Versace

Fashion Design   Apparel Definition

A Group of Lines Under One Name

Versace designs, markets and distributes luxury clothing, accessories, fragrances, makeup and home furnishings under the various brands of the Versace Group, and the brands listed show how one family name is divided by price, age and category: Gianni Versace Couture, Versus Versace, Versace Jeans Couture, Versace Ceramic Designs, Versace Collection, Versace Sport, Versace Intensive, Versace Precious Items and Versace Young. Versace's Style Department employs groups of designers and stylists working in teams dedicated to each individual line, under the close supervision and guidance of Creative Director Donatella Versace. Only Versace Couture has a runway presence, and although called Versace Couture it is in fact ready-to-wear clothing made in a Versace factory rather than a licensed factory — a distinction the definition insists on, because the name suggests hand-made couture while the production is pret-a-porter of higher quality and exclusivity of materials, in a Versace-owned factory in Italy.

Distribution and Scale

Versace collections are distributed through 240 exclusive boutiques, over 150 dedicated spaces in major department stores and duty-free areas, and selective multi-brand boutiques in 60 countries. Gianni Versace S.p.A. directly employs 1,500 people and provides indirect labor for an additional 5,000 worldwide. With that broad international presence, the Versace Group had sales of 822 billion lire, or 424.5 million Euro, and net earnings of 18 billion lire, or 9.3 million Euro, in the 1999 fiscal year. Versace Precious Items is the timepiece, jewellery and writing instrument sub-brand, with timepieces and jewellery made in Switzerland and writing instruments made in France — production placed in the countries associated with those crafts, rather than in the Italian clothing factories. The group also operates a hotel, the Palazzo Versace, extending the name from furnishings into a furnished building a guest can stay in.

Faces of the Brand

Some of the celebrities who have been the face for Versace are Madonna, for Versace UK 2005, Demi Moore, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, and Halle Berry is the new face for Versace in 2006. The list is made up of recording artists and film actresses, all women, which matches a house headed creatively by Donatella Versace whose most visible public product is women's luxury clothing and fragrance advertising. In 2004, Versace items began to be manufactured under licence in Eastern Europe in countries such as Poland, a change from the previous Italy-only manufacturing locations. That shift sits alongside the Couture distinction drawn earlier: the top line remains in a Versace-owned Italian factory, while licensed production elsewhere carries other parts of a group that by then spanned nine named brands and a hotel.