Every designer seems to have a favorite decade, and Gianni Versace’s was the swinging 1960s. Despite the surface glitz, a deep vein of classicism ran through this work—and not only when he was draping. Versace’s tailoring and cuts were precise and well suited to the cookie-cutter shapes popularized by the likes of Mary Quant and André Courrèges. For Fall 1995, models strutted down the catwalk in white patent Go-Go-style boots. Miniskirts and sheaths in a checkerboard pattern nodded to mods, while satin coats, short white gloves, and structured bags were representative of what Vogue described as the season’s “uptown aesthetic.”
Versace dressed the models as ladies for day and sirens for night. His “grown-up and glamorous heavy silk satin dress,” wrote Vogue of a chartreuse number Steven Meisel photographed on Linda Evangelista for the July 1995 issue, “recalls the glory days of Sophia Loren.” Its seeming simplicity belied the flawless, body-skimming structure. The designer had no time for gimmicks; fashion, he said, is “about cut, quality, and construction.”
