ELLE.COM/UK April 2020
Shortly before I interview Donatella
Versace, I ask my colourist to bump up
my already-straining-credulity blonde by
a shade. That’s the effect Versace has
on you before you even meet her. Some
people make you stand up straighter
in their presence; she has a way of
drawing out your inner Italian bombshell.
In a world taken over by penitent Marie
Kondo-style bloodletting of our gladdest
glad rags, she is a beacon of maximalism,
an old-school practitioner of Fashion with
a capital F, a full-throated defender of
glamour. And isn’t that refreshing? Today,
when so much high fashion looks like what
you’d wear at a particularly progressive
convent, when we’re apparently expected to don outfits that resemble scaffolding on
a Brutalist building, don’t you want to be a little sexier? Flashier? Versace-er?
JLo definitely does. For the house’s spring/summer 2O2O show, she rewore her
2OOO Grammys look – a jungle-print dress that didn’t so much break the internet as
remake it, spurring Google to create its image search function. With her bronzed, toned
body and her confident strut, JLo, if I may, made that dress her bitch. And the audience
raised thousands of iPhones in tribute. ‘There was so much energy in the room, and
you could feel the power of us creating a special moment in time,’ Lopez says. ‘The
power of women behind it, the power of fashion behind it, the power of putting beautiful
things out into the world and celebrating beautiful moments in life – that’s what it was.’
Or in Versace’s own summary of that moment: ‘I’m here. Look at me: I’m not afraid,
I’m not 2O years old, but I’m much better.’ That’s the kind of empowerment1O7WITH
TOUCH
the Mid as
The woman
F E W D E S I G NE R S C A N L AY C L A I M TO H AV I N G B R O K E N
THE INTERNET, REIMAGINED THE LBD AND KEPT
THEIR BRAND AT THE FOREFRONT OF MODERN CULTURE FOR
DECADES. HOW DOES DONATELL A VERSACE DO IT?PHOTOGRAPHS by PIER NICOLA BRUNOWORDS by VÉRONIQUE HYLAND