1999
2017
192192 marieclaire.com.au
S
he wasn’t there when it
happened. No-one except
the murderer was present
to see Donatella Versace’s
beloved brother Gianni
being gunned down out-
side his Miami home.
The morning of July 15, 1997 was
cruelly beautiful as 50-year-old Gianni
took his customary walk along South
Beach. He liked to get out early while
many residents of this party town slept.
These walks gave Gianni space to think,
but he always had time for a few words
with a familiar face. He would chat to
folks in the café, smile at people he’d
pass in the street. Today, however, the
kerbside was empty as he made his way
back home. Or was it? There was some-
one behind him, calling out. As Gianni
turned, 27-year-old serial killer Andrew
Cunanan fired two shots into his head.
“I first heard news of Gianni’s death
while I was in Rome preparing a show
for Versus [Versace’s younger difusion
line],” Donatella later told Britain’s The
Te l e g r a p h. “The day before, Gianni had
left for Miami. He was supposed to stay
for the show, but I told him, ‘I will man-
age.’ Anyway, the next morning at eight
o’clock, Gianni was on the phone again,
saying that he was thinking of coming
back. I said, ‘Leave me alone, I need to
do a show!’ And then the next call was
from the hospital, saying that my broth-
er was in an accident. And then they
called to tell me the time he had died.”
Cunanan was deranged and at the
end of a three-month murderous spree
that saw at least four other men die by
his hand. (After shooting Gianni, he
turned the gun on himself.)To lose a loved one is to play a hor-
rendous game of “what if ”? What if
Donatella had encouraged her brother
to return to Rome? What if he had been
at the Versace HQ in Milan? How could
she ever forgive herself, let alone contin-
ue to care about the family business? “I
thought fashion would not exist without
my brother,” she told Time magazine in- “But then I thought, ‘Gianni
wouldn’t like this. Gianni would want
me ... to fight for the Versace brand to
survive, to be better and better.’”
At the time of his death, the compa-
ny was valued at $500 million USD. It
was now in the hands of 42-year-old
Donatella and her older brother Santo
(they inherited 20 per cent and 30 per
cent, respectively). Donatella’s then-11-
year-old daughter, Allegra, who learnt
of her uncle’s death on TV, was handed
the controlling 50 per cent, to be settled
on her 18th birthday.
Donatella was grief-stricken and
increasingly reliant on cocaine, but she
believed no-one else could design the
collections. She “had to show strength”,
as she recalled later in a video interview
with The New York Times. “I couldn’t
show my pain to anybody.”
Donatella was born on May 2, 1955,
in the southern Italian town of Reggio
di Calabria, to Frances-
ca (known as Franca)
and Antonio Versace.
The couple already had
two boys, Gianni and
Santo. Gianni was eight when baby Do-
natella arrived, and Santo, 10. Donatella
was their princess, with a wardrobe full
of beautiful clothes sewn by Franca, a
locally renowned dressmaker.
All the kids grew up understanding
the business of cutting, sewing and sell-
ing clothes, but it was Gianni who was
most drawn to it. He made his first
dress, with Franca’s help, aged nine. On
leaving school he went to work full time
in her atelier. As Gianni put it, “Design-
ing came to me. I didn’t have to move.”
Gianni was creative; Santo the
sensible one; Donatella was wild, gre-
garious, social and at her happiest in the
centre of a crowd. Teenage Donatella
loved to party. Gianni would drive her to
Reggio’s only nightclub, where she
would lie about her age and dance the
night away. She and Gianni were close,
laughing and telling jokes.
For a while it seemed Donatella
might calm down. She won a place at
university in Florence, studying litera-
ture, which she recalls as one of the
happiest times of her life. But she missed
her brother. Gianni had moved to Milan
in late 1972, working his way up in the
burgeoning new Italian sportswear
scene as a designer for hire for brands
including Callaghan and Genny.Clockwise from top left:
Gianni and Donatella
(in New York in 1996)
were close; the house
championed the original
supermodels; and still
does so today.