MFW: Versace Warns, “Don’t Mess With Her!”

Since Donatella Versace ushered in what she described as “Versace 2.0” during the Italian luxuriate’s Fall/Winter 2022 collection, the Milan Fashion Week mainstay has spent subsequent seasons perfecting contemporary codes.

Now, two years after she sent her tartan corsets, latex tights and vampire brides down the runway, the 68-year-old has delivered the manifesto for the modern Versace woman. “This collection has a rebel attitude and a kind heart,” the designer mused in the show notes. “The woman is a good girl with a wild soul. She is prim but sexy. Don’t mess with her!”

The latter warning was observed from the moment brand ambassador and bona fide style savant, Anne Hathaway, stepped on the black carpet in a fresh-off-the-runway red corset midi dress. (Indeed, the silhouette was later seen presented in the new season collection by Dutch supermodel Rianne Van Rompaey).

From viral videos of Hathaway ‘gentle parenting’ fans to her regal status as Genovia’s princess makes her soft side apparent. But in Versace’s designs, you transform into a woman not worth contending with. Confidence is stitched into the fibres of Versace’s fabrics, which is why the brand has become synonymous with the recent “Mob Wife” trend and (more importantly) a broker of power dressing.

This notion of strength through softness was the nexus of a collection focused on tradition, tailoring and honing the brand’s DNA. Spring/Summer 2024 looked to the girlish side of the Versace Women in Mary Quant cuts and an archival checkerboard print. But rather than continue this trajectory, Versace returned to the rebelliousness inherent to the label.

This idea was explored through a continuation of punk attire. These nonconforming motifs were rendered in subtle styles like a tweed check fabric studded with Versace’s medusa head sigil and leopard print sweaters intentionally distressed and patched up with a contrasting knitwear technique.

Suiting, shirting and a form of ‘uniform’ evolved in the collection, from the vampy bourgeois black shirts and accentuated white collars that punctuated the opening of the collection to the slew of blazers—some bejewelled and othered sliced into sets—that closed the range.

The more gentle side of the house emerged in an unlikely form—Versace’s use of chainmail. The signature material offered a delicate fluidity as the textile clothed the body in a rigid corset and fell into a light drape. Yes, these pieces acted like armour for the models, but the gathering through the midsection allowed for a taste of sensuality and glamour in an otherwise tough exterior.

As Versace herself explained: “The clothes take the codes of contemporary formal tailoring and disrupt them with cut, drape, and embellishment. The collection focuses on pure lines, and innovative fabrics, considered wildness. This is us. This is Versace!”

This story originally appeared in GRAZIA International.