KEY POINTS:
I took my inspiration for the spring/summer womenswear collection from the Dada movement," says Donatella Versace. "I wanted to play with the logical conventions of fashion and subvert them. I wanted to surprise and disconcert."
Certainly, the sight of a woman in anything as dressed up as a citron-hued boned two-piece swimsuit worn with bare legs balancing on platform-soled sandals a whopping 14cm high would be surprising, and perhaps even somewhat surreal, in this day and age. One wouldn't expect to see anything like this on any beach worth mentioning, where honey-coloured skin, golden highlights, string bikinis and flip-flops are still, for the most part, the order of the day. Versace is clearly in favour of a return to a rather more sophisticated, and certainly more self-conscious, style.
"I hope that the collection will appeal to women as something they can really wear, but fashion is a bit like Dada, in that it is fraught with paradox. On the one hand, it has to be realistic; it has to attract a customer. At the same time, women like to dress up to add glamour to their lives."
There is, of course, no label more representative of high-octane and escapist glamour than Versace, which has, since its heyday in the 1980s, been as readily associated with sex and celebrity as it has with the type of ultra-pragmatic underpinning that ensures that even the most barely-there garment does more than a little for the physique of its wearer. A strategically placed nip and tuck of fabric is so much cheaper than surgery, and with none of the mess, or so the story goes.
Neither is Versace the only label that is currently offering up a silhouette that is womanly to the point of being cartoonish, not to mention a million miles away from the snake-hipped female archetype that has dominated fashion for some time now. Think Edie Sedgwick, and any other gamine, tunic-wearing, Bambi-limbed androgyne one might care to mention.
Also in Italy, Dolce & Gabbana has reinvented its signature corsetry in everything from black plastic to gleaming metal.
"We looked at the idea of sex in the 80s," Stefano Gabbana explains.
"We were thinking about Azzedine Alaia, Thierry Mugler, Versace We were thinking about Dolce & Gabbana! You know, young women don't remember what it was like."
Of course, the early work of this design duo was famously inspired by curvaceous, hot-blooded Italian starlets such as Gina Lollobrigida and Anna Magnani. This time round, any development of this theme has its roots in a more contemporary culture.
"All the talk at the moment is about truth, about health, about eating well, going to the gym," Gabbana continues, "but the world is completely fake, completely plastic, everything is silicone. I love that irony. And why spend money on surgery and suffer that pain? You want more hips, more breast? You wear the corset by Dolce & Gabbana!"
Yes, ladies, it really is that simple - at least it might be, if only in our dreams.
"I just wanted to do a small collection of dresses, stricter, and with more binding and stretch," says the London-based designer Christopher Kane, who is whipping up quite a storm with his body-conscious take on what the young and fashionable might like to wear this spring.
It seems apposite that Donatella Versace herself provided Kane with some of her late brother's signature metal mesh for his degree collection at Central Saint Martins, so impressed was she with his design aesthetic. As if that weren't enough, following Kane's graduation in 2006, she went on to offer him a full-time job in her atelier.
Although the designer has only the greatest reverence for Versace, and, indeed, her labels archive, which has clearly inspired his work to date, he decided instead to set up on his own.
"I thought I'd do it brighter," Kane says of his current offering, his debut collection as a fully fledged professional. A procession of neon-bright, micro-mini bandage dresses trimmed with the finest lace, it harks back not only to vintage Versace but also to the aforementioned Alaia, Mugler and, of course, Herve Leger.
"It was designed for summer, so I just thought the shorter the better and the brighter the better. I came across the elastic by chance, in a really dodgy haberdashery in Shepherd's Bush. So that was it. I suppose that it was a bold statement."
To ensure that it was also more than mere 1980s' pastiche, Kane says that he has a thoroughly modern fashion heroine in mind, as opposed to the big-haired, gym-honed supers that such clothing was aimed at the first time round.
"It's designed to be worn by beautiful young girls, with messed-up hair and not much makeup."
For her part, Donatella Versace intends her decidedly statuesque designs to be worn more by women than girls. Now, as always, however, this is not a brand that readily allies itself with the shrinking violet, or, indeed, with some kind of super-waif.
"If you look at my recent ad campaigns," Versace says, "you will see that I have chosen a group of strong women to represent the brand: Demi Moore, Madonna, Halle Berry, Kate Moss. All these women have lived a bit, and have improved with age. They prove that experience is really attractive, and that fashion and glamour are not the preserve of the young. For me, modern fashion for a modern woman is clothing and accessories that make you look and feel special, whatever your age.
"Modern womenswear from Versace is there to make you look strong, confident and, of course, glamorous sure of yourself and your sexuality. It is all about confidence - so, for today's confident and strong woman, I want to produce strong and confident collections, collections that complement that attitude perfectly."
- Independent
