Donatella Versace moved her Versus show to a profoundly unglamorous exhibition center on the un-edgiest side of town this evening—the London Wedding Show was on next door—yet successfully made it fleetingly feel as if we’d stumbled into somewhere sort of cool. That wasn’t necessarily thanks to the Hadid sandwich show structure (Gigi at the top, Bella to finish), the seriously endless step-and-repeating pre-show, or the happily endless prosecco pre-show—but thanks to the clothes. Versace said recently that her daughter, Allegra, is a guiding light in the Versus team she oversees, which promises well for the house whatever the outcome of the rumors about its creative future currently swirling about.
The womenswear was, well, pretty Versace. After Gigi passed with a shaggy ’do and a poppy eye in a tiny black dress, there was a brief—yet respectable—period of non-tiny dresses. Bella wore some paneled shearling fashioned into pants and a coat. There were tight pants lined by silver zippers south of cropped jackets in lightweight scuba material, with the requisite excess of cords hanging here and there for naught.
There was a great-to-look-at sculptedly oversized quilted coat in a ripped-up collage pattern not knowing enough to last very long on the real streets this label aspires to uniform. There was a spot of denim, an extended oxblood movement, and some sportswear, including one stellar open-backed tracksuit-inspired dress in black with a blue white-piped panel.
Ultimately, though, the dresses: the pink furry-shouldered printed chain mail Barbarella special; a purple metallic minidress with a bon-bon twist at the midriff; a pink flashed scuba dress with accents as pink as its slits were vicious. This was light and frothy stuff to be sure—and certainly not the inchoate rallying call it was presented as—yet it was fun enough to be worth the schlep, and on occasion sexy as hell.
