Prima donna

Donatella Versace has never been afraid of taking centre-stage. As she prepares to unveil her latest collection in Hollywood, she talks to Alexander Fury about celebrity, creativity and refusing to conform.

- Alexander Fury

To interview Donatella Versace any way other than in the tanned flesh is to be woefully deprived of three-quarters of her impact, which is resolutely modern in that it is entirely experiential: the whiplash of peroxide-blonde hair, the wide Cheshire Cat smile, the higher-than-high heels, the gobstopper size diamond screwed onto a perfectly manicured finger.

That's the image both Donatella and the Versace label hold in the popular imagination: hyper-feminine, sexy, rich-to-be pronounced, Donatella-style, as "reach", as in "reaching for the stars". After all, that is what Donatella has done with Versace's Autumn/Winter 2023 collection, jettisoning Milan to show, for the first time, in Los Angeles just before the 95th Academy Awards ceremony. "It's exciting. It's a very good challenge," says Donatella, sitting behind a conference table at the label's glossy headquarters in a Milanese development so new it's still under construction. The building is situated in a piazza named after Luigi Einaudi, Italy's prime minister for seven years until 1955-the year, incidentally, that Donatella was born. On screens in the foyer, Versace's latest campaign videos are projected big, as lushly coloured, suitably cinematic backdrops to figures darting in tailored black. Today, those include Donatella herself, business-ready in a sharp black suit, flares kicking out over her habitual platform heels, a button winking with that Medusa face at her tiny, Barbie-proportioned waist. The flaxen hair is flawless molten Oscar-statuette gold.