How Donatella Versace Took Fashion into the Digital Age

In September 1999, as the world teetered on the edge of a new millennium and the dot-com bubble was ever-expanding, Donatella Versace presented her S/S 2000 collection at Milan Fashion Week – her third season as successor to her late brother, and company founder, Gianni.

‘Versace’s requisite ingredients were all present: sex, bright colours and rock-hard attitude,’ American Vogue wrote in its review of the show. ‘Cleavages were deeper than ever, and a jet-set look imbued everything from the strappy bathing suits to the glittery heels and tie-collar blouses. Versace’s daring cut, wild use of colour and uncensored drama continue to be the label’s strongest assets – and Donatella shows no signs of slowing down.’

The house of Versace didn’t simply speak directly to the zeitgeist, it created it, through the siblings’ shared reverence of popular culture and celebrity. Instrumental in popularizing the concept of the 1990s ‘supermodel’ (known mononymously as Naomi, Christy, Linda and Claudia), Gianni thought of the so-called Pope of Pop, Andy Warhol, as his demiurgic soulmate, sitting for a 1980 Polaroid series and paying tribute to the artist in the brand’s S/S 1991 ‘Pop Collection’.

‘Central to Versace’s work is his acuity in understanding fashion as an art of the media,’ wrote curator Richard Martin in a text accompanying the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 1998 exhibition to celebrate the designer’s legacy. ‘Not only did he thrust fashion into the gobbling jaws of the media of the contemporary spectacle in runway shows and alliances with rock music, dance and performance, he also grasped and was empathetic to the charisma of media performers.’

At the turn of the millennium, Donatella was reckoning with the next chapter of the digital age. Now, the prophetic quote from a 1967 Warhol exhibition catalogue – often misattributed to the artist himself – that, in the future, everyone would have ‘15 minutes of fame’, seemed on the verge of coming true. In a 1999 essay published in Vanity Fair, writer David Kamp coined the 1990s as ‘The Tabloid Decade’, describing an ‘androstenedione growth spurt’ in communications technology and the World Wide Web, noting its subsequent impact on a societal obsession with celebrity.

The Versace model was always instructed by Donatella to move down the runway in a confident, almost cocky, strut towards the flashing wall of camera lenses at the end of the catwalk. In the case of Amber Valletta, who opened and closed Versace S/S 2000, this was a metaphorical stomp into the 21st century, wearing two iterations of a green jungle-print dress constructed from diaphanous, silk chiffon.

This garment would mark a watershed moment for visual culture at large when Donatella dressed Jennifer Lopez in it for her appearance at the 2000 Grammy Awards. Though still in its infancy, Google was inundated with users desperately searching for pictures of the singer on the red carpet – an event which ultimately led to the birth of Google images. (The tech conglomerate would later collaborate with Versace on its S/S 2020 show, designing a new, digitized version of the print, again worn by Lopez.)

Last week, Versace’s peroxide-blonde grande dame stepped down from her baroque throne after 27 years as creative director. To reflect on her legacy as a designer for the digital age is to take stock of the present fashion moment and how the seminal S/S 2000 dress was indeed the beginning of a whole new world, where the internet dictates the core of fashion itself.

Now, the fashion object – dress, shoe, bag, coat – is designed with ‘virality’ in mind. How an image of a garment is proliferated often dictates how it is received on social media, skewing the perception and desirability of a brand in unpredictable ways. This presents challenges for designers, where the line between the craft of making clothes and the speed at which culture now moves, must be intelligently toed. Demna, the Georgian-born designer whose work at Balenciaga appeared in endless dialogue with the internet algorithm, perfected this as an artform – a skill that Gucci, who recently hired him as artistic director, is now banking on to boost its profile amidst falling sales.

Donatella’s departure is part of this slew of frenetic shake-ups across the fashion industry. She assumes the new title of chief brand ambassador, while former Miu Miu design director Dario Vitale follows in her stiletto-clad footsteps as the first custodian of Versace outside of the family. ‘Championing the next generation of designers has always been important to me,’ Donatella said in an Instagram post earlier this month. In the context of today’s tech-driven landscape, we should remember that she created the blueprint for them all.

_{Main image: Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell walk with Donatella Versace at the end of Versace's 1999 Spring/Summer haute couture show in Paris 16 January. Photograph: Eric Feferberg / AFP via Getty Images}