"Donatella Versace cried at rehearsals the
night before her tribute show to her brother Gianni, she said. “So
today, I won’t.” By now, what happened has been documented thousand-fold
on social media: the curtain draw, the fabulous five lined up in their
gold dresses to their personal anthem, George Michael's Freedom: Carla
Bruni, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford and Helena
Christensen. The supermodels didn’t hesitate to accept Donatella’s
invitation to celebrate the life and work of Gianni Versace, she said,
in a show that marked the twentieth anniversary of his tragic death. “I
finally found the courage to really go to the archives and pay tribute
to Gianni,” Donatella explained in a small gathering before the show,
noting that “it took a bit of pain” to get to a place where she was
comfortable dealing with his legacy. “In one show you can’t really touch
on everything Gianni did.” But she did her utmost, in twelve segments
presented by current top models clad in outfits covered in her brother’s
original prints. “Gianni was joy, he was happiness, full of life; and
these prints were a big part of his personality,” Donatella said.
The prints drew on collections from 1991
to 1995, but it was the monumental spirit of the really early 1990s that
filled the air of this tribute show: a time of unchartered territories,
when Gianni was pulling up the roots of bourgeois “good taste” and
shifting the paradigms with what Donatella called “take-it-or-leave-it,
jaw-dropping, in-your-face sassiness.” It was a time when supermodels
were forged, when mannequins became more than just that, and influential
people from the arts and beyond came together - Gianni, Elton John,
George Michael, Madonna, Princess Diana. It’s 26 years since the show
that came to rule them all, autumn/winter 1991’s baroque collection,
which saw Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington and Linda
Evangelista walk arm-in-arm down Versace’s runway for the finale, and
where the designer premiered his swirly, golden baroque print. On Friday
evening in her optical white space at the Triennale, Donatella opened
her tribute show with that print, passing the baton to a new generation
of girls she said are finally reflecting some of the character of the
supes."(vogue.co.uk)
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