Sensual, graceful and unbelievably beautiful: those are the three most suitable adjectives to describe the Atelier Versace Fall Couture Week fashion show. During the first day of Paris Haute Couture 2015, the atelier launched the Fall/Winter 2015 collection astounding the entire audience. From a huge Medusa made of coloured orchids, models came onto the runway moving in magnificent light dresses. Prettiness is another important keyword of the collection: all the garments are made of soft chiffon, enhanced by embroideries and transparencies. It’s a whirlwind of draperies, asymmetric cuts, Chantilly lace and silk. Donatella Versace clothes her woman as an ancient Greek goddess – dressed in clothes, vulnerable and strong at the same time.
This woman is graceful, seemingly helpless, but along the runway she reveals sensual and feminine: a lioness enclosed in the body of a woman, dressed in light garments. Powerful as a goddess, fascinating as a nymph. Versace’s woman is thus the perfect balance between elegance and femininity. She’s also the expression of different inspirations, ranging from Ancient Greece to the Seventies, through the Italian Rinascimento. While the clothes draping and transparent recall the wonderful “Primavera” of Botticelli, on the other floral embroideries, low-cut dresses and lacquered boots showing a clear hippie trend – perhaps we could call it ‘ Woodstock couture! ‘.
It’s also clear the recall to the Seventeenth-Century corset: all the clothes are held up by beautiful corsages, slightly transparent, with formal sticks. And from these draperies, laces and transparencies are born; they’re in plain sight and charge the garments full of sensuality. They’re clearly elements of underwear, well inserted in an haute couture collection. Everything screams feminity here. And we can see it in marvelous dresses made of laces and twines of small fabric strips: here the effect “see trough” is brought to exasperation and women’s nudity is showed with incredible elegance.
Versace’s woman is a daydream. Refined, graceful, sexy and bold. The garments of the collection are as dreamy as clothes of a princess, with a voluminous feather’s skirt which becomes sensual thanks to a deep tear that reveals female skin. Everything is great and balanced, nothing is extreme. It’s a triumph of flowers, laces, chiffon, laminated fabrics, asymmetrical cuts, veils, heels and plateau. In this way Donatella Versace redraws female vulnerability, with a collection that includes important historical inspiration and turns them into modern masterpieces.
