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Versace: Biker Gals March On

There was a burst of signature Versace triumphant rock and roll tailoring in the latest collection from the Milan house, a ramped up biker gal marching to a gutsy beat laid down by a self-confident designer.

Donatella Versace’s fall 2010 women’s ready-to-wear collection on Friday, Feb. 26, kicked off with some sizzling cocktail dresses, made with metal leather inserts and cut asymmetrically so that lots of leg showed. Versace has always been fashion for the self-assured women in mind and body and is again this season as holes and panels showed of shoulders, thighs and necklines.

A paneled white cocktail on Sasha Pivovarova and a nipped at the waist soft black jersey dress on fellow Russian Natasha Poly, both worn over faintly S&M boots, were the epitome of va-va-voom fashion.

But Versace’s finest moments were her biker ideas - saucy coats and pants, inserted with diagonal leather strips suggesting momentum and dash as the models sped down the runway. No other runway show in Europe has models that walk as quickly as Versace, and the cat walkers raced down the metallic sapphire runway.

“I wanted a strong, dynamic woman. That’s what Versace stands for. So of course I want the girls marching quickly,” said a rarely ever thinner Donatella Versace in the packed backstage.

Staged in the Teatro Versace, the house’s custom-built show space located in a renovated cinema in south Milan, the collection did have its odd miss. One could not fully get the overly long gowns for night that swung this way and that. But these were small off notes in a stirring fashion anthem.

“Rock and roll dolls!” enthused Babeth Djian editor-in-chief of Numero, a French independent fashion magazine, summing up this Versace collection.

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