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Versace

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MILAN, September 23, 2011
By Tim Blanks
It's a Versace moment. The H&M collaboration is about to crush retail; designer kids everywhere are feeling the Versace vibe. But maybe the most interesting thing about the show today was that people left the house Gianni founded saying, "That was so Donatella."

The mood was set by the luminescent glow that illuminated the garden at the Via Gesù show space. It was like the light from a swimming pool. And into that glow stalked the tawny-maned goddesses who have roamed the Versace landscape since time immemorial. "The meeting of old and new Versace," Donatella said. That meeting could mean something as elemental as neoprene and plissé in the same outfit. Or shorts where a pelmet mini would have once sufficed. And the gold studs were clearly something Donatella felt an affinity for, if the outfit she wore to take her bow was any indication.

And that may be the collection's greatest plus. There is no way to judge it outside its own context—and that context is Donatella. Those Lucite platforms? Pure blonde. The fractured starfish that anchored Sigrid Agren's bifurcated gown? The plissé pastels? The Reggio Calabrian white with the Greek inflection? All of it an element in some way of Donatella's own design history. Which makes this collection a test of the power of personality in fashion. Cue the inevitable H&M madness.

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