“He who stops is lost. Everything that is taboo, in my work, must be dismantled. I intend to possess fashion, to skin it alive, to pull out its soul.

He was visceral, passionate, carnal, disruptive, a river constantly in flood.
Gianni Versace, who would have been 75 years old today, was a man from the south of Italy with all the chrisms and character traits that this brings with it and that he poured into his unforgettable creations. 

Always true to himself, he never conformed to the canons that dominated fashion at the end of the 20th century, characterized by an extreme, almost severe, minimalism. The Calabrian designer has impetuously redefined the aesthetic imagery of the time.
Flamboyant and colorful, sensual and extreme looks inspired by the world of bondage, a baroque and Dionysian touch mixed with a boundless approach led him to become – together with Valentino and Giorgio Armani – the emblem of Made in Italy all over the world.

“Reggio Calabria is the kingdom where the fairy tale of my life began: my mother’s tailor shop, the High Fashion boutique. The place where, as a child, I began to appreciate the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, where I began to breathe the art of Magna Graecia.

That fairytale that Gianni talked about in an interview in 1992 began on December 2, 1946 in the capital of Calabria. Already as a young boy he began his intrinsic and indissoluble relationship with fashion, the one made of needle and thread to be clear. His mother Franca was a professional tailor and owned one of the best Italian tailor’s shops at No. 13, Via Tommaso Gulli, near the Cathedral of Reggio. He worked there for a while ‘then, after attending the classical high school without ever finishing the cycle of studies, in 1972 he moved to Milan to work as a designer. In 1975 he created his first ever collection for Complice, made up of leather garments, and on March 28, 1978 Gianni signed his first collection that bore his name after founding the maison together with his brother Santo and Claudio Luti. 

This first collection – presented at the Palazzo della Permanente in Milan – already outlined Gianni’s taste and courage: prints, drapery, and metallic elements were the characteristics that broke the mold of the time and projected Gianni and his fledgling fashion house into the elite of Italian fashion and beyond. 

“When people look at Versace they must feel terrified, petrified, just like when you look into the eyes of the Medusa”.

Passionate about art history and Greek mythology, Gianni chooses one of the Gorgons, Medusa, as the logo of the maison.
Sister of Steno and Euriale, Medusa is the gòrgone par excellence, the only mortal and their queen, she was also the guardian of the underworld at the behest of Persephone.
Splendid in appearance, instead of hair had a hair made of snakes and anyone who crossed their gaze was petrified forever. 

Absolute innovator in design, techniques and research of fabrics that, if they did not exist, he created them. An example is the collection of 1982 when Gianni chose the oroton, a very light and soft metallic mesh thanks to which he created real masterpieces.

The baroque and colorful prints on silk shirts of the late ’80s, the black and bondage that have characterized the ’90s as well as the metallic elements, a distinctive feature of the Calabrian designer, represent the last legacies of Gianni before his untimely and dramatic death.

On July 15, 1997, in broad daylight on the front steps of his Miami villa, Gianni Versace was assassinated by Andrew Cunanan with two gunshots that ended the life of a timeless and decisive icon in the history of fashion of all time.
What still lives on, however, is his genius and legacy thanks to his designs and legendary creations, as well as the work of his sister Donatella who took over the reins of the fashion house after his murder. 

The symbols, the colors, the top models, the sensual and strong eroticism, the call to his mother earth and his soul impossible to enclose in a definition and that exploded with joy and creativity are the legacy, this certainly immortal, of the legend Gianni Versace. 

“I’m not a fashion designer: I’m a tailor. It’s my job. I can cut and sew clothes. Not everyone can do that”.