Like the rock stars he genuinely admired and grandly courted, Gianni Versace believed in pushing things to the limit. His leathers were sleazy, his prints full-blast. His dresses fit the body like a wet glove, sometimes including as many bondage-style belts and straps as to make a straitjacket seem strapless. His clothes eroticized, even prettified men (but guys like Sly Stallone and Mike Tyson wore them anyway); they imparted a tough edge to women (think Elizabeth Hurley in that notorious black dress, alabaster breasts scrunched between safety pins and panels of fabric). As a designer he could be titillating, outrageous, bombastic, vulgar, classic, avant-garde and, of course, wildly expensive. He became known as much for the way he presented his fashions — on the runway, in advertising and in lavish “image books” shot by the likes of Richard Avedon and Bruce Weber — as for the clothes themselves. His approach was always provocative, irreverent, even shocking. So perhaps it is possible to say that in the dramatic images of the bloodstained steps in front of his oceanfront mansion, there can be found some continuity from his beginning to his end. In death as in life, Versace made good on his oft-repeated vow never to be boring.
Much has been made of Versace being a “rock & roll designer.” Certainly he had long made custom stage clothes for his musician friends, from Elton John’s Captain Fantastic look to the Artist Formerly Known as Prince’s satin jackets and snakeskin pants for the Gold Experience Tour. But Versace’s vision went way beyond that. Versace simply loved rock & roll and the freedom that it stood for. His shows were staged like rock & roll shows, with great, pounding soundtracks expertly edited to dramatize the sequences of models and styles — and the changing moods — emerging onstage. (Cassettes and CDs of a fashion show’s soundtrack were often handed out at the door.) The lighting also borrowed from rock extravaganzas, with timed blue and red floods throwing a shimmering haze on his creations (runway photographers hated the havoc this played with their light meters) while etching the fabulous bodies of Claudia Schiffer, Stephanie Seymour, Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell in a preternatural electric glow. Rock & roll as we know it today, the rock of MTV and VHI — its songs melded with powerful imagery, its pointed blending of fashion and music — did not exactly begin here, but it certainly was refined and extended. The aesthetic link between certain pioneering videos that joined fashion and music — “Freedom,” by George Michael, with its leather jackets and ripped jeans; “Addicted to Love,” by Robert Palmer, with its mechanized chorus of live mannequins in little black stretch dresses — and the image-making approach of Versace is obvious. Versace was absorbing rock’s dash and flash for his collections, and rock videos in turn began to appropriate a more consciously stylish look.
Although rockers have always celebrated nonconformity and held relative disdain for the middle-class conventions of fashion, many rock stars ended up in the front row of Versace’s shows — uneasily at first, but then with greater confidence as the frisson of interest was certified in other media and the commercial synergies became apparent to both the designer and the stars. Eric Clapton, Freddie Mercury, Sting, Madonna, David Bowie, Jon Bon Jovi, Tina Turner and Courtney Love all showed up at Versace shows at one time or another. In recent seasons, on the night of his presentations, the streets outside Versace’s showplace palazzo have been jammed with carabinieri and Italian teeny-boppers waiting for an ecstatic glimpse of the band members from Oasis or some other heartthrob group. Tupac Shakur performed a rap during a Versace menswear show just weeks before Shakur was cut down in Las Vegas.
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