Donatella's golden goodbye: Kate Moss leads model salute in farewell that also has a silver lining
To mark the release of her final collection for the fashion house she's helmed for almost 30 years, the well-loved designer assembled a bevy of her closest friends for a leaving do, of sorts.
The fact that said friends are supermodels meant it would have been rude not to turn the party into a fashion shoot – and of course it featured her signature gold and silver chainmail dresses.
Luckily, famed photographers Mert and Marcus (Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott) were on hand to capture the antics of 25 models including Kate Moss, Claudia Schiffer and Amber Valetta, and make the images into Versace's new autumn/winter ad campaign.
As befits the end of an era, the campaign features a 'greatest hits' compilation of the classic Versace chainmail dresses that over the years have found favour with fans including Angelina Jolie, Britney Spears, Blake Lively and Elizabeth Hurley.
While some in the campaign will be available to buy next season, others are archive pieces from the 1990s and early 2000s.
Seasoned fashion-watchers may recall a young Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell wearing silver iterations to the Golden Globes in 1999.
In 2017, to mark the 20th anniversary of Gianni Versace's death, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, Helena Christensen, Carla Bruni and Claudia Schiffer made a rare catwalk appearance in matching silver chainmail evening dresses.
And if you're wondering whether to splash out on a new chainmail mini dress, which costs in the region of £3,000, it's worth bearing in mind that the original nineties versions can fetch up to £15,000 on resale sites.
'Empowered' is how Donatella, 69, described feeling to her 12.4million Instagram followers on witnessing the shoot.
'The energy was extraordinary,' she added. 'The dresses reflect the light radiating from these amazing women.
'It was all about friendship, loyalty and love, created to celebrate the soul of the Versace woman.
'Every collection is a story, and this is the story of Versace, inspiring the present and anticipating the future.'
For Donatella, who has helmed Versace since her brother, Gianni, was brutally murdered in 1997, the future is uncertain.
In March, Versace was sold to Prada Group in a $1.375billion (£1.06billion) deal that unites two of the biggest brands in Italian fashion, cementing Donatella's decades-long friendship with designer Miuccia Prada and furthering Prada Group's plans to build a 'Made in Italy' luxury goods conglomerate in the vein of French giants LVMH and Kering.
While Donatella will remain chief brand ambassador, she will no longer be creative director, watching the new 'Versada' era unfold from a position of greater freedom, if not control.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
9 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Christie Brinkley, 71, and daughter Sailor, 27, could be SISTERS in identical outfits
Christie Brinkley and her daughter Sailor could have passed for twins in their latest social media post. The 71-year-old supermodel and her 27-year-old lookalike child, also a model, coordinated in matching orange looks designed and styled by Donna Karan. Sailor, whose father is Christie's ex-husband Peter Cook, posted an Instagram reel detailing their outfits on Monday. She captioned the post to her nearly 200,000 followers: 'This morning getting styled by DK herself @donnakaranthewoman in @urbanzen benefitting @solvingkidscancer.' The duo even mirrored each other with blond ringlets and natural-toned strappy sandals. 'This is for my TikTok,' Sailor said to Donna before asking her to 'explain the look.' Christie Brinkley and her daughter Sailor could have passed for twins in their latest social media post The 71-year-old supermodel and her 27-year-old lookalike child, also a model, coordinated in matching orange looks designed and styled by Donna Karan The veteran designer was similarly dressed in a draped red ensemble with long chains with statement pendants around her neck. She added, 'This is the best dress because you can do it six different ways,' before demonstrating the piece's variations. The wrap dressed boasted a plunging neckline and was complemented by matching trousers, creating a monochrome effect. The women sipped on summery cocktails at the swanky event, the Solving Kids Cancer Annual Hamptons Luncheon held at Tutto II Giorno. Their outing comes after Christie recently revealed she was nearly brought to tears while recording the audiobook component of her memoir Uptown Girl, which was published in April. Inside the pages of the literary work, she recounts her tumultuous childhood, four marriages, and multiple near-death experiences. Christie told Social Life Magazine in July that sharing such personal anecdotes was profoundly moving. 'There were parts where I thought, "Please don't cry,"' the mother-of-three told the publication. Sailor, whose father is Christie's ex-husband Peter Cook, posted an Instagram reel detailing their outfits on Monday Christie and Sailor's 'twinning' moment comes after Christie recently revealed she was nearly brought to tears while recording the audiobook component of her memoir Uptown Girl, which was published in April; pictured April 29 Among the most heart-wrenching stories told in her book was the tale of her painful divorce from Sailor's dad Peter; pictured in 1999 Among the most heart-wrenching stories was the tale of her painful divorce from Sailor's dad Peter. In her book, the actress recalled the shocking way she discovered the architect's infidelity, which she confessed 'nearly broke' her. She recalled that a man, whom she did not know, approached her to share the bombshell revelation right before she was set to deliver a commencement address at Southampton High School. Christie described how the man softly told her: 'Excuse me. I need to tell you that arrogant husband of yours has been having an affair with my teenage daughter.' 'I knew from Peter's face that he was guilty, and in that moment, I thought I was going to pass out onstage, in front of hundreds of people,' she wrote. Their subsequent divorce led to a six-year court battle. In addition to Sailor, the blond Hollywood vet is mom to daughter Alexa Ray, 39, whom she shares with ex-husband Billy Joel, and son Jack, 30, whom she welcomed with ex-husband Richard Taubman.
Daily Mail
37 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Eight years on, the undiagnosed condition that may explain why no one believed Chloe Ayling after she was snatched by a madman, injected with ketamine and held captive
She became one of the most famous – or infamous – kidnapping victims of our time. When British glamour model Chloe Ayling was abducted on a bogus photoshoot in Milan in 2017, her plight made global headlines and last year led to a gripping TV drama. Little wonder, because it was the real-life stuff of nightmares. Chloe, then only 20, was grabbed from behind and bundled into a suitcase. Injected with ketamine and chained to furniture, she was forced to sleep on the floor of a remote farmhouse. Pictures of her lying unconscious in skimpy clothing were sent to her manager in London, along with a demand for €300,000 (£260,000). If the ransom wasn't paid within a week, she would be auctioned off as a sex slave. She was also told she risked being fed to tigers when her 'buyers' tired of her. Although she was eventually released, it has been another ordeal for Chloe to rebuild her life. The reason? Many simply didn't believe her graphic and appalling story. So outlandish was the sequence of events she described – and crucially how odd her unemotional retelling of the story was – that to this day, eight years on, questions still abound about whether she was complicit in the kidnap and it was all an elaborate publicity stunt. Could the BBC documentary airing tonight finally silence the online commentators and conspiracy theorists? Including interviews with British and Italian police officers who were involved (and some of whom admit they too doubted Chloe's story at first), the three-part series offers an interesting new theory. It suggests Chloe's lack of emotion, both during the kidnap and in media interviews afterwards, was the result of immaturity and nervousness at finding herself in the public eye – but also of undiagnosed autism. Towards the end of the documentary, she actually receives a formal diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, which she says explains so much – not just about her reactions during her kidnap ordeal, but about her life before and since. 'I had a lot of difficulties with communication,' she explains in the documentary, while poring over childhood pictures. 'I'd react in the wrong way. If I was being told off I would smile. I just had the wrong reactions to things. 'My mum would come with me on school trips because I wouldn't be able to say what I wanted or express how I was feeling. For ages I just said I'm not an emotional person, but now I realise that no matter now hard I try, I just can't [express emotion].' In hindsight this was never more apparent than Chloe's attempt to communicate what had happened to her when she returned home to the UK. What a catastrophe that was. She admits: 'The aftermath affected me more than the kidnap.' The defining moment for many was when Chloe emerged from her mother's house to face the world's press to deliver a statement that began: 'I feared for my life, second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour.' The mountain house where Chloe was held for six days near Turin in Italy The smile on her face, her almost cheerily robotic delivery, and the way she was dressed – in a revealing vest top and tiny pair of shorts – seemed completely at odds with the seriousness of the situation. Public bafflement was quickly followed by judgment. These days we might call it victim blaming, although there looked to be inconsistencies in Chloe's story which contributed to the sheer disbelief that the situation happened the way she said it did. Why had she gone shopping with her kidnapper to buy shoes, for instance? Why hadn't she tried to run? Chloe, now 28, has spent the years since trying to convince others about what happened – even though in the eyes of the law there is no doubt whatsoever. Polish national Lukasz Herba was sentenced to 16 years and nine months (although this was later reduced to just over 11 years on appeal) after being convicted of her kidnapping. A career that went on to include a stint in the Big Brother house the following year – seen by many as evidence of Chloe's desire to be famous at all costs – hardly helped. 'What is it about me and my story that makes this so unbelievable?' she asks at the start of this documentary. By the end, you get the impression she has as much of an answer as she is ever going to get: because she didn't behave in the way most victims would, her story was scrutinised and found lacking. And because no one asked whether her robotic telling of her story could have another explanation, she was dismissed as a money-grabber who wanted only to be famous. By rights she should be livid, although she doesn't appear to be. 'I can't really be mad at people for not understanding, when I didn't really understand it myself,' she concludes. Chloe's diagnosis is a development that makes complete sense to her former manager Phil Green, who appears in the documentary reliving the horror of having to deal with hostage demands. Phil, who had been a lawyer before setting up a modelling agency, met Chloe when she was 19 and told me this week while the attractive teenager was clearly ambitious ('her goal was to have 100,000 followers on Instagram'), she wasn't a typical model-about-town. 'She didn't seem to have many friends, and didn't hang about with the other models. She lived at home with her mum,' he says. Unusually, for someone starting off in modelling, she also had a baby son 'who would only have been about one at the time,' remembers Phil. The child lived with his father, Chloe's ex partner Conor Keyes. Phil had not been aware of any suggestion of autism until the documentary, but now wonders if Chloe's condition actually helped her maintain a facade of calmness during the ordeal. 'Her reaction to everything that happened was so unemotional, even at the time, but maybe that was a good thing because if she'd behaved in the way some other girls would have who knows what would have happened? Chloe smiles in a skimpy top and shorts as she spoke to the press outside her mother's house after leaving Italy 'Afterwards though it led to people just not believing her.' His inclusion in the documentary defending her is also interesting given the background. Although Phil was the one who always seemed most steadfastly in her corner, Chloe appears to have blamed him for not doing enough to help secure her freedom and perhaps for putting her in jeopardy in the first place by sending her to Milan for the assignment. She dumped him as her manager as soon as she returned from Italy and they haven't spoken since. 'It was brutal,' he says of his sacking. 'I think she blamed me for what happened and we've never been able to sit down and talk properly about it. 'She thought I'd abandoned her [to the kidnappers], but the reality is that my office, which was in my house, had been taken over by the police. 'They were replying to the kidnapper's emails on my behalf. I was out of my depth trying to deal with it all, and I still feel terrible about what happened. I think she has remained bitter. But I always knew she was telling the truth.' He feels Chloe was the victim of more than the kidnapping, angrily lashing out today at the Italian prosecutors who put her story in the public domain against Chloe's own wishes. They also forced her to stay in Italy for weeks after her release, effectively holding her captive all over again. 'If that had happened to an Italian girl in Britain, she would have been allowed to go home immediately to be with her family.' On top of that, the Italian authorities took Chloe back to the property where she had been held – ostensibly to help with their investigation. 'My feeling then was that they didn't believe her and wanted to see her reaction,' he says. The feeling that Chloe was badly let down is echoed by the detective superintendent who headed the British side of the operation, who admits on camera (on condition of anonymity) that the lowest point in his 30-year career was when he realised he had not been able to find or save Chloe. 'It was my job to get her back and I didn't,' he says. The astonishing thing about this case is that it was not the authorities in either Britain or Italy who did save her. She was found only because the man holding her – a man she knew as 'MD', but who was later identified as Polish national Lukasz Herba – walked her into the British Consulate in Milan. In court Herba was described as a 'narcissistic fantasist' who had become obsessed with Chloe. A computer programmer who was living in the West Midlands, Herba had been a Facebook friend of Chloe's (a fact she discovered only after the kidnapping). In order to kidnap her he concocted an elaborate plan, posing as a photographer called Andre Lazio to book her via her agent for a modelling job in Milan. With the help of his brother Michal, who was also jailed for his part, he then abducted Chloe when she arrived in Italy, drugging her and bundling her into a holdall, before taking her to a remote hideout where he kept her captive for six days. He convinced Chloe that he was a trained assassin working for a Mafia organisation called Black Death. Although he never sexually assaulted her, she does speak in this documentary about how he did make sexual advances – but backed off when she convinced him that they would be able to embark on a proper relationship once she was free. She refers to an incident where he tried to kiss her but she declined, saying that she wasn't in the right 'headspace' but implied she could be once she was free. 'He lit up then and everything changed,' she says. 'He could easily have just raped me,' says Chloe, 'but he had this idea of having me in his future. He didn't want to upset me. I repeated that I was not in the right headspace. I wanted to be released before anything sexual happens. I got up and went to have a shower and he was all sorted after my shower. We didn't speak about it again.' Sharing his bed and shopping with him? While these were all details that caused people to doubt her, she says it was all part of her desperate attempt to gain his trust, hoping that he would break ranks, defy his dangerous bosses and help her escape. She was not to know that there was no Black Death organisation. 'He was the good guy in my eyes,' she says. After Herba deposited her at the British Consulate, initially Chloe attempted to stick to the script Herba had drilled into her – that he had simply found her and was her rescuer – but she soon caved under questioning. The fact that some details, such as the shopping trip for shoes, emerged later was highly damning to Chloe, but the Italian police accepted her story that she was simply embarrassed at how far she had gone to appear to be her captor's girlfriend. But public opinion was never as accepting and Chloe is understandably hurt that she was never given credit for her own role in her escape. What has happened to her since? After that perhaps ill-advised appearance on Celebrity Big Brother in 2018, she has rebuilt her life as a model, posting regularly on OnlyFans and Instagram (where she describes herself as an 'entrepreneur' and a 'multiple property owner'). She was never in a career that was compatible with anonymity, but she reveals in the documentary that a few years ago she bought a property in North Wales, falling in love with the area and attracted by the fact that no one knows who she is there. There is no mention of her son in the documentary. She declined to involve him for privacy reasons. Nor is her mum Beata a part of it. Chloe, originally from Coulsdon in south London, explains that her mother was so traumatised by the kidnap ordeal that she still cannot talk about it even eight years on. And while the autism diagnosis has helped Chloe herself understand the backlash against her, she is keen to stress that it does not excuse how she was doubted. There is rarely such a thing as a 'perfect victim' she says. 'Autism plays a big part in the way that I reacted, and that was confusing to neurotypical people. 'However, there are other reasons why people could react in the way that I did, or in an 'unusual' way that doesn't fit the normal box. 'People disassociate with events that have happened or have a delayed reaction, especially after trauma. So, it can't all be put down to a diagnosis, and that shouldn't affect the way people treated me.'
Daily Mail
39 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
'I thought it was a hat!' Video of man with bob throwing shapes in Ibiza sparks hilarious memes
A young partygoer with a stylish bob has been spotted cutting shapes in Ibiza. Footage of the man - Jack Kay - went viral at the start of this week as he was filmed donning a gold chain and pair of sunglasses with a baby pink cup gripped in his hand. But it was the dancer's haircut that caught the attention of thousands of social media users - with many saying they thought the 'top bloke' had been wearing a hat. The lone reveller's bright white teeth contrast perfectly with his black vest as he purses his lips and throws out his best moves to the groove of the music. Several thousand people have commented under the footage on TikTok after it was uploaded with a plea to locate the 'absolute legend'. Somebody claimed the mystery dancer was in fact 'Lloyd Christmas ' - a character from the film Dumb and Dumber who is also known to sport an iconic bob. One person said: 'When you've got Ibiza at 3 but the battle of hastings at 4.' Another added: 'That's a hat right? It is... it must be? Tell me it is...'. Since the footage spread online Mr Kay - now known as "Ibiza final boss" has uploaded a brand new video to TikTok - but this time with friends. He can be seen wearing the same iconic sunglasses and gold chain pulling out more dance moves from under his belt as a mate puts his arm around Mr Kay's neck. A montage of photos also shows the partygoer enjoying himself with "the lads". Somebody commented under the video: 'Short back and Battle of Hastings, cheers mate.' Another person said: 'Short back and magna carter please mate.' And a third concluded: 'Are the mandem from Sherwood Forest as well?' Mr Kay has already developed a fanbase with some admirers even using him as their artistic muse. Someone who had painted a portrait of the reveller caption their social media post: 'Excellent use of free will if I do say so myself.' Somebody concluded: 'When you've got Ibiza at 3 but the battle of hastings at 4.' The tweet was liked nearly 5000 times A number of people have even taken selfies with the Ibiza final boss as they bump into him on the island. Tony Truman, co-owner of Ocean Beach Ibiza, posed for a picture with the young champ while another fan mistook him for the DJ and presenter Charlie Sloth on their first encounter.
