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Versace’s Saharan Soldiers

There’s a whole theme of international global trotter rippling through the Italian menswear season, with collections inspired by everything from thirties ocean liner cruises and trips to Latin American jaunts like Rio and Punte del Este, but few made the notion of travel more escapist than the house of Versace, whose latest collection, shown on Sunday, June 21, for men was a modern take on the French Foreign Legion.

Throughout Sunday's show in Milan, Versace’s men’s design director Alexander Plohkov stuck with the Versace tailoring codes like sleek double breasted jackets in white linen, though subverted the mood by showing them over some beautiful elongated djellabas with hazy desert mirage prints.

And the Saharan theme was very much alive in some stylish beige leather shirts and bags whose patchwork covered the invitation to this assured show, and used desert-like colors with the palette of khaki, white and sand used on silk muslin and crumpled leather.

Smart details like cavalry tassel belts and wristbands, or faille collars on tuxedos that recalled military braiding all gave the show a genial roving nonchalance.

Post show, Donatella Versace hosted a dinner in the family’s via del Gesu in the midst of a striking collection of Renaissance busts and ancient Roman statuary.

“She’s the reason I am in fashion,” said designer Ricardo Tisci of Givenchy, who sat front row, before attending the dinner.

“Italian fashion would not be anything without Versace. This house is where it all begins,” said Tisci, a native of the northern silk manufacturing capital Como about Donatella Versace, whose family come from Calabria, the southern tip of the Italian peninsula’s boot, i.e., two designers separated by distance but united in style. Just like the show’s Foreign Legion.

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