces his lifetime of
work and his extraordinary career. "Gianni Versace" reflects the designer's
major themes, monuments, and inspirations from both art and history.
Our sponsorship of "Gianni Versace" is a bittersweet tribute to a man
whose commitment and contributions to the art of fashion will be deeply
missed.
7
FOREWORD As a museum director, I occasionally long to celebrate all of those ardent
and frequent visitors who love The Metropolitan Museum of Art and
learn endlessly from its collections and ~xhibitions. In this instance, I have
the rare pleasure of commending one such visitor, Gianni Versace
(1946-1997). Versace was an avid fan of the Museum, even using in his
last couture collection the Byzantine crosse~ that he remembered seeing in
"The Glory of Byzantium" exhibition a few months before. Also, Versace
gave generously to The Costume Institute, always offering to the collection
the pieces requested by The Costume Institute's curator. He was a
generous patron to the 1995-96 exhibition "Haut~ Couture."
The exhibition "Gianni Versace" is, of course, not about his love
of The Metropolitan Museum of Art but about the Museum's admiration
for Versace. As the exhibition demonstrates, Versace earned, despite his
early and tragic death, a place in fashion history. He created design at
every level and in a variety of media, expanding in later years into home
furnishings and tableware. But his essential craft was always the clothing.
In this exhibition and book we see the Versace garment no longer
on the luminous runways, on supermodels and superstars, or with the
benefit of lavish "image" campaigns and advertising icons. As always, The
Costume Institute serves as the plac;:e where fashion is rendered inanimate
yet with no loss of splendor or magic for the purpose of study. The truth is
that Versace does not need the aura and charisma that he prized and used
to benefit the clothing. Subjected to the analytical examination of our
exhibition, dresses in plastic, boisterous appropriations from
contemporary art and art history, and tour-de-force dresses with safety-pin
bridges across skin resonate not w-ith spectacle a 1one but with
introspection and serious intelligence. Years ago, Richard Martin, Curator
of The Costume Institute, wrote that "Versace's clothing is far less diva
and dominatrix than it might seem." That assessment is borne out in an
exhibition rich with historical influences from Poiret, Gres, and Vionnet as
well as versatile in suits, evening dresses, and daywear.
In September, The Metropolitan Museum of Art was the site of
Gianni Versace's American memorial, a very private and moving
ceremony. There, we said farewell. In this exhibition, we acclaim and
applaud a lifetime of bold artistic exploration worthy of fashion history.
Indeed, this exhibition should also be viewed as a commitment on the part
of The Costume Institute to display more frequently in the future
contemporary fashion design in its exhibition program.
The Museum gratefully acknowledges substantial support from
Conde Nast and The David H. Koch Charitable Foundation. Additional
assistance was received from Fairchild Publications Inc. and VH1, and we
extend our most appreciative thanks for their generosity.
Philippe de Montebello
Director
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
9
INTRODUCTION Fashion, the art that affords inclusion, delineates individuals, and
constitutes protocol, has changed fundamentally in our time. Strategies of
beauty in the 1980s transformed fashion in the most important way since
its transfiguration from a class system to a mass consumption energy in
the late 1960s. Gianni Versace reorganized the etiquette of apparel. He did
not aspire to decorum. Rather, he accorded fashion with desire,
substituting the lust of fashion and body concupiscence for the cause of
correct behavior and social calibration.
In wanting to bestow upon Versace his grand place in fashion
history, one cannot forget that modern fashion has not always been prim
or sedate. Those who contrived to situate it back into place as a criterion
for enforcing systems of pseudo-aristocracies of the 1970s and 1980s were
the ones with short fashion memories. Versace's epater Ia bourgeoisie
stance commands the longer history of modern fashion: it is not polite but
aggressive. Father Abraham to the fashion genealogy, Charles Frederick
Worth did not adhere to class distinctions. The rise of the couture
accompanied the new monies and flailing monarchies of the middle years
of the nineteenth century. Worth was dressing the imperial courts, the
"best" ladies, and the very "best" courtesans and stage performers. The
client list that established the modern art of fashion was as cross-cultural
as Edouard Manet's contemporaneous vision. A century earlier, fashion
had been associated with moral vituperation, denounced when convenient
as an instrument of economic tyranny. Worth pulled fashion away from its
elitist constituencies and moral function.
Versace posed and provoked the basic issues of fashion's role.
Versace tantalized us with vulgarity. In this, he adapted a strategy from the
fine arts in the twentieth century, including elements of the banal and
coarse in his sensibility. The collage, smarmy joke, offensive imagery, and
ready-made object pertinent in the juggernaut of modern art are evidence
of an attempt to be vulgar. Versace employed a similar strategy, perhaps to
determine an audience like that of contemporary art with its feint to the
liberal left designed to evade at each step the possibility of becoming a
bourgeois commodity.
Modern art found one great ideal in the prostitute. As Toulouse-
Lautrec discovered the aesthetic probity of the demimonde and the ideal
model in the streetwalker during the 1880s and 1890s, so too Versace
located the prostitute as the last unexamined figure in fashion's twenty-
year sociology of the street. Yves Saint Laurent had plucked trenchant
elements of fashion from the denizens of the street, day and night,
rendering glamorous the effects of sailors, drag kings, and men in black.
Later, in the 1970s and 1980s, Rei Kawakubo sagaciously surveyed the
street for the vitality in the swaggering and provisional drape of the
displaced and the punk, much in the manner of Manet's epic scanning in
the 1860s. By the 1980s, Jean Paul Gaultier was collecting from the street
for his zany anthropology of a complex, pluralistic modern life.
But with all of this scavenging of the street for transfiguration into
style, one creature of every street metaphor remained untouched. Versace
11
found her as a boy on the streets of Reggio Calabria and never forgot her
confident style. He saw her in the great films of Federico Fellini, Luchino
Visconti, and others who defined the Italian postwar cinema as an
international success. He saw her in the new license of sex worker, gender-
proud and gender-heroic, in the sexually liberated world of the 1970s and
1980s. She is Mary Magdalen and Vivian Ward Pretty Woman (1990), the
prostitute not only with a heart of gold but with a gold mine of design
ideas as well. No one had taken the prostitute into fashion as Versace did.
In a feat worthy of literature, Versace seized the streetwalker's bravado
and conspicuous wardrobe, along with her blatant, brandished sexuality,
and introduced them into high fashion.
But Versace did not, like some of his followers, simply convey the
prostitute to the salon and runway. He did what fashion can do when it
finds inspiration on the street. He represented her as glamor, accepting the
extreme flirtatiousness of short skirts, the seduction of shiny cloth and
cognate materials, and understanding the motive of sex, but rendering
each hyperbolic and expressive, not merely a portrayal of what had
existed in the wardrobe of the street. Versace gave as much to the
prostitute as he took from her style. He supplied her with a new
suppleness that made the body-clinging drapery work in the manner of
early Madame Gres. He worked the transparency of lace with the shine of
metal mesh as if to both dazzle and seduce the prostitute's client in one fell
swoop. He accommodated her lack of expertise and her excess in pattern
mixing with design juxtapositions that are extravagant but not clashing.
He made her in rich silk and long gown with a train that is a cross
between Cinderella and Delilah.
Prostitute style was always present on the Versace runway. Soon
after she was concocted in the 1980s, she was melded into runway glamor
by the thin nonchalance of high-fashion models and the spectacle of the
mediagenic fashion show. By the beginning of the 1990s, she had almost
lost her original identity, as if she had immediately been accepted in late-
twentieth-century society as a tycoon's ravishing second wife, regardless of
background. But art museums are, of course, filled with portraits of
prostitutes and parvenues, their posings always most interesting because of
their aspirations. We could hardly imagine the history of modern art
without those flagrantly tawdry women who came to define the
progressive and transgressive limning of the modern.
In making his deliberate choice to exalt the streetwalker, Versace
risked the opprobrium of the bourgeoisie. As a designer and as a human
being, Versace never sought the middle road or the middle class. Rather,
he forged a unity between the independent of spirit and will, the rich, the
young, and the intrepid. Without explicitly rejecting the bourgeoisie, he
never affiliated his fashion with conventional sensibility and never was
grounded in the proprieties that middle-class values implicate. In fact, it is
the middle class alone that still withholds its approval from Versace, often
distancing itself from his purported vulgarity and his unabashed embrace
of consumption. When one considers that fashion designers of the past
who were enthusiastically welcomed by the bourgeoisie, such as Christian
Dior and Cristobal Balenciaga, posed uncouth decolletage or peasant
inspirations for high fashion, we understand the special case of Versace.
Like Chanel, he ensnared more than fashion. He was defining the
character of the modern woman, reassigning power, and infusing lifestyle
issues into the fabric of clothing. His valorization of the prostitute was an
exquisite choice, recognizing the independence and strength of the
streetwalker not as an enslaved sex worker but as an autonomous, self-
defining figure of awesome visual authority among the ambiguous and
compromised figures of modern visual culture.
For even beyond playing Pygmalion to the prostitute, Versace was,
like Chanel some fifty years before, enlisting sex into fashion. It is said
that Chanel designed a skirt with a bit of concavity at center front not
merely for suppleness in appearance but also to remind the viewer of the
woman's body. She was not the analytical cubist striving for abstract cones
and cylinders; she was the sensuous feminist, acknowledging an inner
truth to the body underlying the clothing. Likewise, Versace's sensuous
drapery of the 1980s and 1990s revels in the body within; it falls onto the
body not as a scrim but as three-dimensional teasing veils. For example, a
leather and lace dress with net midriff inevitably becomes a moire pattern
contingent on the pressure and release of the body underneath. Yet, even
again like Chanel, Versace lived to see his initially deemed outrageous
work grow to be accepted. New York Times fashion writer Amy Spindler
(August 5, 1997) wrote, after Versace's death: "What was so jarring about
much of his work in the 1980s was that he used references that at the time
were unacceptable in designer fashion: leather, denim, brash prints,
bondage, metal mesh, and even sexiness that, for its time, was considered
'happy hooker' lewd. Time made those references part of the standard
fashion vocabulary."
Recognizing Versace as the first post-Freudian designer is honoring
the truth and utter lack of shame or guilt in him. The moral, religious, or
decorous reticence and remorse of other fashion about sex is lacking in
Versace. He accepted sex not merely as a fact of life but as a celebration of
life. The long tradition of fashion's coy expression of sexuality, alluding as
by metaphor to sex, is ultimately grounded in the conventions of
refinement. By those conventions, Versace is raw and impudent. Yet it
would be hard to imagine the cultural construction by which in the 1980s
and 1990s refinement denies sexuality. Further, Versace's candor and the
primacy he gave to sexuality apply to men as well as women. His
menswear designs suggest the same forthright eroticism that he exercised
in womenswear. He would not tolerate repressed sexuality for either men
or women.
Central to Versace's work is his acuity in understanding fashion as
an art of the media. Not only did he thrust fashion into the gobbling jaws
of the media of the contemporary spectacle in runway shows and alliances
with rock music, dance, and performance, he also grasped and was
empathetic to the charisma of media performers. While other fashion
12 13
designers have also understood the media's attraction for fashion, Versace
was a virtuoso performer in this regard. The clothes address this role for
they-at least, the most familiar garments-are seldom made for the polite
drawing-room discourse or even the private ballroom candlelight of most
fashion design. Rather, they radiate under the lights of the camera, of the
runway, and of video's revealing eye. Versace designed for the visually
voracious, media-saturated generations that have come of age only in the
last quarter of the twentieth century. No other time could have convened
fashion of plastic, intended for spectacular effect, and grand dresses
designed for an opulence not only in the details but also in the effect and
charismatic afterlife of the image. Versace knew that fashion could
participate in the great Gesamtkunstwerk of the end of the millennium
that had recruited equal parts of rock, special effects, the cult of
personality, and unadulterated eroticism. Versace put fashion into that
farrago not as an ancillary measure but at parity with all the other arts of
media dynamic. Media discernment may, in some ways, displace the social
judgment implicit in most fashion. In social terms, plastic is an
inappropriate material for dress. In media terms, plastic provides the
excitements of sheen and muted transparency. Hence, Versace played with
plastic skins combined with silk linings. Leather, still bold in the social
setting, stimulates media tumult and suggests power. Versace reads at least
as forcefully from the distance of media as from the traditionally closer
proximity of social relationships. It is as if the designer had an instinctive
media sense for the perception of fashion, the art that he practiced at hand
in draping but that he also perceived from afar in synergy with media.
In the deliberate choice in this book to represent Versace's work
on mannequins rather than on the famous super-models in fashion
photography, we have pursued fashion as a still life. The evidence
provided by these images is that Versace offers impact and excitement even
when detached from the seeming codependency of media energy. To bring
Versace to the museological preserve denies nothing of the inherent
animation of his work. Deprived of the stars, his landmarks are still
indispensable documents of style in our time. Divested of the designer's
undeniable personal charisma, the clothing remains important and elegant.
If media augmented fashion's expectation of spectatorship from
a s()cial distance, it has been not only fashion's observer but also its
genesis. As early as the 1980s, Versace was creating to the scale of film.
His several affiliations with dance and opera certify that he could demand
that clothing be read on proscenium, but he also knew that clothing ideas
came not only from the garment but from film and media as well. His
admiration for Gres and Vionnet always had a touch of Hollywood and
Jean Harlow added, thus reinvesting his clothes with movie-star sensuality.
He envisioned fashion as if it were appearing in a movie or video, in the
extreme and the representational, not merely in the ideal paradigm of
apparel. The drapery in his metallic slave-girl dresses is not Greek or
Roman, though Versace did understand and enlarge upon the principle of
classical wet-drapery. Versace was also versed in gladiator films: his
historicism is thorough and knowing, but by the end of the twentieth
century, historicism necessarily includes the media's dilations of "real"
history into hyperbolic and imagined history. Similarly, Versace's
inspirations from the eighteenth century glow as if for the candlelight of
court chambers and ballrooms while commanding as well the spotlight of
the modern spectacle.
On seeing his work in a museum exhibition or in this book, it
becomes clear that Gianni Versace is not merely a figure of sentiment or
cultural inquiry, or subject-object of the media spectacle. Under the
dissecting light of a museum's examination, Versace achieves another and
equally positive effect. The encyclopedic knowledge, the virtuoso
performance of techniques, the sensibility to experiment, and the
equilibrium between history and contemporaneity are perhaps seen even
more clearly here. Thus, his landmarks must hold their own without the
presence of the celebrities or circumstances that inaugurated them or that
burnished them in memory. The inspirations from art are not to be
museum equivalents, but they must now represent something more than
runway souvenirs that reference art. Experiments in materials and in the
transubstantiation of reality into fantasy and opera-scale theatricality must
be plausible as avant-gardism or as performance documents. The fashion
designer who so embodied the vitality of recent years continues to
transmit that same quality on mannequins and in a museum setting.
Cynics say of contemporary fashion, especially of Versace: take away the
rock and roll, the advertising budgets, and the super-models, and what
have you got? They expect the answer to be: nothing. For Versace, the
answer is: incredible fashion that answers still to the indomitable spirit of
century's finale.
14 15
Evening gown, ca. 1992 landmarks are of such complexity, for they are not necessarily the only
Brown, white, and gold leopard-printed versions of the ideas in question, but rather they are what seem to be some
and baroque-pattern-printed silk of the most important and compelling forms of the continuing experiment.
microfaille with beaded shoulder straps Thus, a selection of Versace's landmarks demonstrates the designer's
Courtesy Gianni Versace Archives eclectic but tenacious interests, often expressed in series and occasionally
in single pieces. But the singles are the exception, for Versace never
To dress in little more than a scarf is not believed in and seldom accepted "well enough." His opulent prints are
merely akin to Salome's dance; it is also bold enough to encompass gilded neoclassicism and wild-animal prints,
in tune with the simplifying ambition of baroque fetes and the exaggerated resort style of South Beach, rich
much modern fashion. A fancy, even classical imagery and the patterns of Ravenna mosaics. The puncturings
flashy, scarf is diagonally disposed to and suturings of Versace's sui generis high punk, confecting a high art
become the basis of this dress, already where the style and impulse had never reached above class and adolescent
possessing the gold overlay and border, rebellions, are a complete transfiguration of their source materials. The
animal print, and dynamic required to punk impulse to accumulate and tether was an additive strategy. Versace
make a dress as Versace made dresses, by took the element of suturings and fastenings to his eternal impetus to let
the age-old process of draping. the body break through the barrier of clothing. His extravagant
appropriations from popular culture are characteristic of many of
Versace's most innovative work. Though the idea pre-existed in some way,
he manipulated the reasoning and the fulfillment of the form, ending with
a landmark that is genuinely Versace. It is not surprising that the 1996 art-
fashion conjunction in Florence juxtaposed Roy Lichtenstein and Versace.
Both artists were respectful of the past but insistent on the right to
reinterpret pre-existing images in their work, often bringing the dull and
18 19
uninflected art of the commonplace into an extreme, hyperbolic form. Day ensemble, fall-winter 1991-92
Of course, to determine which punk-inspired garment is the Black silk twill printed with gold
landmark, given the designer's insistence on perfecting an idea on his own baroque motifs
terms, is a difficult task. Among the great sari dresses, there must be some Courtesy Gianni Versace Archives
choice, but the designer played with the sari as a composer plays with
sonata form. Here, the slashing and violation of the age-old form carry a The gold classicism and gold baroque
political implication,. and Versace pointedly confronted the eternity of the that became signatures for Versace recur
sari with the ephemerality of punk. With the criticality worthy of a again and again. Symbols of the comfort
philosopher holding two principles in opposition and determining some and opulence that Versace wanted to
adjudication between the two but an appreciation of both, Versace created project, they migrate from scarves and
a synthesis of a 1970s London and an India of the Raj or of even more primal accessories into the clothing and back
times. again. In the 1990s, they also inhabit
But there is also an irrefutable memory to Versace's ultimate Versace interiors and tableware designs.
draping with pin-bridged openings. The Elizabeth Hurley dress (1994) This day ensemble is able to convey the
emerges from the sari development, but it is of another, quite remarkable essence of the designer simply by the
synapse in the designer's keen mind. The color and drape of the sari are talismanic quality of its baroque elements.
eschewed in favor of the little black dress. Versace opened up the side from
bust to waist and again at the upper leg. Versace's dress is as startling in
design conception as it was arresting when seen on Hurley. The little black
dress is almost as much a tradition, at least for the twentieth century, as is
the sari and likewise connotes convention and implacable design. Versace
attacked the little black dress savagely, letting go of Chanel's coy sensuality
through suppleness and elasticity and unleashing a body-exposing,
20 21
Evening ensemble, spring-summer 1996 process-displaying working method. Thus, it is ironic to think of a Versace
Zebra-printed synthetic stretch mesh, creation as a landmark, inasmuch as his work was so often about
yellow-and-black leopard-printed silk demolishing landmarks in contemporary fashion.
Courtesy Gianni Versace Archives Similarly, Versace's remarkable corset and lingerie dresses are not ·
merely like those of the many contemporary designers who were still, in
Amazing and sensuous combinations are the 1980s and 1990s, stimulated by antique lingerie redesigned at its own
characteristic of Versace. Polite matching scale to a single-layer dressing. Versace extended the corset to function
was a trifle to Versace. He preferred the as an evening dress, establishing a newly sinuous line from the bust to
surprise, even the initial dissonance, of the toes.
unexpected and frenetic combinations. Versace's landmarks are not definitive. Rather, they are only
His disposition to pose the controversial moments from a rich, varied scrapbook of remembrances that can take any
rather than the polite and conventional is spectator into the realm of memory and yield even more through their
at the heart of every design decision, even knowledge of design history.
including the uproarious pattern mix.
22 23
Evening dress, spring-summer 1994
Yellow-and-orange crimped synthetic
jersey
Gift of Gianni Versace, 1996
(1996.202.3)
Crimped jersey sets in the wrinkles that

imply a first order of disarray. Versace
reified the process by using grandiose
punk safety-pins as if they are a part of
the draping process. Thus, he set the
dress out as if it were the most
rudimentary process of the draping
imagination, using studio discards for
material. Elsewhere, the safety-pins offer
their curious dialogue between the faux-
elegant and the practical, but here their
role is to render the gist of draping on
the mannequin.
24 25
/_ ,
Evening gown and shorts ensemble,
spring-summer 1994
Purple, orange, and yellow crimped
synthetic jersey
(1996.202.1 a-c)
Versace confronted two histories, one

monumental and one quite recent. The
sari represents the grand tradition of
wrapping in Indian dress. It is vitiated by
the ruptures and their closure with the
gargantuan safety pins that allude to
Versace's caricatural reference to punk,
itself a recent and ephemeral British
style. Further, there is another classic
confrontation: that the disestablishment
character of punk assails the eternity of
the sari as a way of dressing. While
Versace did not function explicitly as a
historian, he performed a critical task by
means of the elements he put together
and reconciled, at least for the purpose
of the dress itself.
26 27
Evening gown, spring-summer 1994
Orange and purple synthetic jersey
(1996.202.4)
Although best known for his evening

wear, Versace never lost the faith with
sportswear that he established in the
1970s. Conversant with Italian
sportswear traditions, including Irene
Galitzine and Simonetta, and the
American tradition of easy dressing,
often inflected by the East, Versace could
firmly place shorts and slacks in the
midst of high style.
28 29
Black silk with silver and gold-tone
metal safety-pin ornaments
Courtesy Gianni Versace Archives
Perhaps forever to be known as the

Elizabeth Hurley dress, as it was first
worn by her in 1994, this dress is the
definitive resolution of Versace's use of
punk safety pins. That the British model
took the design home in a sense to
England is paradoxical, for what is
manifestly high style in this instance has
lowly British roots. But what had been a
sari or other fashion chissic is now
resolutely the little black dress, its
simplicity providing the perfect foil for
the intensity of Versace's safety-pin detail
with the body's presence showing
through from beneath. Just as Gabrielle
Chanel rendered her little black dresses
as the tabula rasa on which a whole
panoply of costume jewelry and
idiosyncratic personal style could take
place, Versace rendered the little black
dress more revealing and more
voluptuous than ever.
30 31
Evening dress, fall-winter 1991-92
Quilted black silk crepe, chiffon, and
reembroidered lace
Gift of Gianni Versace, 1993 (1993.52.5)
With a nod to the Balenciaga baby doll

of the 1950s, Versace extended the lace
of lingerie to make a skirt for the
modified form of a back-laced corset.
Imparting utmost elegance to what is a
combination of historical styles, Versace
reinforced a conceptual premise with the
employment of a multitude of beautiful
details. He pointedly never held history
up to ridicule. Rather, he celebrated
traditional technical virtuosity and
historical styles within the embrace of his
own time.
32 33
Studded ensemble, fall-winter 1991-92 new ornamentation from the obdurate
Black leather and silk crepe with silver and practical device of the studs. A
and gold-tone metal studs corresponding detail only confirms that
Courtesy Gianni Versace Archives there is a visual delight found where we
expected only physical reinforcement. If
Studding, a practical reinforcement, the effect is more Greek than Byzantine,
became design for Versace. A fret along the idea owes something to the cognate
the hem and patterns on sleeves and Byzantine pieces in the same collection,
front represent Versace's talent for in which mosaic tesserae are implicated
turning the rugged sportswear motif into into metal on fabric and leather. Here,
a decorative one, treating the studding as classicism and ornament are discovered
if it were a form of printing. The in the same principle of small metal
triumph of the ensemble-and a surprise details being read as design.
in fashion history-is that Versace made
34 35
Day suit, spring-summer 1994 this suit benefits from both the regular
Black-and-white glen-plaid wool with pattern and its inherent sense of
float weave deviation. This subversive note within
Courtesy Gianni Versace Archives the otherwise formal assembly of the
luncheon or day suit represents Versace's
If there is any metaphor to represent keen interest in all fashion traditions. In
Versace's suits, it is the elegant textile short, if Dior did it, then Versace wants
pattern of this one. Establishing a grid, at least to try it.
but releasing one float weave in series,
Bolero day suit, fall-winter 1994-95 extremely short skirts; and their buttons
Light-blue synthetic plush and accessories never sacrifice the
Courtesy Gianni Versace Archives Versace bravado. The bolero jacket is, of
course, not the flattering and acquiescent
The designer who had held the form of the cardigan or suit jacket that
bourgeoisie at arm's length in the late softly camouflages the waist and
1980s offered signs of peace and mollifies the hips; Versace offered not the
reconciliation with his smart suits in the convention, only a small compromise.
1990s. These were not automatically the That a related ensemble was represented
taste even then of the skeptical and in unforgettable 1994 photographs by
haughty. Their cuts are almost brutal Richard Avedon with a satyrlike nude
(here, the bolero jacket emphasizes the male suggests that the image-making also
waist); Versace showed them with conceived an image beyond chic lunch.
36 37
Day dress, ca. 1984
Polychrome-striped silk
Gift of Marilyn Linzer, 1996
(1996.496.1)
Big shoulders, which Versace

remembered fondly as one of his
hallmarks in the late 1970s and early
1980s, conform to the 1940s look that
Versace admired early in his career.
Movies, both Italian and American in
this case, contributed to this imagery
made especially graphic by stripes and
the relaxed disposition radiating from a
flaccid center front. Merging the easy
nonchalance of the soft silk with the
regimentation of stripes, Versace enjoyed
the sportswear graphic, while yielding to
the draping of the 1930s and 1940s.
38 39
Day dress ensemble, spring-summer The early work of Versace includes
1980 expert sportswear, combining disparate
Navy-and-white striped sheer silk materials with the virtuoso hand of the
chiffon, with red cotton-blend knit, blue American sportswear pioneers. Chiffon,
leather and coral plastic accessories plastic, and leather are all used in an
Gift of Gianni Versace, 1980 ensemble that bespeaks utility and
(1980.399.1 a-e) semaphore-like clarity. Considering such
work in the development of Versace's
oeuvre, one realizes the latent sexuality
in his sheer panels of cloth, bare
interstices, and joyous materials.
Day pant ensemble, spring-summer 1980 The nautical forthrightness of this sports
Navy-and-white striped sheer chiffon ensemble demonstrates Versace's early
and red cotton knit and outstanding ability to make the
Gift of Gianni Versace, 1980 ordinary luxurious. Capacious pants,
(1980.399.2 a-f) sheer chiffon, and soft wrapping give the
outfit the utmost elegance along with
comfort. Here, what comes close to a
cliche of summer dressing is saved by its
reliance on the unpretentious mix of
ordinary and exceptional elements.
40 41
Evening gown, fall-winter 1987-88
Black metallic mesh with rhinestone and
reembroidered cotton lace trim
The way this dress clings across the

poitrine and glistens with mesh brilliance
might suggest Versace's icon of the
prostitute, but the fineness of the lace
trim and retardataire train suggests the
delicacy of Boue Soeurs or Callot Soeurs
in the style of a court-presentation dress.
Once again, Versace attributed so much
cognition and so much fashion history to
the visionary prostitute that she became
the paradox of the woman of the night,
paragon of history. Nonetheless,
Versace's keen fondness could not be
excused by some critics, who could
hardly see the historicism for the sense
that this might be a less than proper
dress. Versace would never exculpate nor
be disdainful of the prostitute: it is her
presence as ideal that prevented Versace
from ever being bourgeois.
42 43
Sleeveless dress
Top-stitched lavender silk
The attent'uated effect of lingerie is

achieved by extending what seem to be
the functional lines of the lingerie into
the long verticals of this dress. With
the extension of these lines, the dress
becomes both a column and an item
of lingerie, beginning to rationalize its
length and taking advantage of the
shaping lines found in lingerie
construction, here rendered
large and long.
44 45
White silk crepe and ribbed silk with
rhinestone grommets and shoulder straps
Amidst the flurry of 1990s fashion

stimulated by newly supple and
externalized corsetry, Versace boldly
extended the line of the corset into a
gown. In so doing, he did not resort to
the body exaggerations of supported
bust or narrowed waist of other
practitioners of the 1990s corset. Instead,
he allowed the line to be sinuously
modern. In a sense, Versace was doing
what many other designers were doing at
the same time, but he was steadfast to
his ideal of the sensuous, body-revealing
dress, not employing the caricatural body
of many who explored body shaping.
46 47
Evening dress, fall-winter 1984-85 Promethean fire of art was merely another ember for his torchy fashion.
Gray, yellow, and silver metal mesh While Versace loved art and was always an avid museum goer, he did not
Courtesy Gianni Versace Archives observe the distinction that many place between popular culture and the
high culture of art. In being so willing to take on art, he was not
As the metal mesh became a virtuoso intimidated by museum solemnity nor even art's stern auteur sovereignty;
material for Versace, he found its it was all merely another captivating image for Versace. Characteristic is
inherent properties. He considered in this Versace's habit of visiting The Metropolitan Museum of Art in recent
case, first, the rectangle, and created a years, most often starting with The Costume Institute but proceeding to
silhouette attentive to the straight line other galleries as well. The seamless flow of a visit to the multifarious
and right angle. But inevitably, this Metropolitan Museum offers all the arts equally for the designer's
reference is to the field of painting, and consideration, so that one art is not perceived sacrosanct and another
its decoration is now in the manner of merely metier.
Gustav Klimt and other decorative For each Versace example inspired by art, there is not only the
painters. Acceding to flatness and the paradigm but also the designer's impulse and his remodeling of it into a
rectangle, Versace did what every good living art. Thus, the fragile, air-driven constellation of a Calder mobile is
modernist of art critic Clement translated into a soft, floating, tissue-like dress that allows us to feel a
Greenberg's orientation does and realized gentle motion akin to that of a mobile. As Amy Spindler (New York
the full potential of flat surface. Times, January 21, 1997) described: "Mr. Versace made walking mobiles
of his models, in airy translucent dresses painted with Calder forms and
wires." It is precisely the animation that Spindler described that is the
designer's necessary objective in using art authentically: to render it in
conjunction with the living model and to allow it to live in a new way.
Now the Calder mobile is not merely suspended from the ceiling but
so 51
dances on a strapless gown of gossamer tissue. Likewise, the rich faceting
of Delaunay as practiced by Versace mediates Robert Delaunay's ideas and
the brilliant textile inventions of his fellow artist Sonia Delaunay. There is
no passivity in Versace's use of these artists; there is instead a capturing of
the essence and a desire to see an art translated into apparel made for
spectacle.
Perhaps Versace's most famous art equivalence is with Andy
Warhol. Cavalier and commercial creatives both, they are less a design
odd-couple than one might imagine. Instigators and voyeurs, they both
were charmed by and became agents for the popular culture. In the same
manner in which it is impossible for the contemporary conceptual artist to
come of age without a Duchampianism, sometimes derivative, a
contemporary artist of media proclivity cannot come of age without a
Warholianism, most likely derivative, and Warhol served Versace both as
affinity and explanation. His Pop Art dresses testify to Versace's place in
the world. They bear their own sensationalism a quarter of a century after
Warhol's brazen gestures. Even beyond their specific renderings-
conflating James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, trumping Warhol to the later
cultural exa~geration and excess, even beyond that of the 1960s-the
Warhol apparel comprises Versace's declaration that fashion is to art what
art was once to the popular culture-sordid scavenger and beautiful
correspondent, both at once.
52 53
Day dress, spring-summer 1983
Black linen
Gift of Carol R. Reiss, 1994
(1994.472.3 a,b)
For Versace, a linen dress is as simple as

a Barnett Newman painting, which is to
say that it is calculated and contemplated
to every measurement and variation.
Like Claire McCardell, Bonnie Cashin,
and other pioneers in American
sportswear, Versace used the precise
measure of apron- and kimono-like folds
in determining unpretentious wrap
dresses, the sole decoration being the
trim and the inherent measurements. For
a designer later so identified with the
;urface treatments and excitements of
apparel, Versace's first impulses were
akin to minimalism.
Sleeveless evening gown, spring-summer
1991
Partially beaded silk twill printed with
polychrome images of Marilyn Monroe
and James Dean
If Byzantine icons were fair game for

Versace in 1991, then the icons of the
1960s were also ready for renewal and
transfiguration. The movie-star
idealization of Andy Warhol, more
recently described as "The Warhol Look:
Fashion, Style, and Glamour," was
reinforced by the tandem of Monroe and
Dean. By the time Versace appropriated
these images, not only were both stars
dead but so too was Warhol. Versace
employed icons that are implicated in a
lesser history than those of Byzantium
but that were nonetheless historical by
1991. His interest was not in truly
"contemporary" art but in Warhol as an
Old Master, though the personal
affinities and sensibility for media and
self-projection were also subjectively
keen for Versace.
54 55
Strapless evening dress, fall-winter 1989
Polychrome-beaded and ~mbroidered
black synthetic mesh

The artists Robert and Sonia Delaunay,

and their jagged, bristly, and colorful
modern planes, were a stimulus to
Versace, especially given that Sonia
Delaunay had worked in fashion, and in
other design forms, and was one of the
first promoters of the kind of universal
artist-designer that Versace wanted to be.
s6 57
\
Strapless dress, spring-summer 1997
White-and-black hand-painted and
appliqued silk chiffon
The fragile, suspended world of an

Alexander Calder mobile is re-created in
the delicate scrim and layers of a Calder
dress by Versace. Versace created a
homage to the artist, but it is a knowing
one that captures the artist in a
comparable suspension rendered in a
floating modern dress.
ss 59
Black metal mesh with gold and copper
design motif
Metal mesh served Versace as the

abstract canvas, irresistible to the color
blocks and intervals that we associate
with the history of abstract painting.
Ultimately, Versace was more drawn to
the narrative forms, but his regard for
the artists Gustav Klimt, Vassily
Kandinsky, Joan Mir6, and Alexander
Calder, and for modernist painting in
general testifies to an acute interest in
abstraction as well.
6o 61
--
Sleeveless dress with opened bust-seam, often with a skirt shorter than the 1920s length but looking most like the
fall-winter 1994-95 Technicolor lustiness of "epic" classical films.
Leopard-print silk velvet and gold-tone Classical drapery came to Versace not with the propriety of Gres
metal mesh hemlines, which reach the floor in the manner of a Roman matron.
Courtesy Gianni Versace Archives Versace mixed Gres with Federico Fellini, coming up with a slave girl out
of narrative art as much as out of historical evidence, but showing leg and
A dress can be slashed, in which case its thigh. For the Roman dresses, Versace did not reconstruct the Roman
cut through to the body is an after-the- Empire; he preferred a glory in contemporary and libidinous imagination,
fact and additional gesture. In this rendering bordello Rome in its decadence and what Versace imagined as a
instance, Versace did not slash but culture in Italy of unembarrassed sexuality and of opulence similarly
characteristically found his gap within unblushing. Can the historian wholly confirm or deny this robust
the design. Leaving the gap and its representation of history? Versace invented from a matrix of knowledge,
corresponding drape from the bust-seam drawing on his vast library for images out of history but insisting on
can appear accidental or incidental in a extracting them from the historical disposition into a boisterous sensibility
way no slash would ever be. of the contemporary.
Deconstruction as a fashion metaphor Versace's translation of Byzantium derived from his inspection of
has often been a matter of destroying artifacts and his certainty that he could perform something akin. The
what is wholly made. But in the most mosaics of Ravenna did not hush Versace among all the international
talented hands-Rei Kawakubo for tourists; it is as if history inspired Versace to say "I can do that," even
Comme des Gar~ons, for example-the with regard to the most venerated and monumental traditions. Even the
knowledge of pattern and draping allows piety of monumental crosses and Virgin and Child in mosaic tesserae did
the design to render a select detail not daunt Versace, who manifestly worked in a secular time and in a
incomplete or unconnected. Versace's carnal, sensuous manner. Ravenna was an inspiration. At a later point, in
boast that he always draped is 1997, The Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition "The Glory of
consequential when he not only Byzantium" cast Versace back into that incense-imbued world of dreams,
constructs through draping but also glitter, and monumentality.
deconstructs. Versace's Byzantine collections called upon specific characteristics
of his work. His recurrent interest in the heavy encrustation of metal
embroidery corresponded to the luster of Ravenna's colorful and shining
mosaics. Shrewdly, Versace rendered his Byzantium in weighty
ornamentation, but he also intuited another Byzantine premise. The
radiant mosaic walls of Ravenna that transmute mass into splendid
message are in marked contrast to the heaviness of the construction itself.
In like manner, Versace's 1997 Byzantine dresses are leather, a surface we
are least likely to associate with a crust of embroidery. The result is that
we have an implacable field that is made miraculous in the presence of the
sparkling, story-giving surface, just as we experience on entering a
Ravenna building.
For Versace, such historical references are not re-creation; they are
there-situation of the effects of history to a new circumstance in apparel.
In like manner, Versace's extravagant dix-huitieme, an amalgam of art's
representation and fashion's grandiose silhouette, skims or channel-surfs
the eighteenth century for the dispositions he craves: ribald sensuality
worthy of Casanova's account of the court or Fielding's revelation of
upwardly mobile lives; the flagrantly ornate world of horror vacui
decoration, delighting in rococo excess and letting the fetes galantes of the
era seem even more suggestive as skirts open and bras announce love-plays
and sweet elegance; and a silhouette of ballooning skirt topped not with a Evening dress, fall-winter 1994-95
rib-grinding corset and bodice but with a top of deep decolletage and rib- Gold-tone metal mesh
revealing closeness to the body. Courtesy Gianni Versace Archives
About dress inspired by the column-and-cylinder decades of the
twentieth century, Versace respected both the dressmakers and the artists As always, Versace offered himself
of the 1920s and 1930s; he understood their discovery of the flat in challenges in dressmaking, absorbing
modern dress as a counterpart to his own modernist tendencies and his what had begun as simple, boxlike
own desire to drape the dress to fall against the body. But one principle rectangles of metal mesh into the soft
alone was not borrowed in this case. Versace loved the circles and drapery of a style that equivocated
simplified decoration of the time, suggesting that the ornate even for between the 1920s and classicism. If the
Versace succumbed in some way to the International Style, with its decoration wet drapery of classical sculpture could
that is solely determined and required by function. be emulated by the languorous jerseys
History, never a burden for Versace, was treated with the and silks of the 1920s, then why not try
legerdemain of a designer who wanted to extract the essence of the to render the style in the metal mesh that
historical example when it accorded with a contemporary need. In this, we Versace deftly took into a process of
have the model of a contemporary history and of the historicism that can draping?
enlighten the creative process.
66
Evening gown with asymmetrical hem,
spring-summer 1995
Draped and pleated light-blue
synthetic jersey
In one of his most blatant examples,

Versace demonstrated his Fellini-like
ability to respect history and to eroticize
it and render it hyperbolic and
unforgettable. This is a strumpet of the
decadence of the Roman Empire, the
prostitute emergent from history. But
Versace's passionate history is not
without artistic evidence: as strident as
this image may be, it is based on his
equivalent to ancient statuary's wet
drapery. But surely, his is not the history
of high-school text: it is the erotic
pageant and history expanded in terms
of our current culture and ideas.
68 69
Gun-metal gray metal mesh studded with
rhinestones
As hard and cold as metal might be,

Versace draped it as if it were a liquid
fabric, defying all the austerity of gun-
metal gray and the heaviness of
additional rhinestones. Versace treated
the material as if it were gossamer, even
when it was not.
One-shoulder evening gown
Cream silk satin and chiffon with silver-
bead embroidery
The one-shoulder-draped and

manipulated gowns of Madame Gres
were a great inspiration to Versace, who
let a simple neoclassical line inflect the
natural flow of the drapery. Even before
the "Madame Gres" exhibition held in
the fall of 1994 at The Costume
Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, on being told that the exhibition
was being planned, Versace exclaimed
that she had probably been the greatest
inspiration to him among all designers in
history.
Silver-tone metal mesh with Greek-cross
appliques
The mosaic tesserae are the common

ground of landscape, figures, and crosses
in such architectural examples as the
Romanesque churches in Ravenna, and
similarly, Versace used the metal surface
throughout a piece, equalizing the soft
drapery and the rigid form of the cross.
The complicated surface of the metal
mesh, read from afar as a shimmer, is the
logical counterpart to the mosaic, melded
from a distance but multivalent up close.
72 73
Gold-tone metal mesh with Greek-cross
appliques
The heavy metal dresses of the season,

weighing in at a shoulder-numbing
twenty pounds, are Christian soldiers of
a type that perhaps only Versace could
have envisioned. They imply the
considerable physical power of the
woman, suggesting a Xena heroine
among fashion models, but they also
convey the emotional power of the cross.
The hard surface of both dress and cross
serves as the equivalent of the mosaic
field and surface of the Byzantine crosses
of Ravenna. In her memorial recollection
of Versace, editor Ingrid Sischy
remembered the zeal of Versace when
leading her on a visit to Ravenna, a place
of great ardor for the designer.
74 75
Dress, fall-winter 1997-98
Black leather embroidered with Greek-
cross motif
In the Atelier Versace collection inspired

by The Metropolitan Museum of Art's
"The Glory of Byzantium" exhibition,
Versace returned to the great crosses he
had used in the earlier 1990s. Risking
sacrilege, Versace employed a symbol as
potent as the cross in pursuit of secular
fashion. The probability of being
criticized is often inhibiting to fashion
designers and to clothing's wearers, given
the necessary social function of the art.
But Versace could defy or at least mystify
the Church at least as much as he defied
and mystified the middle class who
would find such an incendiary gesture
offensive. In this sense, though, Versace's
design is not about being ingratiating; it
is about pursuing a vision.
76 77
Byzantine halter ensemble, fall-winter
1991-92
Polychrome beaded and embroidered
black leather, black silk satin, and
chiffon
Versace solicits interpretation. This

ensemble requires some explanation,
not only for the religious imagery but
even for the presence of the leather
jacket. As I argued at the time
("Sailing to Byzantium: A Fashion
Odyssey, 1990-1991," Textile & Text
14:2, 1~91): "But a Virgin and Child
taken from mosaic to embroidery,
gearing down the scale but keeping
even the process more or less intact, is
to declare representation an affinity
with clothing and apparel something
other than an uninterpreted,
unintelligible field of design. What
cannot be said about this [Versace]
clothing is that it is meaningless ....
Versace takes a supremely recognizable
image and applies it to clothing to
make explicit his demand that clothing
is an eloquent, rhetorical mode."
Versace knew this imagery to be
provocative, and he chose to be a
provocateur.
78 79
Suit, fall-winter 1991-92
Polychrome-printed silk velvet
Gift of Anne H. Bass, 199 3
(1993.345.5 a-c)
Versace's romanticism and synaesthesia

are suggested in this elegant suit that
places romantic painting and dance at
the service of the fashion designer's most
tender emotions and the textile printer's
consummate mastery. Art history, always
at the designer's beck and call, mollified
Versace's sensibility in the early 1990s to
enable him to make the smart suits and
tailored daywear that emerged in the
1990s to accompany his more famous
(and infamous) eveningwear.
So 81
Bustier ensemble, spring-summer 1992
Embroidered, appliqued, and beaded
blue silk moire and blue denim
Modern dress in silhouette, the bustier

and jacket are in surface decoration
evocative of the eighteenth century. The
notable decolletage of eighteenth-century
separate bodices may be suggested by the
bustier, but the irony between the two
epochs appears chiefly in the modern suit
jacket offered with the decoration of the
ancien regime. It is as if Versace had all
the parts of each era but only wanted to
make a wanton jigsaw puzzle,
juxtaposing various parts and not quite
playing by the rules.
Evening ensemble, spring-summer of. The sweet games of love that might
1992 have intrigued a court were not Versace's
Denim and polychrome-printed silk faille milieu. Instead, he made his woman
Courtesy Gianni Versace Archives more courtesan than court lady. With,
however, a wonderful comprehension of
The open gown of the eighteenth-century eighteenth-century dress, Versace
French court gave Versace license to released all the potential for sensuality
offer the most extravagant version there- and love play.
84 ss
Evening ensemble, spring-summer 1992
Navy-blue denim, gold-and-black
baroque-patterned silk faille
This evening outfit steps out of the

candlelight of the eighteenth century
with a stiffened skirt, petticoat-like
interventions and a palimpsest of lace,
and wondrous baroque silk with a
network of horror vacui decoration. But
never content to let a style rest in one
epoch, Versace lurched back into
twentieth-century sportswear with a
denim top. Yet even as he gave us the
bodice of a cowgirl, he also understood
eighteenth-century decolletage. While the
mannequin is seen here from the back,
we might expect the runway view with
several buttons unbuttoned: the effect of
a voyeur's Versailles rendered in rodeo
denim.
86 87
Beaded and embroidered red net and
rose-printed red synthetic twill
A sheer bodice tops a leg-revealing skirt

of eighteenth-century style, its
unrestrained floral pattern speaking of
both Versace's excesses and those of the
eighteenth century. The skirt opens up
and falls to the sides in a bagged-up,
pouched manner of the late eighteenth
century. It is clear that this is not by any
means historical re-creation, yet it is
shrewdly aware of how high-spirited and
how profligate eighteenth-century dress
could be.
88 89
Sleeveless evening dress with panniers,
spring-summer 1988
Polychrome floral-printed silk
The eighteenth century is a souvenir of

opulence, color, and seductive intrigue.
The extreme brevity of this pannier-
distended skirt is not entirely practical
for modern life, but Versace could not
bring himself to take on the ponderous
volume of eighteenth-century apparel.
His version is, in fact, indebted to Dior
of the 1950s and Lacroix in the 1980s,
but he went shorter than either and far
bolder in spareness to the body.
90 91
Blue denim, gazar, and silk with gold-
tone metal accessories
A vivacious print and the girlishness of a

short skirt emerge from the eighteenth
century but are pipelined by Versace
right into the spirit of the twentieth
century, more so as accompanied here
by a denim jacket. Again and again,
Versace evoked the eighteenth century
only to confront it with more casual and
more modern principles.
92 93
Evening slip gown (and detail), slip gown by Versace requires a leap of
spring-summer 1996 faith or, in Age of Enlightenment terms, a
Pleated silver silk satin with embroidered leap of reason. Versace's silhouette is of
sheer insets our time, but the referencing of petticoat
Courtesy Gianni Versace Archives visibility and the elaboration of the inset
panels match dix-huitieme stomachers
To imagine that the eighteenth century, elaborating the center and the splaying of
with its articulated and engorged skirts to reveal equally beautiful, even
silhouettes, is an inspiration to a willowy more delicate layers beneath.
94 95
Asymmetrical one-shoulder evening
gown, fall-winter 1997-98
Yellow rayon jersey and black leather
Indebted to Madame Gres, but rendered

shockingly disruptive by the intervention
of black leather, this evening gown is
Versace's own version of the 1920s. In a
famous photograph, probably intended
chiefly for a process demonstration, a
Gres mannequin exposes one breast in
an asymmetrical draping. It is as if
Versace took that idea and added one of
his leather dresses to incorporate his
version of propriety. Yet, by setting the
leather as apparent contrast to the
draping of the jersey, Versace made no
effort to reconcile; he only disordered his
examplar in Gres, making the 1920s
look provocative in the 1990s.
96 97
Evening gown with asymmetrical
draping and gathering, fall-winter
1997-98
Pink silk jersey
The historical source here is clearly

Madame Gres, but Versace replaced the
French designer's discreet elegance with
his own penchant for the vampish and
glamorous. Gres emphasized the classical
and the comfortable. Versace displaced
those characteristics with his sexy siren.
Appliqued purple silk chiffon
The ease and innate modernity of teens

and twenties dresses enthralled Versace.
Sheer layers allow dressmaking to stand
out and display print and decoration.
This classic modernism was clearly
Versace's great alternative to body-
hugging tightness and the look of the
prostitute. It assumes a lyricism for the
designer, still letting the body be
expressed but far less overtly erotic than
in other instances.
Evening dress, spring-summer 1995
Purple silk chiffon with satin appliques
and beaded shoulder straps
The tuniclike layering of 1920s style is

suggested by Versace in this evening
dress that in silhouette might even honor
Poiret, but that is gossamer and body-
clinging in a way that shows off in the
hot light of the contemporary runway.
Yellow silk chiffon with circular yellow-
and-mustard satin appliques
Diaphanous effects encase the body in

gossamer cylinders of forms, evoking the
principles of twentieth-century fashion.
For the teens and the twenties, when
these forms originated, they suggested a
new sexuality, but Versace rendered
obvious the connection between these
floating forms and his joy of the beauty
perceived along with the gauzy surface.
Evening dress (and detail),
spring-summer 1982
Beaded and printed blue silk chiffon
This chiffon tube epitomizes the new

cylindrical fluidity and the cubist clarity
of the fashion new in the 1920s,
enhanced by the further referencing to
Art Deco decoration in Mediterranean
colors. It is as if Versace took his favorite
fashion designers of that period and put
them in concert with the best in
contemporaneous painting and
decorative arts.
102 103
Mustard-and-orange silk chiffon
Sweetly redolent of Mycenaean

civilization, this dress of an Art Deco
archaeology also expresses the 1990s,
enhancing the body and utilizing the
contemporary disposition to sheer, body-
revealing form.
104 105
Bias-cut evening gown, spring-summer
1997
Cream hammered silk satin with chiffon
back panel
This dress for a contemporary diva could

almost have stepped out of the 1920s. Of
course, Versace's 1920s drapery was
often influenced by the movie-star
version Grecian dresses and bias-cut
gowns of the 1930s silver screen that
always entranced him. The sultry
sexuality of those dresses came into play
when Versace reconceived the 1920s for
the 1990s.
106 107
Black metal mesh and synthetic lace
The early years of the twentieth century

rendered fashion cylindrical and with
cling that would adhere not to an
artificial structure but to the body itself,
and Versace brought the same idea to
this dress that uses the teens and twenties
style but clearly identifies the modern
woman. The presence of a tr~in seems
historical; the cleaving to the bust and
ribs seems erotic.
108 109
Evening dress, fall-winter 1991-92 Evening dress (and detail), fall-winter techniques and the investment of such
Powder-blue silk crepe, chiffon, and lace 1991-92 couture practice in a garment that could
Gift of Gianni Versace, 1993 (1993.52.2) Pale-pink silk crepe, chiffon and lace from a distance pass for sleazy lingerie
Gift of Gianni Versace, 1993 (1993.52.1) are Versace tenets. After all, when
Like the poet determined to represent Chanel seized the little black dress in
both innovation and conformity and This flirtatious evening dress that is little wool jersey from the maid, she had to
structure as well, mastering the more than the structure of a slip is just give it all the couture finishes to
restraints, Versace imparted every as rich in its couture values as it is guarantee that it was transfigured. So,
possible complication to the elements of flamboyant in flaunting sexuality. The too, Versace seized the ostensibly vulgar,
lingerie dressing. He did not merely posit dazzle of dressmaking performance was imparted a panoply of technical skills,
the wearing of innerwear as outerwear for Versace the one possible counterpart and left the garment changed and the
but combined the techniques, providing to the sizzle of sensuality. Lace, pleating, spectator overwhelmed by the merger of
lace, accompanying it with quilting, and quilting all meet in the small complete opposites.
adding bracing, and pleating the lace. expanse of inches of fabric. Multiple
112 113
Animal-print ensemble, spring-summer dusky and somewhat illicit world of motorcycle jackets but rather is
1992 employed structurally. Moreover, leather is not a male prerogative for
Yellow-and-black printed silk with gold- Versace. Of course, other and earlier designers had used leather for
tone metal accessories womenswear, especially Yves Saint Laurent in his pioneering work. But
Courtesy Gianni Versace Archives Versace cast the referencing of leather back and forth between the
templates of menswear design such as motorcycle jackets and the
Never too much, never too rich, and consummately womenswear leather he had made into skirts going back to
perhaps even never too thin-Versace the 1970s. Leather is studded, but leather can also be quilted; its bits
added the category of willful excess and become the geographic integers of a mesh map, or it can constitute a field
extravagance to fashion's ability to evoke upon which the delicacy of embroidery seems even more fragile on a
desire. Rich printing, varied materials, staunch skin; and its practical application is mingled with its most
and wild coordinations are part of the symbolic and most transgressive use in S & M.
Versace aesthetic. He preferred Of all the materials advanced by Versace, plastic is the
decadence and immoderation to any quintessential and the most controversial. Transparency was an easy cause
standard of good taste. He also invoked, for twelfth-century Gothic architect Abbot Suger, but it is a very difficult
as many designers do, the spirit of Diana one for contemporary fashion. It risks the very invisibility of the emperor's
Vreeland, in the whirlwind of animal new clothes, but it also can suggest possibilities for a modern Cinderella.
prints, flamboyance, and high style. Versace honored a fashion convention in shielding the inside, where it
grazes the skin, with a soft skin, exposing relatively little of the wearer's
body to the plastic itself. The spectator's anxiety suggests that there is even
greater discomfort to the viewer than for the wearer.
Versace answered to the early-twentieth-century Italian artists'
Futurist Manifesto, when he introduced new materials to fashion and
114 115
Tank dress with cutout midriff,
fall-winter 1994-95
Yellow vinyl
Risking reference to the 1960s but bold

enough to speak to the 1990s are
Versace's uses of the recalcitrant material
of vinyl with a dressmaker's deftness of
hand. It is perhaps difficult to imagine
such dresses as other than an Austin
Powers parody of the Sixties, but Versace
made the dress so much his signature
that we may think 1960s, but we still
remember-and are saved by the fact-
that we are in the 1990s.
Tank dress with cutout midriff,
fall-winter 1994-95
Fuchsia vinyl
Versace assembled a conclusive catalogue

of the horrors of the middle-class
sensibility. Brightly colored vinyl has to
be of top rank on such a list of anathemas.
Versace seized the contemptible materials
and acted as if he were dealing with silk
or wool. This is the tour de force
performance of the artist who knows
exactly what alienates his audience and
who knows equally well that he can
perform magic using the reviled
materials.
insisted on new uses for some old textiles and techniques. In trading with Dress, fall-winter 1995-96
the vernacular, Versace was perhaps only continuing the great tradition of Cream wool with clear vinyl yoke and
Chanel and others. In going beyond fashion for new resources, he may pockets
have been preceded by Elsa Schiaparelli, but his enterprising and far- Courtesy Gianni Versace Archives
reaching search for materials feels even more like an artist's endless forage
for the best material, however unconventional or even unknown, through The use of clear vinyl causes this wool
which to discover form. dress to seem more glued to the body,
the transparency suggesting both
coverage and noncoverage. In the
syndrome of the emperor's new clothes,
the vinyl overwhelms the more traditional
material and makes the dress seem to
vanish.
118 119
Coat, fall-winter 1992-93
Quilted black leather with fur trim
Versace's leathers have not the planes of

hard jackets but the stuff of sculpture,
and ultimately the stuff of dreams.
Concavity and convexity, reinforced by
the quilted grid, give the leather a vitality
by making the material always appear
light, almost inflatable. Even Pop
sculptures by Niki de Saint-Phalle and
Claes Oldenburg are suggested in these
alternately swelling and compressed
shapes.
120 121
Evening tank dress, spring-summer 1996
Black synthetic net with black leather
appliques and beading
As they do in his plastic dresses,

Versace's net dresses of spring-summer
1996 offer islands of scattered beading
and appliques to present some
reasonable coverage of the body. Black
leather floats in patches in an effect that
appears to be a wholly random and
uncontrolled order.
122 123
Silver-tone mesh with black cotton
lace trim
Lingerie, that layer formerly unseen but

very visible in the 1990s, has been
treated by many designers by showing
the delicacies and balance between
innerwear and outerwear, public and
private. But Versace was not content
with the conundrum as it existed. Rather,
he added Joan of Arc to the fray, offering
a sheer lingerie with the silver-tone
reflections of armor or, at very least,
industrial design. The effect is to
fabricate the sheer layer as undeniably
self-sufficient. Black cotton lace trim
only furthers the sense of industrial
strength and design.
124 125
Evening tank dress, spring-summer 1997
Silver-tone chain mail and mint-green
metal mesh over mint-green silk
Versace rendered the insubstantial

silhouette of the 1920s in metal, but he
never let the metal seem hard or heavy.
Instead, he relied on the metallic sheen
and the play between silver and green to
provide the equivalent of silk or even
sheer textile. The tour de force of this
performance is Versace's genuine
adherence to the 1920s ideal, plus his
transference into another material, even
into technology. The formless mail
dresses proved the supple possibilities of
the medium, but the re-creation of a
whole Deco silhouette is even more
prodigious.
126 127
Transparent vinyl with allover
polychrome beading
Transparent plastic is distanced from

nudity only by the scattering of beading,
conceived as a kind of aleatory allover
pattern but sufficient to deflect the eye
from a direct reading of the body within.
But Versace clearly knew that this is a
scrim and a diversion with a more
important sense of addressing the body
and making the dress as see-through
as possible.
128 129
Sarong ensemble, spring-summer 1989
Beaded black synthetic net and hand-
painted brown silk velvet
The sarong came naturally from

Versace's background and expertise in
sportswear wrapping and the global
sources implied by wraps. Like his lush
skirts in sportswear, the sarong also
contains an element of surprise. The
amplitude of the fabric is largely
concealed when it is tightly draped to
the side in the sarong manner. Now in
sumptuous material, the sarong becomes
even more extravagant.
130 131
Cut-out and banded black wool with
top-stitched wool and leather banding
The easy and tempting allusion this

collection makes to bondage and
sadomasochistic fetish created the
expected outrage in 1992. The collection
was denounced by some, reaffirming
Versace's fashion base as the
adventuresome and avant-garde. In fact,
the collection seems to refer less to The
Mineshaft or other fetish clubs than to
the means of overlacing the body with a
minimum of structure, as spaghetti straps
and fashion exploration had always
done. The device may have had an
allusion that was sure to be incendiary
and judgmental for some, but the usage
was standard practice for advanced
twentieth-century fashion. This is not to
exculpate Versace from enjoying the
sensation his streetwise evocation
caused-in the manner of many
contemporary vanguard artists-but to
recognize that the prime cause was more
conservative than most thought. But
Versace was not trying to be politically
correct any more than he was trying to
be proper. He prized being labeled a
hedonist, for hedonism was the matrix of
his fashion sensibility.
132 133
Wrap evening gown, spring-summer
1987
Black metal mesh with beaded fringe
Extravagant though he may have been,

Versace admired fashion of astringency
and discipline; perhaps he could master
the discipline and then take the style to a
more ornate expression. His great loves
among the designers of the 1920s were
Madeleine Vionnet and Madame Gres,
each a fashion ascetic of a kind. But
Versace could also convey his romance
with the 1920s by his use of dynamic,
animated fringe and the sheathing flow
of popular 1920s style.
134 135
Strapless evening gown with matching
underpants, fall-winter 1995....:96
Beaded yellow synthetic jersey
Braver than brave, Versace never took

refuge in the solemnity or importance of
his materials. Rather, a synthetic jersey in
scorching color would suffice and would,
of course, create a similar, if not greater,
spectacle, as a related long dress in
refined materials. Versace could, like
most designers, create evening gowns
with ease, but what he could do in such
singular fashion was to make one that
would stand out in the crowd on such
occasions as awards nights and openings.
136 137
Crinkled cream silk satin and synthetic
lace with gold-tone metal safety-pin
ornaments
The wrinkled look of 1994 and 1995 is a

paradox. Versace was going mainstream
in many ways, but he was not going
bourgeois. One means of retaining his
outsider identity is the crumpled cloth,
even as it is massed into extraordinary
shapes. It is as if Versace was striving for
the shapes of Worth but insisting on
using punk pins and materials with a
disarray that would have shamed the
Charles Dic.kens Great Expectations
character Miss Havisham.
138 139
Halter evening gown, spring-summer
1991
Silk jersey printed with polychrome
Vogue magazine motif
When Vogue celebrated its centennial

with the book On the Edge: Images of
100 Years of Vogue (1992), writer
Kennedy Fraser claimed: "In the main,
Vogue has been a good friend to
women." Surely its pages, covers, and
ideas have played a role in the lives of
many American women. Versace
rendered a homage, using recent and
historical covers of the journal, that
acknowledges both a visual source in the
world of women and the power of the
media.
jumpsuit, spring-summer 1991
Silk and synthetic net with allover
polychrome beading in Vogue magazine
motif
Seeking to justify the modernity and

gender role of Vogue, Kennedy Fraser
offered: "Outwardly, for most of the
time, American Vogue seems to believe in
a sort of feminine Utopia of ever
healthier, more flat-bellied, and
thoroughly fulfilled young
professionals." Clothed in beaded
journal covers, the woman who wears
the jumpsuit that Versace offered as
metaphor to the modern and efficient,
recalls Versace's roots developing out of
American sportswear and all that such
sportswear implied for the effective and
up-to-date woman. Versace's
"advertising" is largely subservient to
this effort to embody the modern woman
as envisioned by magazine and designer.
Bathing ensemble, spring-summer 1994 specific connection between fashion and the fashion magazine is publicly
Purple and polychrome paisley-printed denied and disdained with the claim that the two are independent in the
Nylon stretch jersey traditional separation of advertising and editorial. Yet fashion magazines
Gift of Gianni Versace, 1996 today walk a tightrope. Fashion designers, such as Versace, who delighted
(1996.202.2 a-c) in the image campaigns that consume massive pages of advertising in
many magazines and certainly in Vogue, hold considerable power. Versace
The prints of Versace have often been offered a novel trade-off; he advertised Vogue on clothing, thus placing the
compared to the popular prints of Emilio magazine's pages on a garment. Who could resist some reciprocity? Word
Pucci that likewise enthralled a and image were for Versace about media seduction and the desire for
worldwide audience, especially clothing to communicate. One imagines that Versace, had he lived a few
Americans, with their applications to years longer, would have incorporated the music he also dearly loved into
sportswear. The beautiful prints that had his clothing. He had already tried his hand at rock clothing originating
adhered only to silk became for Versace from Elton John and Tina Turner that used words, lyrics, and the
the resplendent patterns of all his works, suggestion of the spoken (or sung) word.
including bathing outfits. For Versace, Ultimately, Versace's goal would have been the sensory
the impulse was democratic. Opulent Gesamtkunstwerk. No parochial ideas moved Versace, only the
prints, once the privilege of only the possibilities of eliding media and letting clothing assume a larger place in
most expensive and rarefied textiles, the world.
became the mode of everyday life.
144 145
Strapless evening dress, fall-winter
1997-98
Black leather embroidered with
Japanese characters
For Versace, lover of sound and music,

there was a purposeful glossolalia to the
inchoate minglings of language. The
declaration in Japanese, going back to
his 1985 jumpsuit, is not one of a
required, specific knowledge but rather
of a sense of implied meaning. Versace
understood every tourist's pleasurable
moment when being so involved in a
foreign place that one is intuitively certain,
as in a dream, that everything being said
is fully understood only to return then to
the reality of incomprehension. Thus, the
optimism present in the symbol is
likewise the optimism of the dress: surety
that we understand one another or will
make every act of faith to communicate.
Strapless evening dress, fall-winter
1997-98
Black leather embroidered with
Japanese characters
Colorful and cheerful messages of the

symbols of greeting and joy literally
stand out against the field of leather.
They cause us to look at the leather
more carefully and to realize that this is
no sinister skin but instead a very
compliant material treated with the effect
of a textile. A flexible tube of leather on
the body is a primeval form of dress, but
in its utter simplicity it is no Wilma
Flintstone garb. Rather, its wrap may
suggest the simplification of the kimono.
It is as if Versace understood that dress
communicates even more instinctively or
basically than a learned language.
148 149
Man's shirt, spring-summer 1991 scrapbook of images of beautiful men, goes further to provide a warrant
Silk twill printed with polychrome for the sensuous man. To be without a necktie is the metaphor to being
Warhol-inspired imagery self-reliant after the industrial models for men's behaviors and for
Courtesy Gianni Versace Archives menswear. Versace attempted to reverse the principle of "The Great Male
Renunciation" by which nineteenth-century men forsook their long-prized
Because of the importance of men in embroideries, brilliant colors, dashes of lace, and luxurious materials for
Versace's vision of fashion, he readily the gray and dark-blue and black frock coats and suits that would be apt
transferred the motifs of womenswear for the sooty cities and dour tasks of modern industrialization and
to menswear. The Andy Warhol inspired management, leaving all that was beautiful and decorative to the sphere of
imagery of Marilyn Monroe and James women. Versace wanted men to be just as sexy as women; he demanded
Dean also appears on a Versace woman's that they be physically open. In guaranteeing a positive aesthetic of
evening gown of the same collection. masculinity, Versace offered a perfect balance to the women he envisioned.
Admittedly, not everyone would chose to
wear this shirt with bared torso as we
have pictured it, but the draping is, as in
all Versace's shirts, more body-clinging
and blouselike than is customary in
men's shirts. If the imagery can cross
over between men and women, the three-
dimensional form can also be similar.
152 153
Man's ensemble, spring-summer 1992
Black-and-white printed silk and black-
and-white printed denim
Versace's Roman warriors, as his ideal

men might be described, inhabit a
classical civilization, even when outfitted
in denim. The black-and-white mosaics
of ancient times rise up in the patterns of
the jeans in black and white in a way
that may or may not be explicitly
recognized as ancient Rome. Versace's
uncanny ability to transport history into
the present is operative: after all, there
are standard men's black jeans, and there
are standard men's white jeans. But only
Versace put black and white together
and made them look like floor mosaics.
154 155
Man's jeans and shirt ensemble,
spring-summer 1993
Cotton and leather
Versace understood that the ubiquitous

fashion black also applied to menswear
and generally shunned the menswear
compromises of navy-blue and gray.
Instead, casual black and formal black
are virtually interchangeable, as are
materials as well. Versace used leather
for shirt and jeans but also combined a
cotton shirt with leather jeans. The ethos
of Versace's book Men Without Ties is
evident in casual wardrobe-building,
unified both by black and by the
enjoyment of the sensuous male body.
156 157
Man's leather jacket,
spring-summer 1993
Black leather with silver-tone
metal beads
In this fringed leather jacket, the devices

of the rodeo cowboy and the motorcycle
jacket are combined. The complication
of the fringing, articulated with metal
beads and balls, testifies to Versace's
disavowal of the austerity of menswear.
Rather, the Versace menswear ideal
always has a touch of the dandy,
smatterings of spectacle, and a hint of
historicism. If 1990s menswear has come
to schism between the body-aware and
the self-aware and the vestigial forms of
"The Great Male Renunciation," Versace
was clearly on the body's side and
aligned with spectacle. His menswear
has, of course, been popularly endorsed
by celebrities and especially by rock
entertainers.
Man's black leather jacket,
spring-summer 1993
In life as in design, the black leather

jacket served Versace as the menswear
version of the little black dress. It is not
a business suit; it incorporates sexuality,
and it engages versatility. For Versace
himself, it was a standard of his personal
wardrobe worn from day through
evening, casual to formal.
Man's chain-mail ensemble (and detail), significant not only as a sensuous surface
fall-winter 1982-83 but also as historical allusions .... Leather
Black leather with metal applied became for Versace a medieval evocation
decoration, and black denim when combined with inset steel knit
Courtesy Gianni Versace Archives suggestive of chain mail.. .. As the shell of
the architecture [Whig Hall, Princeton
Of a closely related chain-mail jacket University] is seemingly pierced to
from the same collection, I wrote in 1982: discover the refreshed post-modern
"Perhaps we would not anticipate ... that interior, so too the leather jacket is, as it
we would find a counterpart in apparel were, opened to reveal the inset steel
design to this early post-modern net" ("Post-Modern Menswear: Irony
monument by Gwathmey/Siegel, but a and Anomaly in Men's Attire of the
fall 1982 leather jacket by Gianni Versace 1980s," Dress, 1982). Versace's
may suggest the same characteristics. In menswear can refer to such heroic
the Versace jacket, the materials are most possibilities as knighthood and chivalry.
160 161
Man's studded ensemble,
spring-summer 1993
Black leather with gold- and silver-tone
metal studs
Always preferring excess, Versace offered

a proliferation of studs almost as if he
were manufacturing heavy-traction tires.
The pinpointing of a few studs would be
the customary designer translation of
popular and fetish-effect leather, even for
a Mad Max apocalyptic image, but
Versace chose to cover the body with
studs, letting the exorbitance become the
aesthetic. Virility might then reside in the
leather attire made dandified by the
lavishness of studded decoration in
contrast to its practical origin. Versace
made the leather of the streets into the
leather of luxury.
Man's Nehru-style suit,
spring-summer 1997
Gray pinstripe synthetic twill
Perverse and clever, Versace yielded to

pinstripes but not to the boardroom.
Even as his womenswear would not yield
to middle-class convention, so too
Versace resisted middle-management
menswear. Pinstripes seem almost the
contradiction of the Nehru style; the
former is a forward gesture, while
the other is a conservative convention.
Man's jeans (and pocket detail), Even jeans were subject to Versace's
fall-winter 1990-91 unremitting sense of decoration and his
Printed cotton-and-nylon blend twill horror vacui penchant for narrative
Gift of Brooks Adams and Lisa adornment, more or less transferring the
Liebmann, 1996 (1996.237.7) crowded pages of Eastern illustration to
the form of contemporary jeans. His rich
Bold Asian prints suffused even Versace illustration is not entirely meant for
jeans in the early 1990s, as he looked yet conventional reading, given that it
again to the Far East and Near East. reverses with the pocket details.
166 167
Sleeveless evening dress with panniers exit. This is dressmaking and stagecraft for Versace. While he has canted
and oversized stole, spring-summer 1988 the fabric in order to provide the minimal juncture at the back, this dress
Black-and-white filigree-printed silk is theater for Versace, implying that fashion plays a dramatic role.
Courtesy Gianni Versace Archives Versace's gargantuan ambitions for fashion included a role for it in
all the arts. To imagine the runway, the rock-and-roll concert, the opera
This evening dress with panniers stage, the grand public event, and even Hollywood as a continuous
inevitably recalls the eighteenth century, platform is what Versace cUd. Timeless metaphor and the eternal yearning
even though it is brusquely short. for synaesthesia were for the first time not in the hands of a poet,
Versace had made note of the Lacroix playwright, composer, or even impresario. Chanel, Dior, Schiaparelli, and
pouf of 1987, and he created his own others designed for theater and film from the experimental to the
version, perhaps even more graphic and commercial. But Versace's model for the dream, the accustomed fantasy of
even more flirtatious in its streamlined fashion now endowed with a new trait of media, was that the fashion
form. Even with a reference to another designer was a fundamental dreamer, one who planned and not merely
designer of embellished and historicist one who followed other artists. Rather, this crucible for the arts was
form, Versace made his own version imagined by a fashion designer.
more addressed to the body. The concept is as simple as it is startling. Creating a utopian
design or conceiving the medium of spectacle can be a fashion designer's
initiative. The fashion designer is no longer ex post facto staff to artists of
enterprise in other media. Versace dreamed a dream of the spectacle that
begins with fashion and engages every sense and every vision.
1]0
Theater dress, 1987
Cut-work cream linen
In this combination of splendor and

vernacular dress for Maurice Bejart's
dance Souvenir de Leningrad at the
Palais de Beaulieu in Lausanne, Versace
exercised his interest in the graphic
clarity of Russian art and regional dress
along with his capacity to create a
costume that had to move on dancers as
they move strenuously on the stage. For
Versace, opera costumes could be static
and statuesque, but those for the dance
could be more directly of service to
modern life and its movement.
172 173
Evening slip gown, fall-winter 1996-97
Fuchsia cotton lace studded with
rhinestones
Versace understood fashion as spectacle,

allowing for "entrance dresses" that
would have knocked Edith Wharton and
all cultures of confidence. Versace's
eclectic historical range was always
expressed with the assurance of someone
who made fuchsia a great declaration
and who combined the boldness of color
with the clinging silhouette and low
neckline of the woman who wants to
shock. In another time, such a woman
might have stood for a John Singer
Sargent portrait; she might have been
Mrs. Rita Lydig, for example. Style
history has always depended upon those
women and their determined style that
was dazzling in its complete lack of
reticence. Thus, Versace created a dress
not for spectacle or theater per se, but
that is inherently the memorable "drop-
dead" dress that can bear no apology
but otherwise bares much.
174 175
Back-drape evening gown, fall-winter
1990-91
Black silk jersey
This dress, ready to surprise the viewer

coming and going, symbolizes Versace's
emancipation from any bourgeois values.
From the front, it pleases and appeases:
it is conservative social garment. From
the back, the dress is pure spectacle,
edging away from polite society. It is a
piece of theater in itself. Of course,
Versace may have been thinking about
such designers as Augustabernard and
Madeleine Vionnet, who in the 1920s
and 1930s provided deep descent in the
back, often accompanied by a high
neckline in front. But Versace clearly
added an epater Ia bourgeoisie twist via
the extreme descent at the back.
Theater dress, 1987
Cream and black silk with three-
dimensional black chiffon sleeve caps
This dress for Herodias in a La Scala

production of Wilde-Strauss's Salome is a
captivating creation for theater. Versace
thought in terms of the body-clinging
form he most admired, but he extended
the shoulders as elsewhere he extended
the hips with eighteenth-century
panniers. There, the elaboration was true
to history. Here, he did more than
Adrian or Edith Head (whom he
admired for their movie work) to make
powerful shoulders through their
extension into rectangles.
178 179
Theater dress, 1989
Cream and black silk with black satin,
velvet, and net appliques
The doll of a poignant Maurice Bejart

dance suggests Versace's ability to create
for dance and for the synthesis that a
memorializing doll might represent. This
boldly patterned theater dress makes
credible fashion and creates the
opportunity for a symbol as well.
180 181
Theater dress, 1989
White silk satin appliqued with black
silk satin, net, crepe, and braid
This behemoth eighteenth-century dress

for Clairon in the San Francisco Opera
production of Richard Strauss's
Capriccio could sweep an entire stage,
but all of Versace's dreams of the
eighteenth century are about great
inflated dresses, triumphant music, and
male and female elegance of a kind
unequaled today. The pretext was
Strauss, but the vision is pure Versace.
Theater ensemble, 1987
Hand-painted and appliqm!d silk
The features of regional dress, with its

hand-painting and sense of layering and
pastiche, are not, after all, far removed
from Versace's own characteristics of
emphatic, rich dressing. This ensemble
conveys a grandiose effect without class
pretension, projecting the full joie de
vivre of common folk and natural
exuberance. Appreciating such virtues,
Versace made a dress of extravagant,
but not necessarily costly, effects.
184 185
Panniered theater dress, 1991
Quilted blue silk satin with black-and-
white satin appliques
In this costume for a production of

Strauss's Capriccio at the Royal Opera
House in London, the fullness of an
eighteenth-century dress with petticoats
and panniers explodes into full lateral
expansion in a contemporary caricature
of the wide, extravagant dimensions.
Insinuations of modern design cover the
surface, giving the effect of abstract
pattern discernible on an eighteenth-
century silhouette.
AFTERWORD I well remember inviting Gianni Versace to see the first exhibition I
curated at The Costume Institute, "Infra-Apparel," which took place in
the spring of 1993. As we were parting at the end of the visit, I described
forthcoming shows and especially my excitement on soliciting Gianni to
write a tribute for the catalogue to our 199 3-94 exhibition "Diana
Vreeland: Immoderate Style." Wanting to be sure that Gianni and Antonio
d' Amico would come back to see other exhibitions at The Costume
Institute, I ventured that I would invite them to see subsequent shows. In
his very efficient manner, Gianni replied, "I come to every one of your
exhibitions. I see them all."
And so he did, always quietly, always enjoying extended visits in
the gallery. Fashion designers are often quick visitors to costume
exhibitions, but Gianni was not. I ran into Gianni and Antonio at the
"Madame Gres" exhibition and chatted briefly with them before
proceeding into my office. An hour later, I came out for lunch and found
Gianni and Antonio still studying the exhibition.
Fashion designers sometimes alight on their pieces and appraise
placement and quantity. Again running into Gianni by chance as he
arrived to see the "Bare Witness" exhibition, I advised him that his piece
on loan was in one of the last galleries in accord with the natural sequence
of the exhibition. But Gianni was again resolute. "I start there," he said,
gesturing toward the first gallery and striding in that direction.
I wish I could believe that I will turn a corner in the course of this
or another exhibition and see Gianni making a beeline toward a Gres or a
Vionnet. But somehow I have come to know that he comes to all The
Costume Institute exhibitions; as promised, he sees them all.
Richard Martin
BIBLIOGRAPHY Versace, Gianni, et al. A Sense of the Future: Gianni Versace at the
Victoria and Albert Museum. London: Victoria and Albert Museum,
1985.
Versace, Gianni. Gianni Versace: Dialogues de mode. Des photographes

autour d'une creation. Paris: Musees de la Ville de Paris; Palais Galliera,
Musee de la Mode et du Costume, 1986.
Versace, Gianni, and Mario Pasi. Versace Teatro dalla Scala

all'Hermitage. Milan: Franco Maria Ricci, 1987.
Bocca, Nicoletta, and Chiara Buss. Gianni Versace: L'abito per pensare.
Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editori Arte, 1989.
Versace, Gianni, Nicoletta Bocca, Chiara Buss, and Omar Calabrese.

Gianni Versace Fashion for Thought. Kobe: The Historic Museum of
Kobe, 1991.
Versace, Gianni, and Antonio d' Amico. Versace Teatro. London: Royal
College of Art Henry Moore Gallery, 1991.
Versace, Gianni, and Omar Calabrese. Versace Signatures. New York:

Abbeville Press, 1993.
Versace, Gianni and Donatella. South Beach Stories. Milan: Leonardo

Arte, 1993.
Versace, Gianni, and Isabella Bossi Fedrigotti. Vanitas: Designs. New

York: Abbeville Press, 1994.
Versact;, Gianni, Barry Hannah, Richard Martin, and Bob Wilson. Men
Without Ties. New York: Abbeville Press, 1995.
Versace, Gianni, and Roy Strong. Do Not Disturb. New York: Abbeville
Press, 1996.
Martin, Richard. Versace. New York: UniverseNendome, 1997.
Versace, Gianni, et. al. Rock and Royalty. New York: Abbeville Press,
1997.
Mazza, Samuele, and Mariuccia Casadio. Versace: Il profeta del Glamour.

Milan: Leonardo Arte, 1997.
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GIANNI VERSACE

PHOTOGRAPHS BY KARIN L. WILLIS

THE METROPOLITAN MusEUM OF ART, NEw YoRK

The exhibition is made possible by CONDE NAST

Additional support has been provided by

Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art,

John P. O'Neill, Editor in Chief

Copyright © The Metropolitan Museum of Art,

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The photography in this volume is by Karin L.

All the costumes in this volume are in the collection

Color separations by Professional Graphics,

Cover: Detail of page 18

Frontispiece: Detail of page 44

62 HISTORY (CLASSICISM/BYZANTIUM/THE EIGHTEENTH

I40 WoRD AND IMAGE

I68 THE DREAM

I9I SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Crimped jersey sets in the wrinkles that

Versace confronted two histories, one

Although best known for his evening

Perhaps forever to be known as the

With a nod to the Balenciaga baby doll

Big shoulders, which Versace

The way this dress clings across the

The attent'uated effect of lingerie is

Amidst the flurry of 1990s fashion

For Versace, a linen dress is as simple as

If Byzantine icons were fair game for

black synthetic mesh

The artists Robert and Sonia Delaunay,

The fragile, suspended world of an

Metal mesh served Versace as the

In one of his most blatant examples,

As hard and cold as metal might be,

The one-shoulder-draped and

The mosaic tesserae are the common

The heavy metal dresses of the season,

In the Atelier Versace collection inspired

Versace solicits interpretation. This

Versace's romanticism and synaesthesia

Modern dress in silhouette, the bustier

This evening outfit steps out of the

A sheer bodice tops a leg-revealing skirt

The eighteenth century is a souvenir of

A vivacious print and the girlishness of a

Indebted to Madame Gres, but rendered

The historical source here is clearly

The ease and innate modernity of teens

The tuniclike layering of 1920s style is

Diaphanous effects encase the body in

This chiffon tube epitomizes the new

Sweetly redolent of Mycenaean

This dress for a contemporary diva could

The early years of the twentieth century

Risking reference to the 1960s but bold

Versace assembled a conclusive catalogue

Versace's leathers have not the planes of

As they do in his plastic dresses,