by Deborah Ball
As her drug habit deepened, Donatella became less predictable in the atelier, routinely turning up to work at noon. She kept associates waiting for hours, and her schedule ran late into the evening. Gianni demanded that his staff give him their all, and his sister’s wayward habits drove him to distraction. “Gianni used to call her in the morning, and you could hear that she was still in this haze, with this croaky voice,” Antonio said. “She wouldn’t get to work until late, and when she did, she was in pieces.”19
eleven
Spoiled by Success
oNE BALMY EVENING IN FALL 1993, WITH DONATELLA AND A host of celebrity friends at his side, Gianni threw open the doors to Casa Casuarina, the extravagant home in the heart of Miami’s South Beach neighborhood that would lift him—and his brand—to new heights of fame. An invitation to his housewarming was the hot ticket of a Miami Beach social season that peaked on New Year’s Eve and rollicked on until Easter. Champagne glasses in hand, guests streamed through the mansion and its luxurious garden, marveling at the frescoed walls, the antique furniture Gianni had re-upholstered in Versace fabrics, the elaborate marble bathrooms, and most of all, the spectacular pool, tiled with thousands of tiny mosaics and illuminated with underwater lights.
By the time Gianni threw the party, the buzz around his new home was huge. “When Gianni came, it became such a media event,” said Bruce Orosz, owner of a leading photography production company. “It went well beyond someone just renovating a house. The stories started to circulate about what he was spending, and it created this mystique around him and that house.”1
Gianni had discovered the house that would become a symbol of his heady rise in the 1990s two years earlier. Just before Christmas 1991, he flew to Miami to attend the opening of a new boutique. During his last trip there five years before, he had found Miami cold and impersonal. But this time he was bewitched by the edgy frisson of the newly reinvigorated section of Miami Beach known as South Beach, with its population of drag queens, muscle boys, artists, and celebrities and its energetic embrace of sexual freedom and physical beauty. “Everything has changed so much here,” Gianni told a journalist at the party for the shop opening. “At this moment, Miami to me is heaven. I want to stay forever.”2
Over the next few years, South Beach became a slice of paradise for Gianni—as well as a pure distillation of the Versace world: decadent, guilt-free, and not a little bit vulgar. In the 1930s, developers had erected hundreds of low-rise Art Deco buildings in the area to provide cheap accommodations for northern snowbirds. Wedding cake details such as flowers and curlicues looked like sugar confections in the keystone used for the buildings’ façades. After World War II, however, South Beach began a long, slow decline. By the 1970s, the neighborhood had become a decrepit place full of retirees, criminal flotsam, and poor Cuban refugees. At the same time, Miami’s position as a byway in the decade’s booming cocaine trade sent street crime in South Beach soaring.3 Many of the Art Deco buildings became roach-infested crack houses, smelly retirement homes, or simply abandoned shells. But at the end of the decade, musicians, painters, and performance artists seeking cheap studio space had discovered Miami Beach. They began fixing up some of the buildings, opening a handful of funky restaurants, nightclubs, and boutiques amid the dollar stores and bodegas. The result was spectacular. The Art Deco buildings, originally painted in bland off-white or dirty beige, were repainted in a rainbow of Necco Wafer colors, such as lemon yellow and bubblegum pink, shades that pulsated under the tropical sun. Design magazines began producing spreads on the revival of the Art Deco district in South Beach.
The beach’s bohemian atmosphere and sleek tropical design drew the so-called guppies, or gay yuppies, from New York. They brought along their friends from the fashion world, who discovered an ideal new backdrop for their ad campaigns. In 1985, fashion photographer Bruce Weber shot a Calvin Klein Obsession underwear ad on the roof of the Breakwater Hotel in South Beach. Photographers such as Annie Leibovitz and Patrick Demarchelier followed, and by the time Gianni arrived for Christmas 1991, South Beach was one lavish photo shoot. Models followed next. Within a few years, there were about twenty modeling agencies in the area, and Ocean Drive, the boardwalk that ran along the sea, became a real-life runway, with models in spandex hot pants and string-bikini tops inline skating to their next go-see with their portfolios tucked under their arms.
“There were so many gorgeous people here,” remembered Merle Weiss, owner of a boutique that sold clothes to drag queens. “You went to Publix [supermarket] and you could just tear your heart out.”4 Designers such as Calvin Klein and Marc Jacobs began vacationing in South Beach, and on their heels came celebrities such as John F. Kennedy, Jr., Daryl Hannah, Jon Bon Jovi, Prince, and Elton John.
Gianni’s clothes became the unofficial uniform in South Beach clubs, and his store there boomed. Pretty Latin girls went to the Versace shop, where a sound track of thumping dance music was always playing, to buy slinky metal-mesh cocktail dresses and head straight to the clubs. Hunky gay men wore his garish silk print shirts unbuttoned to the navel.
On that Christmas trip, Gianni came across Casa Casuarina, a 13,500-square-foot mansion that sat directly on Ocean Drive, at the corner of Eleventh Street. Casa Casuarina was originally built in 1930 by Alden Freeman, an eccentric philanthropist, as an homage to the Alcázar de Colón, a mansion built in 1510 in Santo Domingo that was home to Christopher Columbus’s son Diego. (Freeman named the house after the casuarina tree, an Australian breed that was standing on the site when Freeman began building.) Diego had been viceroy of the Indies, and his wife was related to the Spanish monarchs, so the original Alcázar de Colón had Moorish, Spanish, and Byzantine influences. Freeman transposed many of those themes to Casa Casuarina, making for a gaudy confection of a residence.
By the time Gianni found Casa Casuarina, the building was a shadow of its former self. Previous owners had broken it up into thirty tiny apartments, and rented them out to a mix of down-and-out drug addicts, moribund old people, and edgy, penniless artists. Although developers had revived scores of Art Deco buildings, they were daunted by the cost of redoing Casa Casuarina.
“It was this mix of old Jews from New York dumped there by their kids and young artists who didn’t have much money,” Weiss recalled. “But it was very hip and funky. That’s what Gianni liked about it.”5
In 1992, Gianni spent nearly $8 million to buy both Casa Casuarina and a run-down hotel next door, which he razed to make space for a pool, guest wing, and garage. The entire compound covered half the block, and Casa Casuarina became the only private residence on Ocean Drive. It was an unusual choice for Gianni, given that his celebrity friends, such as Madonna and Sylvester Stallone, were buying homes—set far behind guarded gates—in mainland Miami on Brickell Avenue, known as Millionaire’s Row. But Gianni loved the idea of remaking the eccentric mansion. The house, with its Moorish tiles, white stucco façade, slate roof, and wrought-iron balconies, was a complete break with the house’s Art Deco neighbors. The main three-story building centers around an open-air courtyard enclosed on all four sides by balconies with wooden railings. On the roof is a large L-shaped terrace, covered in brightly colored Moroccan-style tiles. Next to the terrace is a domed observatory with a powerful telescope.
Gianni poured millions into renovating and furnishing Casa Casuarina, creating a flashy, mesmerizing style once described as “gay baroque.” He built two concentric walls to close the compound off from the street. The ironwork on the walls and balconies—even the drains—were dotted with golden medusa heads. He spent ten thousand dollars apiece to ship in a certain type of palm tree from California because the ones native to Florida didn’t have the right look.
His pool became legendary for its extravagance. He hired a Milanese craftsman, handed him one of his elaborate multicolored print scarves, and said, “Here, I want you to copy this.” Fifty craftsmen worked for a year to create images of entwined dolphins, tridents, shells, and geometric des
igns, all in a blaze of red, blue, and gold. Working in Milan, they had to break slabs of marble by hand into hundreds of thousands of tiny tiles—and because he didn’t want to wait months to receive them by boat, Gianni had them shipped by air, at an extra cost of $200,000. Between the pool area and the mosaic floors, ceilings, and walls inside the main house, they laid more than 21,500 square feet of tiles in all. The cost: $1.5 million.6 Underwater lights made the pool a shimmering oasis at night. “That pool is probably the most expensive pool ever built,” said the project manager for the house.7
Inside the mansion, Gianni was no more restrained. Carved wood panels, tiles, frescoes, and stained glass windows embellished the thirty-five rooms. In one room, a chandelier made of iron palm fronds hung from a ceiling that was, in turn, painted with trompe l’oeil palm fronds. In one bathroom, a golden seat sat on a marble toilet. Gianni’s own suite, which looked out onto the ocean, covered eight hundred square feet and featured stained glass windows, beamed ceilings, and frescos of puffy clouds against a deep blue sky. He stuffed the house with a madcap array of furnishings—six hundred items in all. He had mahogany and gilt chairs reupholstered in red, blue, or gold Versace prints, creating a riot of colors and styles. He had silk lampshades made up in purple leopard print, and he covered plush sofas in deep yellow leopard-skin patterns.
The renovations cost a fortune—by one estimate, as much as $30 million—and Gianni’s spending created tensions with Santo, who scrambled to pay the huge bills that arrived from art dealers, contractors, and craftsmen. After a heated call from Santo, Gianni railed against his brother. “I ’ate my brother!” Gianni screamed to the project manager. “I ’ate him! But you know what, darling? I’ll show him.” He then called his antiques dealers and bought something else.8 The Miami house was Gianni’s biggest splurge, and the tension it created between the brothers would persist for years to come.
From the very moment of the 1993 housewarming party, Casa Casuarina became the center of gravity on South Beach, and Gianni himself became a symbol of the area’s 1990s zeitgeist like no other celebrity. His parties, usually organized by Donatella, were the envy of the beach. She would dispatch her assistants to organize the food and entertainment. “How much can we spend?” they asked her. “Whatever you want,” she replied. “There’s no budget.” Drag queens, models, photographers, and muscle boys mixed with Elton John, Cindy Crawford, Jack Nicholson, and Alec Baldwin, all gaping at the extravagance of Casa Casuarina.
One year, Donatella and Gianni threw a birthday party for Madonna. The pop star had been a Miami habitué since around 1992, when she had shot part of her book Sex in a mansion in the city, which she subsequently bought. “She hung out with the top photographers at the time, which were the same ones I was working with,” Donatella would say later. “We moved in the same circles and saw each other at parties. For a while, it was just Ciao, ciao. Then one day, she called me and said, ‘We need to talk.’”9
Madonna was in the market for a new image. Donatella courted the star assiduously, sending diamond jewelry along with free couture dresses. Then, in 1995, Madonna agreed to appear in a Versace ad campaign, shot at Donald Trump’s Mar al Lago estate in Palm Beach. For Versace, which had had more success in recruiting male stars, the ads featuring Madonna were a breakthrough, creating an association between Versace and celebrities that garnered endless press coverage. After Madonna, Donatella drafted one celebrity after another—Demi Moore, Courtney Love, Halle Berry—for her ad campaigns. (Madonna herself appeared twice more in Versace ads.) For Madonna’s birthday, Donatella chose a cake so big that it had to be lowered into the turquoise pool of Casa Casuarina, where it drifted like a giant water-borne float. Men in Versace bikinis waded in to cut slices for the guests.
In 1992, Gianni dedicated a collection to South Beach that became a hit with club-goers there. It included pastel-colored silk shirts embellished with cartoonish images of 1950s-era Cadillacs, with “South Beach” spelled out on the back. He sent the entire collection—dozens of shirts, dresses, belts, and leggings—gratis to trendsetters on the beach.
“He must have sent me one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of clothes,” remembered Lee Schrager, then owner of Torpedo, a popular gay club. “There were twenty shirts, tons of belts. There were boxes and boxes of clothes.”10
Once Gianni opened his house, he began flying to Miami Beach a half dozen times a year, usually taking the Concorde from Paris to New York and then hopping a flight down to Miami. (After Gianni’s father died in 1992, Gianni celebrated Christmas in Miami rather than Como.) While Santo came only rarely—Cristiana preferred their family to vacation separately—Donatella was a devotee of South Beach. Before Gianni bought Casa Casuarina, she traveled there frequently, staying at the Fontainebleau Resort, a huge 1950s-era luxury hotel, with Paul and the children. After Gianni finished his house, she visited even more often.
With the whole clan there, even trips across Ocean Drive to the beach were done in high style. The staff blanketed a thirty-foot-square patch of sand with colorful Versace towels. Donatella would sit on a lounge chair, smoking and tanning, clad in a chartreuse bikini and colorful little wrap skirts, a huge Louis Vuitton tote full of suntan lotion and Marlboro Reds by her side.11 (Sometimes, Donatella’s fame in South Beach was too much. One transvestite, dolled up to resemble Donatella, often stood outside Casa Casuarina’s gates. “Donatella, come out here!” she shouted. “I’m the original Donatella. You’re just a fake!”)
Gianni found his own temptation in the thriving gay scene on South Beach. He was a magnet for the buff young aspiring male models there. (He once shot a campaign at a park that was a popular cruising area for gays.) In turn, Gianni wasn’t above using his superstar status in the gay world to have some fun. At Paragon, a gay club in South Beach, Gianni once homed in on a handsome go-go dancer there, beckoning to him—but the young guy, perhaps thinking the designer was just another older man on the make, ignored him. Finally, Gianni began gesturing to himself, mouthing what one local gossip columnist called “the magical word that will open any hustler’s heart: Versace.”12
Miami Beach’s surfeit of ripe male flesh made for a thriving prostitution business, something Gianni and Antonio had indulged in from their first trips to South Beach in the early 1990s. Antonio and Gianni were largely faithful to each other, but each liked something on the side. In an interview with Miami police after Gianni’s murder, Antonio stated that Gianni met an aspiring model named Jaime Cardona, who would discreetly provide him and Antonio with willing young men. Cardona also worked at the Warsaw Ballroom nightclub, Gianni’s favorite haunt, where the entertainment was racy even by South Beach standards. There were amateur strip contests and drag queen shows, but the main attraction was Lady Hennessey Brown, whose show consisted of pulling objects, such as handkerchiefs and scarves, from her vagina. She could even make milk pour from her nipples.13
In the early days, Gianni went to the Warsaw with Antonio and a few Italian friends. Later, his entourage expanded to include the likes of Sting, Cindy Crawford, Elton John, and Ingrid Casares, a pretty Cuban who resembled Audrey Hepburn, with a short pixie haircut and dark Bambi eyes. (Casares, featured in Madonna’s Sex book French-kissing the pop star, was reputed to be Madonna’s lover for a time.)
“I remember Gianni would invite us over for tea, and it would be Elton John, Sting, Cindy Crawford, Madonna,” said Casares. “We would all walk to the News Café and sit to organize our night out. Then we’d walk to Warsaw or wherever, and nobody bothered anybody. There was no paparazzi yet.”14
At the Warsaw, Cardona got to know South Beach’s hippest crowd, and he became a fixture in the Versace galaxy. Gianni had Cardona show him and Antonio around Miami Beach, taking them to the hottest clubs. He later did some modeling for Gianni. Gradually, Cardona became Gianni’s informal social secretary, compiling the guest lists for the parties at Casa Casuarina.
“He would decide who was cool and who wasn’t,” said Louis Canales, a
longtime publicist who did work for Gianni. “He had immense power.”15
Cardona’s help soon extended to more private encounters. According to statements provided to Miami Beach police by Cardona after Gianni’s murder, Cardona sorted through the ads for male escorts and vetted the men at a bar near Casa Casuarina. He once found an escort who went by the name of Kyle and brought him to the back door of the mansion, instructing him to go straight up a private staircase that led to Gianni and Antonio’s rooms. There, the three chatted briefly, and Kyle had sex with each man. Afterward, Antonio paid him. Kyle got the impression that such encounters were more for Antonio’s benefit than for Gianni’s. Sometimes, Gianni appeared disinterested or even left the room.16
Gianni moved blithely around South Beach, never worrying about his own personal safety. While Donatella often used bodyguards and sometimes pestered him to get his own security, Gianni didn’t see the need. Despite Miami’s reputation as a dangerous city—eight foreign tourists were killed there in less than a year in 1993—he was remarkably sanguine. Once, Andrea Tremolada, Versace’s head of advertising, who had flown in from Milan, left the mansion one day with Gianni to go to lunch. When they swung open the gates on Ocean Drive, they found a large group of fans waiting with cameras on the sidewalk to snap a picture of Gianni. The intrusion unnerved Tremolada. “Signor Versace, aren’t you afraid that someone could hurt you?” he asked.
“Why should I?” Gianni replied. “I’ve never hurt anyone, and I don’t see why anyone would want to harm me.”17
Once Gianni bought the mansion in South Beach, Miami became the exclamation point on the high life Donatella and Paul were enjoying. Drugs were as available as Good & Plenty candy in South Beach in the 1980s and 1990s, as Latin American drug cartels found a rich market in the anything-goes club scene there, selling everything from marijuana to a nasty mix of heroin, cocaine, and horse tranquilizer known as Special K.
