VERSACE, SPRING 1992

Momentarily leaving aside the fact that Linda Evangelista was a distractingly massive babe in her day, and how moronic Donatella is as compared to Gianni, let’s discuss how rad this collection is.  Actually, first let me take a number of deep breaths, as I love this stuff (I attribute this to my hot Mediterranean blood).  To the untrained eye, it consists of nothing more than the typically gaudy baubles that typically adorn the nouveau riche.  And you know what?  God bless those crazy fuckers.  It takes a measure of chutzpah to dress like this, one that I am lacking, my love of vintage Versace men’s printed shirts aside (another post entirely!).

Okay, let’s get down to work.  It would be easy, trite, and perhaps somewhat shrill (like all gender theory!), to look at this campaign and say “the sexuality of the model is being exploited to blah blah blah blagghghggghgg…”  I am going to take a different approach and say that in some ways, gender is being interestingly subverted and played with here.  The swirling acanthus leaves adorning the garments signify a desire to play with and pervert the classical orders.  The use of scallop shells, starfish etc. continues this theme, giving these prints a sort of sexual voluptuousness and engaging them in a tradition ranging from the Minoans to Botticelli.  Interestingly, for me, their garish repetition seems almost to resemble camouflage, both superficially, and also in the way that the prints seem to bleed into one another, dazzle, and confuse.  Versace seems to have made his clothing ludicrously form fitting, because that’s the only way that one could really recognize the contours of the human body in the face of this Baroque excess to begin with.

That camouflage seems to be a theme here is unsurprising to me, as in my opinion, Versace seems to have drawn on the visual language of condottiere armour.  The condottiere were mercenaries from across Europe who partook in various regional wars through Italy under the banner of the Papacy or one of the many local city-states.  As seen in the Da Vinci image above, their commanders in particular enjoyed presenting themselves with a certain measure of panache and flamboyance.  It seems to me that Versace is appropriating this generally male violent aggression, and turning it into high powered, female, sexual aggression (ie awesome).  Of course, this is somewhat complicated by the inclusion of denim, an inherently American and modern material.  Yet, even here, it seems to be presented as oversized – almost to emphasize the appropriation of a male piece into a female wardrobe.  I’m spent for now, will probably up an ungodly amount of Versace ephemera in the near future.

Images via StyleRegistry

Advertisement