House of Versace: The Untold Story of Genius, Murder, and Survival

by Deborah Ball

  Gianni had left absolutely nothing to his siblings—not a single share in the company, no personal token of affection. He had not even mentioned them. Moreover, he had entirely ignored Santo’s children, betraying an indifference to Francesca and Antonio that stung his brother badly. The year before, Santo had agreed to sell Gianni a 5 percent stake in the company on the condition that Gianni would leave the holding to Santo’s son, Antonio, in his will. But at a family lunch a few weeks before Gianni left for Miami, Santo was furious to hear that his younger brother still hadn’t made the change to his will.

  “Gianni, what are you waiting for?” Santo demanded. “Just get it done!”

  “I know, I know,” Gianni replied. “I promise to do it as soon as I get back from Miami. Don’t worry.”2

  His brother flew to Miami with the 1996 will still in place. His siblings would always wonder what else he might have changed had he fixed the appointment with the notary before that tragic trip. Instead, his rash decision to leave half of an empire worth as much as $2 billion to a delicate eleven-year-old girl still stood. In that moment of anger at his siblings, he had convinced himself that he was protecting his company by bestowing his stake on Allegra. He never considered the impact his decision would have on the people who had worked for him for so long, on his two siblings, or on Allegra herself. He could hardly have imagined that a single, handwritten document, scribbled in anger, would set his company and his family on a path to near destruction.

  Santo was the first to break the silence in the notary’s office. While he was the quickest of the four to grasp the significance of what Gianni had done, he put a brave face on the news, determined as ever to maintain family unity. “If these were Gianni’s wishes, we’ll respect them,” he said in a somber tone.3

  Donatella, recovering her composure, abruptly asked Severini for a copy of her own will and left the room without a word to the others. She was still reeling from the news that Gianni had snubbed her entirely—but had left virtually his entire fortune and control of his company to her young daughter.

  Antonio stood up slowly, still absorbing Gianni’s generous effort to take care of him after his death with the use of his magnificent houses and a monthly stipend that would keep him in comfort. But Donatella’s brusque exit reminded Antonio that without Gianni there to protect him, he would have to bear the full brunt of Donatella’s animus toward him. In the weeks after Gianni’s death, she had virtually ignored him, leaving Antonio with the feeling that Gianni’s family held him responsible in some way for their brother’s violent death. After fifteen years of vacations, birthday parties, and Christmases together, he realized that his days as a member of the Versace clan were over.

  Santo confirmed that feeling. “I think you had better find yourself a lawyer,” he told Antonio in a clipped tone, before walking briskly away.

  On a gray, overcast afternoon in early September 1997, a parade of celebrities, most of them scrupulously dressed in Versace, ascended the grand marble staircase of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The day before, museum workers had mounted a white awning with side flaps over the entire staircase to shield the notables from the phalanx of reporters and photographers that would gather out front on Fifth Avenue. New York City police officers stood by to keep the media at bay. Since the death of Princess Diana the week before, paparazzi had become the bane of celebrities, and some of these famous people had attended her funeral the previous weekend.

  Inside the museum’s Temple of Dendur, the soaring glassed-in atrium that was a favorite setting for the city’s glitziest parties, a memorial service for Gianni was getting under way. Robert Isabell, Manhattan’s premier party planner, had decked the space out with masses of white flowers. In a press release, Versace’s PR office declared the event off-limits to the media, saying it was a private memorial for just “family and friends.” But privacy was an alien concept at the house of Versace. Donatella’s PR chief admitted a journalist from Condé Nast’s ever-compliant Women’s Wear Daily, who could be trusted to write a flattering account of the service and duly drop names of Versace’s A-list “friends”: Whitney Houston, Jon Bon Jovi, Ralph Lauren, Tom Ford, Donald Trump, Courtney Love, and Woody Allen.

  One celebrity after another stood to pay tribute to Gianni. Madonna read a poem she had composed herself. Anna Wintour, famous for her chilly reserve, choked up as she recalled the monthly faxes Gianni sent her with punctilious comments on each issue of Vogue.

  “It’s hard for me to believe that I’ll never talk to him on the phone again,” Elton John told the group. The singer then sat down at a piano to sing “Live Like Horses,” one of Gianni’s favorite songs.

  Then Donatella stood to make her first public appearance since the funeral in Milan. It was her official debut as the face of Versace. Her short speech moved many guests to tears. “Each time Gianni asked me to do what back then seemed like these impossible things, I’d tell him I couldn’t do it,” she recalled, speaking nervously in her thick Italian accent. “I’d tell him I couldn’t do it, and he’d tell me I could. I did it. He was always the most exciting person I knew. He was my best friend.”

  After the memorial, Donatella invited a clutch of stars back to Gianni’s townhouse. The New York home had been Gianni’s final toy. The previous October, when the renovations were finally complete, Gianni threw the party of the season, gathering A-listers such as John Kennedy, Jr., Richard Gere, and Hugh Grant to inaugurate his new home. Gianni happily played tour guide of the house, which showcased an art collection that included a portrait of Gianni by Andy Warhol and important works by Roy Lichtenstein and Jean-Michel Basquiat. But those paled in comparison to Gianni’s stunning new collection of twenty-five Picassos, which glowed in the light of dozens of candles. It was the collection that had sparked the brutal argument with Santo just a year before.

  That carefree October evening, during which Donatella had played the witty consort to Gianni’s glittering court, seemed a distant memory. Now a small circle of guests, including Madonna, her brother Christopher Ciccone, Lisa Marie Presley, Luciano Pavarotti, and Courtney Love, gathered with Donatella in the townhouse’s secluded garden. She changed out of the black outfit she’d worn for her speech and into tight white jeans and a matching T-shirt and made subdued small talk with her celebrity friends.

  Just after 10 p.m., Madonna, who prefers to be in bed by 11 p.m., left the townhouse. As soon as she was gone, her brother Christopher Ciccone and Love went into one of Gianni’s guest bedrooms—where Love pulled out a large packet of coke. They expertly cut the powder into neat lines and began snorting it. Madonna, who hated drugs, frequently berated her brother for his cocaine habit, but Ciccone and Donatella often shared hits together while out clubbing in Miami Beach. Shortly afterward, Donatella came upon the scene and beckoned Ciccone and Love into a sitting room nearby, where she joined in. But the coke hardly seemed to lift her mood.

  “Chreestopher, Chreestopher, play ‘Candle in the Wind’ for me,” she pleaded. He got up and slipped a CD into the expensive stereo system. That week, the song had soared to the top of the charts after Elton John reworked his classic ballad to honor Princess Diana at her funeral. For Donatella, the sad song, originally a paean to Marilyn Monroe and her early death, might have been a fitting tribute to her brother. When the song ended, she begged Christopher to play it again and again.4

  When Donatella returned to Milan, just a month remained before the show. Feeling entirely adrift, she told herself over and over that even Versace’s fiercest detractors wouldn’t have the heart to trash her debut collection—yet she couldn’t shake the pressure of having the world’s eyes on her. “You have to hold on,” she told herself every morning. “You can’t fall apart.”5

  The show, as usual, would be staged in the courtyard of Via Gesù. Ever since Gianni’s death, Donatella had become fixated on security and told her assistants to ensure that guards had completely secured the building. Afraid of being overwhelmed by the crush of wel
l-wishers after the show, she ordered her press office to limit the number of backstage passes they issued; she personally vetted the list of the guests who received them.

  On the day of the dress rehearsal, an unseasonable heat settled on Milan, which compounded the fatigue the team felt after weeks of marathon days. Donatella had taken particular care in choosing the models, falling back on the role that she felt most comfortable with. She assembled a mix of new girls such as Stella Tennant and Karen Elson—the mannequin Gianni had so disliked at the July couture show—and traditional Versace models such as Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista. As Donatella oversaw the last-minute run-through, a white butterfly floated among her team. It seemed to linger, refusing to go away.

  “That’s my brother,” Donatella repeated, as if she could conjure up his presence by wishing it. “That’s Gianni. It’s his spirit.”

  On the day of the show, Donatella presided over the standard press conference that walked the fashion journalists through the themes of the collection they would see that evening. Clad in black, she lit one cigarette after another as she nervously reeled off her inspiration.

  “These are clothes for a woman who is sweet and tough at the same time, someone who can survive life’s catastrophes with dignity and stand on her own two feet,” she said as if reciting from a script. She then took a slow drag on her cigarette and her voice nearly broke as she continued. “I’m terrified,” she admitted to the clutch of journalists, many of whom had known her brother for years. “Gianni is irreplaceable. I would like to be judged for what I am doing, not compared to him. If you compare me to him, I can only fall short.”6

  That evening, under a giant tent set up in the courtyard at Via Gesù, the lights dimmed briefly and the music surged, signaling the audience to take their seats. Gianni’s old rivals had all turned out to support his little sister, although the effect was only to ratchet up the pressure on Donatella. Giorgio Armani, Donna Karan, Karl Lagerfeld, and Miuccia Prada took their places in the front row, ready to scrutinize Gianni’s little sister’s work. Demi Moore, Peter Gabriel, Cher, Boy George, and Rupert Everett sat nearby.

  Laser lights burst from the screen and “Candy Perfume Girl,” a new, unreleased single by Madonna, boomed over the speakers. Neon squiggles in white, green, and blue shot along the runway. Naomi and Kate Moss sauntered out first, a bright spotlight following them down the length of the runway. The first dresses were funky variations on the traditional Prince of Wales fabric. Donatella had used the gray check pattern in halter dresses, silk chiffon camisoles, and as ribbons running through silk evening gowns. Then followed a mishmash of themes and ideas, from bright red pantsuits to a bold blue dress with a galaxy motif drawn in pink to rubberized silk dresses that looked as if they’d been poured onto the models. Girls in bright green bikinis followed others clad in tiny pink hot pants.

  While some individual pieces clicked, the collection as a whole fell woefully short of Gianni’s work. It was scattershot and confused, a muddle of references to Gianni’s winning themes and the street-inspired look Donatella had pushed at Versus. Donatella was groping for a way to update her brother’s label, to make it more hip and relevant. She had brought in the new young designers and the powerful stylists to help her find a fresh look—without losing the Versace DNA. But without a clear vision of her own, she was buffeted by the jumble of ideas her team pitched her while feeling pressure from legacy Versace employees to stick to Gianni’s familiar tracks.

  At the end of the twenty-minute parade, Donatella came out for her bow. She wore a simple black sheath with a deep slit up the left side. She had on very little makeup and her ironed hair looked slightly rough, her extensions imperfectly done. The audience jumped to their feet as she made her way to the end of the runway with the reluctance of a pirate walking a plank. She kept her eyes fixed on the ground, ignoring the models around her, her face contorted as she struggled to control herself. After a rushed bow, she retreated back up the runway, her face buried in her hands.

  Once safely backstage, she nearly collapsed, sobbing in the arms of her assistants. For fifteen minutes, she stood visibly shaking as her assistants and thirty seamstresses formed a circle around her, clapping and stomping their congratulations. The VIP guests began streaming in. Armani, accompanied personally by a grim-faced Santo, was among the first to break through the crowd, hugging Donatella and kissing her wet cheeks. “I miss my brother so much,” she told him. “I’ve never felt so overwhelmed in all my life.”

  House music continued to pound over the sound system as the television cameras jostled hard for a shot of Donatella and Santo with the VIPs. Reporters scrambled to extract a verdict on the show from the rival designers. “Very interesting, very interesting,” Lagerfeld murmured cryptically as he pulled away from the reporters.

  “It looked very good,” said Miuccia Prada encouragingly. “Donatella must and can improve, but you can see how hard she worked.”7

  Gianni loomed in absence. Both brother and sister recognized it that day.

  “My phone doesn’t ring like it used to,” Donatella told the journalists. “Gianni used to call me for anything, even to describe to me the color of the roses that had bloomed in his garden that morning.”

  Santo stood nearby, pale and drawn. “How I miss Gianni’s phone calls,” he told one reporter. “I even miss our fights about whether he could buy another Picasso. We were side by side for fifty years. And now he is gone.”8

  fifteen

  Inheritance and Loss

  eVEN AS THE PRESSURES IN THE ATELIER MOUNTED, A FAR more serious situation was emerging for Donatella at home that fall of 1997. Ever since the reading of the will, she worried about how the news of Gianni’s bequeathal would affect Allegra. The little girl was already distraught by the loss of her doting uncle. The news that she was now the controlling shareholder of Gianni’s company was confusing and upsetting to the sensitive eleven-year-old.

  When classes resumed in September at the expensive British school she attended in Milan, Allegra became the object of intense gossip after newspapers broke the story of Gianni’s will. She couldn’t help picking up on the curious chatter, and any semblance of a normal life vanished for her as Donatella, fixated with security, hired bodyguards to accompany Allegra to school every day. The beefy men spent the entire day stationed outside the school in a hulking SUV, drawing curious stares from classmates and their parents. Visits to the homes of family and friends now required advanced planning. Not long after Gianni’s death, Paul took Allegra to Reggio to visit Zia Nora, and he decided to take his daughter to see the city’s renowned archaeological museum. Even though the museum was a short walk from Nora’s home, Allegra’s security guards refused to let her go by foot. Instead, they got permission from the museum to park their car right in front of the door so that the girl could go straight inside.1

  The strain on Allegra began to manifest itself more seriously just weeks after Gianni’s death. Soon after, just as Donatella was preparing her debut runway show, Allegra simply stopped eating. As the fall wore on, the girl grew alarmingly thin.

  Anorexia nervosa is considered one of the most insidious psychological disorders. The term “anorexia” literally means “loss of appetite,” but the label is misleading. People with the disease still feel hungry but are so terrified by the idea of gaining weight that they become obsessed with food, eating, and counting calories. They measure their value as a person by the number they see on the scale. Sufferers of anorexia virtually starve themselves, fast for days, and overexercise. They think of little else but food and begin to behave in ways that often create enormous stress for family members. They lie about what they have eaten, avoid dining with others, and develop obsessive habits such as cutting their food into tiny pieces or eating dishes that are extremely hot in temperature.

  Since it staves off the onset of the physical signs of adolescence, it often strikes girls in their teenage years who dread the idea of becoming women. Teenaged girls wi
th anorexia have so little body fat that they often don’t develop breasts or hips. By starving themselves, they avoid the typical adolescent growth spurt, leaving them with undersized, childlike bodies. Anorexic teenagers oftentimes never get their periods, a comfort for girls who are struggling with their bodies’ physical changes.

  The illness is notoriously difficult to treat. Eating disorders are insidious because, unlike alcoholism or drug addiction, they may not have an obvious impact on work or family life. Moreover, anorexics’ perception of themselves becomes so distorted that even in an emaciated state, they see a fat person when they look in the mirror. Their drive for perfection—that is, the lowest weight their bodies can stand—is insatiable. Plus, unlike other compulsions, anorexia inspires envy. Early on, a woman suffering from anorexia may thrive on compliments she might receive for being so thin, which sometimes eggs her on to lose more weight. The social acceptability of thinness has even encouraged some anorexics to argue that the condition is not a disease, but a lifestyle choice. Nonetheless, a significant number of people with anorexia—estimates range from 5 percent to 20 percent—die from the condition, either from suicide or the myriad physical problems stemming from chronic malnourishment. According to some studies, fewer than half of anorexics fully recover.

  An acrimonious debate has raged for years as to whether the media and fashion world contribute to the spread of anorexia. Without a doubt, fashion propagates a virtually impossible standard of beauty and thinness. Models often go to great lengths to reach an ethereally slim state. They smoke like long-haul truckers, in no small part because nicotine suppresses the appetite. Some also go beyond the usual laxatives and diuretics that purge their meals, resorting to prescription drugs such as Clenbuterol, a steroid that athletes and horse trainers employ to reduce body fat. By the time of Gianni’s death, the ascendant image in magazines and billboards was even more extreme.