by Deborah Ball
For the first half of the 1980s, the UK tabloids pilloried her often for her fashion faux pas: a white, majorette-style suit with gold frogging down the front, chunky velvet Laura Ashley—style dresses, buckled shoes, and too many ruffled shirts. The obligation of the future queen to dress largely in British designs kept her on a short leash. Gradually, she found her style by scrutinizing her press clippings and learning that what looked good in the mirror might not translate well to photos. She turned more and more to Anna Harvey for advice and contacts with designers. Harvey helped her find clothes that suited both her youth and stature. She pared things down, choosing sleeker, simpler outfits that were cut closer to her body, in strong colors that were visible to the crowds. (She never wore Giorgio Armani’s designs publicly because she felt his muted colors didn’t stand out enough.) By her late twenties, she’d made the awkward, painful transformation from a passive young girl to a dynamic and worldly, if troubled, woman.
Diana was a perfect mannequin, with her slender five-foot-ten frame, a slim neck, and broad shoulders. She wore an Italian size forty or forty-two—a size six or eight in the United States—and had the peachy skin and luminous blue eyes of a classic English rose. Designers assiduously courted her, knowing a jackpot lay in dressing the world’s most photographed woman. When Diana was photographed carrying a chic Christian Dior handbag, the company soon sold one hundred thousand units, the surge in sales sending the company’s revenues up 20 percent that year.
But Diana refused to take free or unsolicited clothes (although she did accept deep discounts of up to 90 percent). If a designer sent clothes to Kensington Palace without being asked, she had a dresser return them with a chilly thank-you note. Designers who dressed her were forbidden to publicize their association with her. To prevent leaks, she tended to choose outfits at the last minute, her selections depending on the weather, her mood, and whether she wanted to make a particular statement with her appearance. Her PR people were then careful to get a mention of the designer into the press.
The year after she donned Gianni’s powder blue dress was the year in which she separated from Charles. Her separation gave her much more freedom to modernize her image and turn to designers such as Versace. Single, restless, and largely liberated of her royal duties, she felt free to flaunt her sexy side. Shorn of her royal title, Diana could wear French and Italian designers freely now, and Harvey contacted the houses for samples that might work. Diana began to wear higher heels and sleeveless dresses that showed off her gym-trim legs and arms, and she stopped wearing hats. She got Sam McKnight to cut her hair into a shorter, sleeker bob that looked casual but chic. Her post-Charles wardrobe was so glamorous and sensual that the UK press dubbed it her “revenge couture.” On the evening in which Prince Charles admitted to his affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles on national television, she stole his thunder by wearing a form-fitting black cocktail dress cut above the knee, her nails painted poppy red. “The Thrilla He Left to Woo Camilla,” read the headline in the Sun the next day.
Just around the time of Diana’s separation, Gianni inaugurated an opulent new store on Bond Street, London’s tony shopping thoroughfare. He spent more than $6 million to transform a former bank branch into a four-floor emporium. Composed of ten different types of marble shipped from Italy, each floor had a different theme—yellow stone for the ground floor, dusty pinks and apricots on the next, and deep green and turquoise for the VIP level. Brocatelle marble lined the staircase, and medusas were etched in frosted glass. At a time when spartan, Japanese-style interiors were ascendant in London fashion boutiques, the new Versace store was an extravagance.
On the opening night in May 1992, nearly a thousand guests gawked at the store, fingering pairs of mules covered with gilt seashells that cost 650 pounds ($1,000), and men’s studded leather trousers, priced at 1,800 pounds ($2,700). Elton John, Joan Collins, Kylie Minogue, and Ivana Trump mixed with artists, London socialites, and magazine editors. The party was the talk of London. Gianni had invited Diana to the party, but she declined. “It will be trashy,” a friend told her.16 Instead, she agreed to a private tour.
The manager closed the store during lunch and Diana browsed, murmuring polite praise for the embroidered cashmere cardigan sweaters and tailored day suits. But she didn’t buy anything. The next day, a delivery truck arrived at Kensington Palace, bearing boxes and boxes of Versace clothes. Gianni had sent her nearly the entire collection. Annoyed, she sent it all back to the shop. Gianni quickly wrote Diana a note of apology and sent her an all-white collection of soaps and candles scented of lily of the valley, her favorite flower. Diana accepted the token.
At the same time, Elton John was becoming closer with Diana, hoping to corral her patronage for his AIDS foundation. Diana had been friends with the singer since 1981, when he had played a private party for the twenty-first birthday of Charles’s brother, Prince Andrew. Over the years, the two spoke privately about their struggles with bulimia, and Diana respected Elton’s energetic charity work. By the 1990s, Diana was becoming more open to friendships with highprofile gay men, an association she’d avoided during her marriage. They offered her the prospect of fun and wicked conversation. Elton started inviting her to his spread in Windsor, where she got to know Gianni better.
“Diana used to keep celebrities at arm’s length, but that changed later on,” a close associate recalls. “She liked to commiserate on the terrible price that fame bought them.”
Over the next several years, Gianni gradually became one of her favorite designers, although she often made him remove the gaudy medusas and overwrought details he piled on his clothes. He gave her first pick of his couture collection and designed pieces exclusively for her that were classic but had a pinch of glamour. His bright, clear colors and impeccable fit helped her shrug off the last vestiges of British dowdiness, giving her the sleek, international look she was known for at the end of her life. (The night she died in a car crash in Paris, in 1997, she was wearing black Versace satin sling-back shoes.)
“Diana needed fresh air,” said Roberto Devorik, the owner of the London Versace franchise and a friend of Diana’s. “She needed a way to show them, I’m here. She did it with Chanel, she did it with Lacroix. But in the sexy way, she had to do it with Versace.”17 For Gianni, Diana was a wholesale vindication of charges that his designs were vulgar—that they were aimed only at arrivistes who frequented nightclubs in Miami or Arab princesses looking for ostentatious displays of their wealth.
In one outfit that emulated Diana’s idol, Jackie Kennedy, Gianni designed a formfitting bubble-gum-pink suit, with a pencil skirt, a short double-breasted jacket with a round collar, and a pillbox hat. He also made her a series of slim, knee-length pastel-colored sheaths that fit her like a glove and became a sort of uniform. His evening wear was done in simple silhouettes that let her express a sexual charge at a time when she was having affairs with various men. Gianni did as many of her fittings as he could himself, but soon charged Franca Biagini, the head of the atelier, with handling the princess. (Gianni, sensing that Diana didn’t care for Donatella, never sent his sister.) As she did with all top couture clients, Biagini had a mannequin made, with a wooden core and a fabric outer layer molded in Diana’s size. If a client gained or lost weight, she adjusted the fabric layer.
Diana and Biagini quickly developed a rapport. The first time Biagini arrived at Kensington Palace, she found Diana waiting for her at the top of the stairs, holding a bouquet of flowers. They spent hours together in Diana’s private living room, a small salon that held her old ballet shoes and photos of her sons. Diana loved going through the clothes and being fitted. Afterward, she would help the seamstress gather everything up and carry it down to the car. Every year, she sent Biagini a Christmas card with a personal note.18
With Elton playing matchmaker, Gianni and Diana developed the sort of obsequious friendship typical in the fashion world. Gianni reveled in his relationship with the princess. He was also quick to spot a golden PR
opportunity. Years later, he told a journalist that he spoke with the princess every week. When she sent him a Christmas card, he had it framed and placed it conspicuously in his New York townhouse. But while Diana was genuinely fond of Elton, her relationship with Gianni was never as tight as he liked to claim.
“Diana and Gianni weren’t really friends,” said one person who was close to Diana. “They never had a one-on-one relationship. She was wary of him. With Gianni it was business. She needed a bit of glamour.”
With his couture collection leading the headlines in the fashion press every six months and Diana stepping out more frequently in his clothes, Gianni took the competition for famous names to the next level. The stars were soon bewitched by Gianni’s clothes, which stood out on the red carpet and photographed brilliantly. Everyone was happy: Versace showstoppers got actresses the attention they craved, and the press got strong, sexy images. It added up to priceless and profitable publicity for Gianni.
The care and feeding of celebrities fell to Donatella. When she wanted to recruit a star into the Versace camp, she began by sending her oodles of freebies, including couture dresses costing tens of thousands of dollars each. Assistants kept a file with measurements of all the house’s major celebrities.
“Donatella came on after Armani, but then they became really huge pushers of the clothes,” recalled Wayne Scot Lukas, a stylist who worked with many Hollywood stars. “It was, ‘Darling, take the clothes.’ The hugeness of Versace was this whole giving, giving, giving away of clothes. Versace gave them to celebrities, to their assistants. They bought the Versace business in America by throwing clothes at celebrities.”19
Once Donatella had won over a star, she lavished perks and privileges upon her that lured her into the Versace lair. She flew her over to shows in either first class or in private jets and put her up in suites at the Four Seasons. The most coveted stars were given the run of the boutique on Via Montenapoleone. (If Gianni didn’t like a star whom Donatella was courting, he would explode when he saw the bill from the shop.) She invited her to stay for a few days at the villa in Como, where even the most jaded celebrities were dazzled by the Versaces’ opulent mode of living.
The first time Madonna came to Milan for a Versace event, Donatella went to the airport to meet her and shuttled her to Villa Fontanelle. Madonna, wanting a more sophisticated look following a no-holds-bared period highlighted by her Sex book, had agreed to appear in ads for Versace. Donatella had the villa filled with Madonna’s favorite flowers—white gardenias and tuberoses—floating in large vases filled with water. When Madonna walked in, she was bowled over. “Look at this place!” she exclaimed as she gaped at the opulent house. “Even I wouldn’t have the balls to do something like this.” For the next few days, Donatella’s hunky bodyguards took Madonna’s dog Chiquita for long walks, while white-gloved servants waited on the star.
When, a few years later, Victoria Beckham was rehearsing in the south of France for the Spice Girls’ first show, she took a break and headed to Milan for a Versace fashion show. “For six weeks, we had no social life at all—so suddenly finding myself in the front row of one of the most prestigious catwalk shows in the world felt magical,” she wrote. “Donatella invited me to stay the night at Lake Como. [She] waved her wand in the direction of the Versace shop. I can still remember the thrill of being let loose and told I could choose whatever I wanted.”20
Far more than Gianni, Donatella showed a knack for dealing with the high-strung stars: He found the celebrities tedious at times and was privately relieved to leave the care of celebrities to his kid sister. Unlike Gianni, Donatella delighted in the buzz and drama they brought. In turn, her high-camp image and plain-talking candor charmed the celebrities. Over time, she perfected her glamour-puss act, sucking voluptuously on one Marlboro Red after another and tossing off gossipy witticisms in her gravelly voice.
Donatella, now emerging as a celebrity herself, soon was appearing at the hottest parties in New York, Miami, and Los Angeles, where she befriended A-listers. She and Paul vacationed with Demi Moore and Bruce Willis in Turks and Caicos, together with their respective broods. Sting and Trudie Styler were frequent guests in Como, as were Sylvester Stallone, Prince, and Eric Clapton.
In the early 1990s, before the celebrity-fashion connection had morphed into a big business involving celebrity wranglers, publicists, and stylists, designers connected directly with stars. At Versace, Donatella’s personal friendships with celebrities extended to offering them clothes for red-carpet events. She and Gianni typically chose a dress they thought would suit a particular “friend of the house” for a big event, and Donatella flew her assistant out to L.A. or New York to fit it. She would later claim her attentiveness was about camaraderie, not commerce.
“I never tried to become friends with these people because I wanted to dress them,” Donatella would declare. “We were just friends. If they dressed in Versace as well, all the better. But it was different. We often had children the same age. We vacationed together.”21
Donatella and Gianni’s timing was perfect. In 1994, Time, Inc., launched InStyle, a sort of hybrid of People and Vogue. It featured celebrities at red-carpet events, in particular the Oscars, as well as out on the town or on vacation. The focus was always on what they were wearing. Meanwhile Joan Rivers had a hit new gig where she joshed with stars about their wardrobe choices at red-carpet appearances. The Italians were the quickest to seize on the change. The French couturiers had traditionally turned up their noses at dressing celebrities, preferring American socialites and European aristocrats, while the Americans were slow off the mark in courting Hollywood. So, as the surging appetite for celebrity news spilled over into curiosity about the clothes they were wearing, Armani and Versace became household names.
Indeed, Gianni’s over-the-top courting of stars added a juicy new dimension to his rivalry with Armani. Armani’s approach to celebrities was far more businesslike than Gianni’s; he virtually never invited them to vacation with him and didn’t lavish them with as much swag. His postshow parties were far more restrained.
“You were there, and you just knew that the Versace people were over there having fun,” recalled one Armani associate. “We were having this terribly sophisticated party, but they were over there getting laid.” In 1992, when Eric Clapton defected to Armani after years as a Versace client—the house had even made an embroidered strap for his guitar—Gianni, who felt stung by the defection, told journalists that the rock star now looked “like an accountant.”22 Each camp was terrified that the other would steal their prized stars. Once, when Armani had Mickey Rourke over for a show, he warned his PR team to stick close to him.
“Someone had to stay with Mickey twenty-four hours a day to make sure that none of the Versace people approached him,” recalls an associate. “We had to go clubbing with him until three a.m. to make sure no one got close.”
Over the next few years, the Versaces played the celebrity game to the hilt. Gianni began featuring the stars in his ads, creating wildly arresting images shot by prominent photographers such as Mario Testino and Richard Avedon: Prince in a metal mesh tank top with “SLAVE” scrawled on his face, a ripped Sylvester Stallone nude except for a strategically positioned Versace dinner plate. The Versace press office juiced the interest by giving the photos free to newspapers and magazines, who often used them on their covers.
Gianni’s shows became celebrity central. He not only plunked the stars in his front row but got them to help with the sound track. Prince recorded a song called “The Versace Experience.” Versace assistants left limited-edition copies of the cassettes on the seats for the audience. Guided by Donatella, Gianni embraced celebrities such as Courtney Love and Tupac Shakur at the height of controversy. He threw lavish parties for them at his house in Como and vacationed with them. Sting and his family spent weeks at the villa. Gianni’s publicists coyly spilled out titillating details of the Versaces’ friendships with the stars, and the media happily lappe
d them up. Yet, while the celebrity machine served up a relentless banquet of publicity, it came at a high cost: By the mid-1990s, Versace’s promotional budget—much of it the gifts and first-class treatment for VIPs—topped $70 million. Gianni and Donatella had turned the business of dressing celebrities into an immensely costly, high-stakes new game.
nine
Supermodels, Superstar
oN A CHILLY EVENING IN MILAN IN MARCH 1991, THE AUDIENCE settled into their seats under a heated tent erected in the garden behind Gianni’s palazzo at Via Gesù. Right on time, the house lights went down and the strains of an operatic aria floated out. Soft spotlights fell on four women—Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, and a platinum-haired Linda Evangelista—each clad in a black minidress and thigh-high patent leather boots. As the aria morphed into Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll,” the models, their hair teased into voluptuous styles, strutted down the white marble runway.
For nearly thirty minutes, one stunning model after another—Helena Christensen, Carla Bruni, Stephanie Seymour, Tatjana Patitz, Dalma Callado—emerged, reveling in Gianni’s latest hairpin-curve collection: Crayola-colored minidresses that flared at forty-five-degree angles from their waists, low-cut catsuits with yellow and blue swirls on their smooth flanks, and bejeweled bra tops combined with short skirts. Bluish lights made the models’ young skin glow against the Technicolor clothes. The photographers crouching along the length of the runway let out approving wolf whistles as Gianni sent out five or six models at a time.
