The new Gianni Versace retrospective in Paris has everything — supermodels, celebrities, famous photographers, and the Italian designer’s most famous designs from the ’80s and ’90s — except for “that dress.”
Instead, a monitor broadcasts the French Wikipedia page for the skimpy black “safety pin” design that thrust Elizabeth Hurley to global fame when she accompanied Hugh Grant to a “Four Weddings and a Funeral” premier in 1994.
Part of the designer’s punk-inspired collection that spring, the original dress is currently MIA, according to Karl von der Ahé, who on Thursday guided journalists around the show at the Musée Maillol in Paris with his cocurator Saskia Lubnow.
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It opens to the public Friday and runs until Sept. 6, showcasing nearly 450 artifacts including jewelry, homewares and rare video interviews, giving an insight into Versace’s life’s work and enduring influence.
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Initiated by Berlin-based Dreamrealizer, which in recent years has mounted seven similar Gianni Versace showcases around Europe, the Paris show was conceived as an original one-off, zeroing in on “the relationship he had with the city and France,” von der Ahé said.
Versace began showing haute couture collections in 1989 at the Ritz hotel, and he’s pictured with the likes of former French President Jacques Chirac and Tunisian-French designer Azzedine Alaïa. One room broadcasts footage of him taking a bow after the winter 1998 Atelier Versace show, which the curators billed as the last public images of the designer before he was gunned down in Miami at age 50.
Most of this sprawling show hinges on nearly 100 outfits showcased on mannequins arranged on a mock runway, the looks assembled by theme, from bondage to Baroque. Plaques specify the model or celebrity who originally wore it, and the collector who lent it.
Dreamrealizer never puts clothes behind glass, which heightens their exceptional condition: the colors still vivid; the gold buttons and pins untarnished. “The quality of Gianni Versace was so high, it looks brand new,” von der Ahé marveled.
Ditto for the 20 silk shirts displayed on Stockmans, their patterns as spellbinding as ever.
The “Rock and Royalty” room includes designs worn by the likes of Lady Diana, Elton John, Madonna, Grace Jones and Demi Moore.
Books and press clippings exalt the designer’s glamorous lifestyle in South Beach, while acknowledging his designs were sometimes controversial: “Chic or Cruel?” was a question The New York Times posed about his fall 1992 collection, inspired by S&M.
The show thrusts visitors back to a fizzy time in fashion, when Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington would lip-synch to George Michael songs as they stalked the runway in skimpy, colorful dresses.
Lubnow and von der Ahé highlighted a host of never-before-seen photos, including a stash from his longtime press officer Doris Brugger, who also lent numerous dresses. But they reprised certain elements, including a recreation of Versace’s Milan studio, the tables strewn with colorful and shiny fabrics.
The Gianni Versace retrospective, which has nothing to do with with the Gianni Versace Srl company or the Versace family, is billed as the first fashion exhibition at the popular museum on Rue de Grenelle, established in 1995 to exalt the work of sculptor Aristide Maillol and known lately for its rotating photography displays.