I Once Met... Gianni Versace
I opened the lid of our backyard recycling bin and found the face of Gianni Versace looking up at me. A copy of the Times magazine fell open on a feature, ‘The serial killer and the fashion designer – a new TV series reveals all’. I was transported back to the early 1980s and my meeting with Versace.
I grew up one of a family of seven in a mill town near Skipton in Yorkshire. Reading, writing and arithmetic left me floundering but needlework, knitting and dressmaking set my fingers flying and my brain buzzing. When I was seventeen, Dad drove me in his van to Keighley railway station where I headed to Manchester for a week-long training course with Lancôme cosmetics.
By my early twenties, I was driving my own car, selling Elizabeth Arden, Yves Saint Laurent and Gianni Versace fragrance and cosmetics in department stores across northern England. We were encouraged to compete in sales and the annual pow-wows in London were a highlight, with seminars and awards. I worked hard and one year found me at the Royal Garden Hotel in London. The moment for the big award came and our manager announced, ‘Who better to tell you the winner than Gianni Versace himself?’ Gianni walked on stage, to gasps and frenzied applause. We were stunned, having had no inkling the great man would be present! My name was called for the award but I couldn’t move, so great was the shock. My manager helped me up and onto the stage, where Gianni beamed and exclaimed, ‘You’re wearing one of my scarves!’
Tongue-tied, I accepted his gift of a diamond pin (made to his design) and an invitation, with a select few, to his penthouse suite. I hurried off to change but my roommate had the key and she was nowhere to be seen. I had a major trek to obtain a spare key and, with time running out and terribly flustered, I threw on a new dress, with no time to attend to make-up.
Barely reaching the penthouse in time, I was guided to Gianni and prompted to make conversation, I found my stage fright continued. Gripped with rising nausea and seeing white stars before my eyes, I could only muster a smile and slipped away. Now, many years later – a grandmother and retrained as a gardener – I treasure Gianni’s diamond pin but still squirm in the spotlight. What would I have liked to say to him? ‘Gianni, do you like my dress? I made it myself, in night school.’
‘The Assassination of Gianni Versace’ begins on BBC2 on 28th February
Sue receives her gift from Versace in 1984