This is the collection in which Gianni Versace showed the killer gold safety-pin dress worn to such eye-popping effect by Elizabeth Hurley. The actress’s gravity-defying number and others like it closed the show, but what came before it was a mash-up of references: Kate Moss in a navy pin-striped suit, one part banker, another part Catholic school girl. Christy Turlington in full-blown Lolita mode, wearing a pink gingham pinafore paired with short white socks and pumps speared through with a kilt pin. The extended offering also included tie-dyed laces and lace-trimmed biker shorts that made abbreviated shifts “decent.” But despite its many sub-themes, Versace’s Spring 1994 collection is rightly remembered as his most punk outing, and it’s closely related to his bondage collection of Fall 1992. Bondage shocked, this one titillated.
Versace made the source of his inspiration clear through his lavish use of pins and slashings. The cut-outs were the result of careful engineering, like a cable knit with open spaces among the twists. This was sexed-up gear designed to elicit not rebel yells, but mating calls.
