As New York's resident sex-pot designer, Anthony Vaccarello was a sensible choice to head up Versace's younger, second label Versus. Fusing Donatella Versace's knack for a slick, properly produced, over-the-top-in-all-the-right-ways 'show', and Vaccarello's minimal take on drop-dead sexiness, this was a marriage that got off to a great start. Versace wrangled her legions of loyal followers to the west side of Manhattan including Naomi Campbell, Rihanna and Nicki Minaj, unfurled a black and white runway paved with Greek fret motifs and set the show ablaze in a million kilowatts of expensive lighting. With that perfect setting and the crowd giddy with expectation, Vaccarello rolled out a series of minuscule black dresses held together with gold lion's head hardware, bondage straps and gold safety pins straight from the closet of Elizabeth Hurley. Vaccarello has never met a high hemline and a deep dress slit he didn't want to hike even higher, and these ambitions sat well on his gazelle-legged A-lister models. How they will sit on regular women is a moot point during a fashion debut such as this. But the freshest looks, to be honest, were the tailored pieces including a perfectly cut, slouchy at the waist, narrow-leg pant paired with a chic black jacket.
Photography: Jason Lloyd-Evans
