Show Report
That peak-shouldered peg-panted period has popped up on a few other catwalks, but Donatella's reiteration was the hardest we've seen.
It's often forgotten just what a pioneer Gianni Versace was when it came to technology and fashion - popping Elton John in a frock and wrapping a naked Jon Bon Jovi in a quilted bedspread tends to overshadow your dab handwith a techno-fabric. But Donatella Versace pitched her A/W 2011 Versace men's collection in those early eighties days before glitz, glamour and Greco-Roman medusas became the order of the day.
That peak-shouldered peg-panted period has popped up on a few other catwalks, but Donatella's reiteration was the hardest we've seen - all krauty Kraftwerk Bauhaus references, with side-slicked hair so shiny it looked as if it had been shellacked, and strict linear suiting in a handful of colours - oxblood, camel, electric blue and good old black and white.
As with Gianni, leather was less a leitmotif and more an obsession for Donatella. She blistered, trapunto-stitched and quilted it into tight biker-trousers and short bombers - one a dead-ringer for Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' look, albeit all in black. If that wasn't enough eighties for you, check the curved shoulders of leather overcoats, or digitised textured knits with pulsing lines or abstract graphics seeming to mimic Joy Division's 'Unknown Pleasures' sleeve or a hastily paused game of Tetris respectively. They also made their way into wool jacquards for a neat update on tweed.
Did it feel entirely right for now? Not really. But the refreshing thing was the conviction with which Donatella hammered home her point. This was never going to have mass appeal - the amount of work in those leathers will send the prices soaring, and men as a whole seem to have shied away from looking like a wayward Gary Numan impersonator. At the same time, the confidence of the vision speaks volumes, and when you're quite so certain about something you can often win your audience around. By the end of the show we were all sold - at least editorially, this collection was a winner.
