MILAN FASHION WEEK Style icons strut their stuff in Italy to pay homage to a legend.
Icons of style strutted their stuff in Italy to pay homage to a legend
Paying tribute to the late Gianni Versace on the 20th anniversary of his murder, former First Lady of France Carla Bruni, 49, joined supermodels Cindy Crawford, 51, Naomi Campbell, 47, Helena Christensen, 48, and Claudia Schiffer, 47, for a shimmering walk down the Versace runway on Sept. 22 as part of Milan Fashion Week. After the Versace Spring/ Summer collection was presented on today’s top models including Gigi Hadid, 22, and Crawford’s daughter, Kaia Gerber, 16, the show stopped to reveal the five legendary models, posing like goddesses against the backdrop. Descending from their poses, they then hit the runway with designer—and sister of Gianni—donatella Versace. The models walked to the tune of George Michael’s “Freedom ’90”—the
music video starred Crawford and Campbell—as well the soundtrack to the iconic moment of the Versace 1991 runway show in which Linda Evangelista, Crawford, Campbell and Christy Turlington united to sing along to the song. “Today I am not sad,” Donatella, 62, said in a press conference afterwards. “I am happy that after 20 years I can finally do this with a smile on my face,” she said, adding that her five stars of the show “had a green room each, but they are running in and out of each other’s rooms all day. And because they walk the runway together they are arguing about who gets to go in the middle, just like the old days.”
Days after the show, Schiffer was still feeling reflective: “We were all remembering Gianni, whom we worked very closely with,” she said.
Asked if she had felt nervous about walking in her first fashion show in 15 years, “Strangely it felt very much at home, very natural ... The most beautiful thing is that every model backstage was crying and clapping at the end of the show.”
Donatella also revealed that she used prints from her brother’s 1990s designs as the basis for this collection. “The silhouettes are all new because the shapes from those days look dated today,” she said. “Except the leggings. Everyone loves the leggings again. The models like Gigi and Bella [Hadid] are always asking me where they can get the ’90s Versace leggings.”
Gigi would have loved some leggings a day earlier. Before walking the Fendi show, she took a stroll around Milan and posted a shot on Instagram of the hole in the crotch of her hot-pink Fendi pants that she had to quickly sew up herself: “Just had to stitch my pants in the car,” she wrote. “An interesting experience thanks to the cobblestone streets of Milan.”