Preamble
For you convenience I have listed below other posts that features Gianni Versace.
Versace – Retrospective 1982-1997
Gianni Versace: The Dream
Gianni Versace: The Dream [1]
'All the world's a stage.' No one believed or lived this aphorism from Shakespeare more fully that Gianni Versace. Creating costumes for daily life and for special occasions is the métier Versace knew well. But his version of daily life is so spectacular, as if planned for the proscenium rather than for the street, that there is little difference between the theatre designer that he became for opera and dance and his sensibility for the operetta of our lives.
Versace always created to the grand scale. Even the early sportswear achievements added rich accents and set the scale bigger, allowing blouses with deep troughs of materials above capacious skirts, ready for the opera star to step into. By the mid-1980s, his work assumed even more the principle of the visible concupiscence, taking on the stagelike presence of the prostitute, who was taking on the role of the diva long established (re: Pretty Woman).
The selection for the dream incorporates several dresses from the fashion repertoire that suggests the essential silhouette and the semaphore for elegance that could transport us into the dream. Versace's little black dress with the cover-up front and uncovered back is in this category. A woman entering a room in such a dress would suggest reserve and utmost propriety. Even as Versace achieved mainstream status in the 1990s, a dress this aloof, chaste, and formal would seem most uncharacteristic. But the dress has yet to reveal itself. When seen from the back, this woman of decorum now becomes a seductress, making a spectacular, perhaps vulgar, exit. This is dressmaking and stagecraft for Versace. While he has canted fabric in order to provide the minimal juncture at the back, this dress is theatre for Versace, implying that fashion plays a dramatic role.
Versace's gargantuan ambitions for fashion included a role for it in all arts. To imagine the runway, the rock-and-roll concert, the opera stage, the grand public event, and even Hollywood as a continuous platform is what Versace did. Timeless metaphor and the eternal yearning for synaesthesia were for the first time not in the hands of a poet, playwright, composer, or even impresario. Chanel, Dior, Schiaparelli, and others designed for the theatre and film from experimental to the commercial. But Versace's model for the dream, the accustomed fantasy of fashion now endowed with a new trait of media, was that the fashion designer was a fundamental dreamer, one who planned and not merely one who followed other artists. Rather, this crucible for the arts was imagined by a fashion designer.
The concept is simple as it is startling. Creating a utopian design or conceiving the medium spectacle can be a fashion designer's initiative. The fashion designer is no longer ex post facto staff to artists of enterprise in other media. Versace dreamed a dream of spectacle that begins with fashion and engages every sense and vision.
Description: Sleeveless evening dress with panniers and oversized stole. Spring-Summer Collection (1988).
Material: Black-and white filigree-printed silk.
Courtesy: Gianni Versace Archives.
Description: Sleeveless evening dress with panniers and oversized stole. Spring-Summer Collection (1988).
Material: Black-and white filigree-printed silk.
Courtesy: Gianni Versace Archives.
Description: Evening slip gown. Fall-Winter Collection (1996-97).
Material: Fuchsia cotton lace studded with rhinestones.
Courtesy: Gianni Versace Archives.
Description: Front of black-draped evening gown. Fall-Winter Collection (1990-91).
Material: Black silk jersey.
Courtesy: Gianni Versace Archives.
Description: Back of black-draped evening gown. Fall-Winter Collection (1990-91).
Material: Black silk jersey.
Courtesy: Gianni Versace Archives.
Description: Cream and black silk with three-dimensional black chiffon sleeve caps (1987).
Material: Cream and black silk with chiffon sleeve caps.
Courtesy: Gianni Versace Archives.
Description: Theatre Dress I (1989).
Material: Cream and black silk with black satin, velvet, and net appliqués.
Courtesy: Gianni Versace Archives.
Description: Theatre Dress II (1989).
Material: White silk satin appliquéd with black silk satin, net, crépe, and braid.
Courtesy: Gianni Versace Archives.
Description: Panniered Theatre Dress (1991).
Material: Quilted blue silk satin with black-and-white satin appliqués.
Courtesy: Gianni Versace Archives.
Reference:
[1] R. Martin, Gianni Versace, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1997).
For you convenience I have listed below other posts that features Gianni Versace.
Versace – Retrospective 1982-1997
Gianni Versace: The Dream
Gianni Versace: The Dream [1]
'All the world's a stage.' No one believed or lived this aphorism from Shakespeare more fully that Gianni Versace. Creating costumes for daily life and for special occasions is the métier Versace knew well. But his version of daily life is so spectacular, as if planned for the proscenium rather than for the street, that there is little difference between the theatre designer that he became for opera and dance and his sensibility for the operetta of our lives.
Versace always created to the grand scale. Even the early sportswear achievements added rich accents and set the scale bigger, allowing blouses with deep troughs of materials above capacious skirts, ready for the opera star to step into. By the mid-1980s, his work assumed even more the principle of the visible concupiscence, taking on the stagelike presence of the prostitute, who was taking on the role of the diva long established (re: Pretty Woman).
The selection for the dream incorporates several dresses from the fashion repertoire that suggests the essential silhouette and the semaphore for elegance that could transport us into the dream. Versace's little black dress with the cover-up front and uncovered back is in this category. A woman entering a room in such a dress would suggest reserve and utmost propriety. Even as Versace achieved mainstream status in the 1990s, a dress this aloof, chaste, and formal would seem most uncharacteristic. But the dress has yet to reveal itself. When seen from the back, this woman of decorum now becomes a seductress, making a spectacular, perhaps vulgar, exit. This is dressmaking and stagecraft for Versace. While he has canted fabric in order to provide the minimal juncture at the back, this dress is theatre for Versace, implying that fashion plays a dramatic role.
Versace's gargantuan ambitions for fashion included a role for it in all arts. To imagine the runway, the rock-and-roll concert, the opera stage, the grand public event, and even Hollywood as a continuous platform is what Versace did. Timeless metaphor and the eternal yearning for synaesthesia were for the first time not in the hands of a poet, playwright, composer, or even impresario. Chanel, Dior, Schiaparelli, and others designed for the theatre and film from experimental to the commercial. But Versace's model for the dream, the accustomed fantasy of fashion now endowed with a new trait of media, was that the fashion designer was a fundamental dreamer, one who planned and not merely one who followed other artists. Rather, this crucible for the arts was imagined by a fashion designer.
The concept is simple as it is startling. Creating a utopian design or conceiving the medium spectacle can be a fashion designer's initiative. The fashion designer is no longer ex post facto staff to artists of enterprise in other media. Versace dreamed a dream of spectacle that begins with fashion and engages every sense and vision.
Material: Black-and white filigree-printed silk.
Courtesy: Gianni Versace Archives.
Material: Black-and white filigree-printed silk.
Courtesy: Gianni Versace Archives.
Material: Fuchsia cotton lace studded with rhinestones.
Courtesy: Gianni Versace Archives.
Material: Black silk jersey.
Courtesy: Gianni Versace Archives.
Material: Black silk jersey.
Courtesy: Gianni Versace Archives.
Material: Cream and black silk with chiffon sleeve caps.
Courtesy: Gianni Versace Archives.
Material: Cream and black silk with black satin, velvet, and net appliqués.
Courtesy: Gianni Versace Archives.
Material: White silk satin appliquéd with black silk satin, net, crépe, and braid.
Courtesy: Gianni Versace Archives.
Material: Quilted blue silk satin with black-and-white satin appliqués.
Courtesy: Gianni Versace Archives.
Reference:
[1] R. Martin, Gianni Versace, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1997).
