There was little gray area in the reaction to Gianni Versace’s Fall 1994 show, which reviewers liked and reviled in equal measure. It wasn’t so much that the clothes were revealing—the silhouette followed a short 1960s shape—but Versace’s use of PVC and plastics, with their Pretty Woman connotations, seemed to rattle some cages.
Vogue was in the pro camp. Designers as a whole were taking a “playful, ultra-sexy approach to the season,” the magazine noted. “Who says ladylike and high tech don’t mix? Certainly not Gianni Versace, who marries the prim shape of an Empire-waist dress with the funky edge of black-plastic-coated silk for a look he terms technoglamour.” Mixed in with the shine was sharp tailoring that nodded to André Courrèges, whose work Versace would reference in one of his couture collections. In this context, the shine can be read as futuristic. For the sparkling finale, Versace looked back, back to ancient cultures and back in his own catalog, reviving the draped metal mesh dresses he first perfected in the ’80s.
