Versace Women's Fashion Brand

Versace is an international luxury fashion brand created by Giovanni Versace, who founded his clothing company in 1978. Giovanni Maria Versace was an Italian fashion designer and founder of Versace, an international fashion house that produces accessories, fragrances, make-up, home furnishings, and clothes - the full category list, and the reason this profile covers a house rather than a clothing line: a women's Versace product can sit in any of those five categories and still be the main brand at work.

The label structure is stated just as plainly. The main collection of the brand is Versace, which produces upmarket Italian-made ready-to-wear and leather accessories, while other diffusion lines are Versace Collection (mainly in the US), Versus Versace and Versace Jeans. The Versace logo is the head of Medusa, a Greek mythological figure, and the brand is known for having flashy prints and bright colors - the two recognition tests a shopper can apply on sight: the Medusa head for the house, and print-and-colour confidence for the clothes.

1978 to 1994: Donna, the Boutique and 'That Dress'

In 1978, the company launched under the name 'Gianni Versace Donna', and the first Versace boutique was opened in Milan's Via della Spiga in 1978. Versace was one of the few independent designers who was in control of everything about the brand, from designing to retailing. In 1982, the company expanded into the accessory, jewelry, home furnishing, and china industries. In 1993, Donatella Versace created the 'Young Versace' line as well as 'Versus' - the sibling record, linked from this page through the Apparel Search designer profiles of Donatella Versace and Gianni Versace.

Then came the dress. In 1994, the brand gained widespread international coverage due to the 'Black Versace dress of Elizabeth Hurley', referred to at the time as 'that dress': Elizabeth Hurley wore a black Versace dress, often referred to as 'THAT Dress', when she accompanied Hugh Grant to the premiere of Four Weddings and a Funeral in 1994. The dress was held together by several oversized gold safety pins, and the dress is perhaps Versace's best-known creation - two photographs appear on this page, the 1994 dress among them, both in this page's gallery.

Researching the Women's Range

Learn more about the women's Versace fashion brand on the brand's own site, carried in this page's References. Its Apparel Search links run deeper than most in this letter - the two designer profiles named above, and a Versace over-the-knee boots guide in the women's clothes guide, all carried in this page's links - so a researcher can follow one product category from brand profile to garment guide without leaving the directory. Set beside Valentino, its fellow 1978-era Italian house in this letter, Versace is the extrovert half of the pair: where Valentino's record runs on couture succession, Versace's runs on a logo, a palette and a single famous dress.

Photos