by Deborah Ball
Bankers and businesspeople joined the artists, ad executives, and movie types who originally cottoned to Armani’s clothes. (Jackie Onassis, reincarnated in a new persona as editor at a Manhattan publishing house, wore his clothes to work.) In April 1982, Time magazine put Armani on the cover, dubbing his clothes “Giorgio’s Gorgeous Style.” The eight-page article thoroughly established Armani as a cultural star, with his precociously white hair and Paul Newman—blue eyes set off by an oaken tan.
For all of his clothes’ public association with sexuality and glamour, Armani’s natural sobriety permeated his designs, giving them an aura of asceticism and authority that also characterized the man and his business. He had a terrible fear of losing his good looks, despite the fact that he grew more handsome with age, as a few wrinkles tempered his finely sculpted face, with its high cheekbones and slim, haughty nose. His personal uniform of close-cut navy or black cashmere sweaters and flat-front pants accentuated a lean physique that never wore an extra pound. He didn’t drink or smoke, and he abstained from heavy food, begrudgingly serving delicacies such as caviar and lobster only at the formal dinners he hosted. Terrified of looking foolish, he stopped dancing at the age of twenty-five and tore up photographs of himself that he didn’t like.7
Armani’s fierce discipline was an indispensable contributor to his rapid, spectacular success and inspired cultlike devotion from many of his managers. But by the early 1980s, swapping stories of Armani’s obsession for control was a bitchy parlor game in Milan. His contracts with his workers decreed that merely attending another designer’s runway show was a fireable offense. He eschewed the outside runway producers who typically helped designers plan shows, preferring to cast the models, choose the music, and give detailed stage directions himself.
“Something as simple as the girl putting her hands on her hips the wrong way could ruin the magic I envision,” he told W Magazine in October 2000.8 Once, when he staged his runway show in a storied building in the historic center, he covered the magnificent frescoes on the ceiling so that they wouldn’t distract the audience from his clothes.
In 1985, Armani suffered a blow that would leave him even more autocratic and remote when Sergio Galeotti died of AIDS. Though homosexuality had ceased to be taboo in Italy by the 1980s, Armani continued to hide his sexual orientation and ordered his public relations department to tell the press that Galeotti had died of a heart problem. (When Il Messaggero, Rome’s daily newspaper, wrote the truth, Armani threatened to pull his ads.) To manage his grief, Armani resorted to antidepressants for a time, before throwing himself full force into his work, displaying a steely determination that left little room for a personal life.
“Giorgio has no friends,” his sister, Rosanna, once told a journalist. Armani agreed: “When do I have time to make myself friends?”9
In his relationships with people as well as in his style and temperament, he was the antithesis of the romantic Calabria-born designer striving to become his main rival in Italian fashion. By 1981, Gianni’s top-floor apartment on Via Melegari was getting crowded. With Paul Beck spending much of his time there, and Donatella having moved in, it was close quarters for the three. Gianni had just one full bathroom, leaving the trio to jostle to use it in the morning. And the place had become a magnet for Gianni’s entire social crowd. Donatella and Paul hit it off from the start. With Gianni working very long hours, they often found themselves alone together. Donatella, still suffering from the loss of her mother, felt somewhat out of her depth in Milan. Shy by nature, she struggled to carve out a group of friends of her own and, in the beginning, returned frequently to Reggio. To the catty fashion pack in Milan, the glamorous designer’s sister came off as provincial, with her hair sometimes badly bleached or clumsily cut and with a heavy Calabrian accent that made the haughty Milanese cringe. When she became nervous in the company of strangers, her face settled into a heavy-lidded stony look, accentuating the fact that her eyes were set close together.
Although she was very slim, Donatella hated her body. Next to her brother’s model friends, with their long, slim limbs like stretched smooth taffy, her own short legs and meaty hands looked stubby and inelegant. Extremely vigilant about her weight, she was constantly on a diet, sometimes getting by on little more than rice and vegetable puree. “Look at how fat I am!” she complained to friends, ignoring their protests to the contrary. Never very photogenic, Donatella hated being photographed and was often captured with a diffident, stern expression. Soon, however, she learned to turn her left side—her better one—to the camera.
Feeling so out of place, she had many reasons to cling to Paul, who was her age, and the tight circle of friends who worked for her brother. Because Paul’s Italian was poor, the pair mostly spoke in English, even though Donatella’s command of the language was still tenuous. But the language barrier didn’t stop them from having fun. Donatella and Paul went dancing often in the evening, while Gianni, exhausted from designing several lines in addition to his signature brand, went to bed early. While Donatella’s stylish way of dressing and fresh prettiness attracted men—she looked young, even passing for a teenager—she dated little. Gradually, however, she felt a spark for Paul. Paul reciprocated and the couple moved into a spartan rented apartment on the other side of Milan.
Within about a year, Gianni hired Paul to help develop the accessories for the men’s line, a small job. Even after several years in Italy, Paul remained something of an outsider. His Italian improved little and he had only a faint grasp of the country’s popular culture. But Gianni saw him as potentially useful to the business. Eager to expand abroad and to win over the recalcitrant American customer, he realized that Paul and his perfect English would help him. Santo, despite intensive language courses, never managed to learn English, and Gianni’s command of the language was fine for party chitchat but was hardly polished at the time. Donatella spoke passable English, but, as she did in Italian, she spoke so quickly that the words tumbled out of her mouth garbled, often leaving her interlocutor perplexed.
Outsiders may have marveled at Gianni’s ability to absorb Paul into the family fold, but, in its own way, the move proved how strong family ties are for southerners. Calabrians like the Versaces believe deeply that blood is always thicker than water; the family has provided the only bulwark against centuries of abuse at the hands of kings, brutal rulers, and corrupt state officials. Even when it was divided by vicious internal feuds, a Calabrian family closed ranks in the end.
With time, Paul’s sweet, easygoing personality and sunny temperament made him a favorite with the Versaces’ friends and employees. Once, during a hot car trip to visit Versace’s factory outside Milan in the summer, he convinced other employees to play hooky for a couple of hours and go for a swim. His evident affection for Donatella and his popularity at the company helped ease tensions between Gianni and Donatella, the result of the siblings’ volcanic personalities.
At the beginning of 1982, Gianni threw himself wholeheartedly into a new project—designing the costumes for a new production of Richard Strauss’s Josephs Legende at La Scala. Gianni’s debut would be one of the most important nights of his life, but not because of his work on the costumes. Santo had tried to talk Gianni out of taking on the La Scala project, worried it would distract him from his own still-emerging brand. But at times, fashion failed to sate Gianni’s creative restlessness; the theater let him stretch and experiment with shapes and patterns that were unthinkable for use in a ready-to-wear line. Indeed, Gianni’s proudest moment would come not after a fashion show but when he saw his costumes on stage in 1986 at the premiere of a Paris ballet staged by Maurice Béjart, the French choreographer. “I cried that night,” he told a New Yorker journalist.10
By the time of the Strauss production, Gianni, now thirty-six years old, was dating a handsome forty-year-old man, whom he invited to the La Scala debut. After the show, the couple followed the stream of dancers and musicians to Biffi, the storied restaurant next to La Scala whe
re celebratory post-opera dinners were traditionally held. Smiling broadly, Gianni soaked up kudos from the crowd. Then a friend approached with a much-younger man in tow. As the two made small talk, Gianni’s gaze lingered on the stranger, a strikingly good-looking young man dressed in a white suit that showed off a lithe body, smooth olive skin, and dark green eyes. With his full lips, dark curly hair, and languid features, the man could have stepped out of ancient Rome—or out of a Versace ad. It was a look that Gianni adored. “Why don’t you join me at my table?” he asked, suddenly forgetting his boyfriend’s presence at the event.
Antonio D’Amico was twenty-four years old and, like Gianni, was a son of Italy’s deep south, although his childhood had been far rockier than Gianni’s. Born in Brindisi, on the spur of the Italian boot, Antonio had moved to Milan with his mother and little sister when he was three, soon after his parents separated. His mother, a petite, dark-haired young woman who resembled Ava Gardner, found work as a seamstress in a coat factory and sent Antonio and his sister to live with some nuns who took in children. Every two weeks, she gathered the small family for a walk in the park or a gelato. After a few years, when she remarried, the children came to live with her again, but soon the small family suffered another blow. On Christmas Day, Antonio, then fifteen, was sitting next to his fourteen-year-old sister during the long holiday lunch when the girl suddenly felt sick. She quickly collapsed, dead from a heart defect.
After high school, Antonio bounced from job to job, helping in a tailor’s shop and working as a chef. With his good looks and ready smile, he also landed a bit of second-rate modeling and acting work, becoming a minor celebrity in Italian fotoromanzi—magazines that told love stories using photos of the actors along with dialogue boxes to explain the action. They were cheesy but enormously popular among Italian housewives in the years before American soap operas arrived on Italian television. He had relationships with both men and women.
One day in February 1982, Antonio was on a shoot when a friend, who owned a large textiles shop in Milan and knew Gianni, invited him to the ballet at La Scala. Antonio was curious to meet the designer; just a few weeks earlier, he’d bought a Versace sweater that he found terribly fashionable, with loose bat-wing sleeves and a Greek motif knit in blue and Bordeaux. When Gianni invited him to sit at his table, Antonio, swept away by the designer’s charm and evident interest, assented—only to find himself sitting next to Gianni’s boyfriend. Gianni continued to chat up Antonio, oblivious as his boyfriend squirmed nearby. After dinner, Gianni slyly asked for Antonio’s phone number. “I’ll call you,” he said.
Antonio left the next day for a month-long trip to Japan for work. When he got back, his answering machine was full of messages, including four or five from Gianni. In the last one, he said, “Since you apparently don’t see fit to call me back, this is the last time I’m calling you!” A few days later, Antonio made amends and went to dinner at Gianni’s apartment. He was impressed by the fine Art Deco furnishings, antique sculptures, and lavish oil paintings. The designer, twelve years his senior, was the most sophisticated, charming man he’d ever met. Indeed, Gianni was a master at enchanting the people around him. When he trained his natural exuberance and enthusiasm on someone, that person came away feeling slightly starstruck. “I’m all yours,” he often told journalists with a warm smile, throwing his arms open and putting them instantly at ease. He laughed easily, trading a juicy bit of gossip he knew would entertain a friend or employee. When Zia Nora arrived for a visit once, he snuck up behind her and cupped her breasts in his hands. “What big titties you have, Zia!” he teased her, as the old lady laughed and slapped his hands away.
Over dinner, Gianni admitted that his current relationship was fizzling out. Antonio, for his part, had been floating from one fling to another. They began seeing each other two or three times a week. Gianni flattered Antonio shamelessly, saying he looked like a baroque putto, the cherubic child idealized in Renaissance paintings. Antonio, dazzled by the attention, drank it up. Over the rest of 1982, the pair saw more and more of each other, spending virtually every weekend together.
After about six months, Gianni began to insist that Antonio come to work for him. (It was typical of the Versaces to absorb friends, family, and even former lovers into the company; Donatella’s high school sweetheart Enzo ran the shop in Reggio, while several of Gianni’s ex-boyfriends worked at the company.) He wanted to make Antonio the head of sales for Istante, a second line that was slightly cheaper than Versace’s main collection, but Antonio was wary. Gianni’s tight-knit staff was already tittering about their boss’s latest affair; few of them thought it would last. Moreover, Donatella and Santo didn’t hide their contempt for Antonio. Santo seemed skeptical about putting the inexperienced young man in charge of one of the house’s collections. Donatella, ever jealous of anyone who might compete for Gianni’s attentions, was cold and unfriendly with him from the start.
When Antonio agreed to work on Istante, he went to Santo’s office to sign the contract. Santo, clearly annoyed, cut to the chase. “What is your relationship with my brother?” he asked sharply.
“That’s none of your business,” Antonio retorted. “That’s between me and Gianni.”
The job with Istante lasted just two months; Antonio was over his head and sensed he was unpopular with the staff. Gianni, anxious to bring his new lover into his fold, deputized him instead to work with him on his theater costumes, where he didn’t have to answer to Santo. Over time, Antonio’s relationship with Santo mellowed into one of mutual respect. He and Donatella, however, settled into a cold war that lasted for years.
Soon after Antonio started work at the company, his relationship with Gianni stumbled badly. Antonio was spending nearly every night at Gianni’s house because Gianni complained on the rare occasions Antonio wanted to go home. Then one evening, when Antonio planned to return to his own place, Gianni didn’t object. Antonio found this strange. Later that night, he slipped back into Gianni’s house—to find him in a clinch with an American model on the living room sofa. Unbeknownst to Antonio, Gianni had been carrying on an affair for some time. Furious, Antonio chased the interloper out and turned on Gianni. “I don’t give a shit that you’re Gianni Versace!” he yelled. “You can’t have everything. You can’t have me and still have these flings. You have to choose!”
For a week, Gianni tried to apologize, but Antonio avoided him. Finally, they spoke. “I had no idea that our relationship was so important to you,” Gianni said. Soon afterward, Antonio moved in.11
Despite their rough start, they made a good couple. Gianni, full of restless energy and brio, worked constantly, while Antonio, more even-tempered, was his anchor. Gianni was naturally a passionate man, and by the early 1980s, he felt an enormous excitement at the explosion of his career. As the relationship grew more serious, Gianni’s friends whispered that Antonio was far too provincial for someone of Gianni’s growing stature. However, Gianni found that Antonio’s modest background, earthy wit, and forthright manner grounded him at a time when Gianni was being swept up in the whirlwind of his growing success.
It took a while for Antonio to get used to Gianni’s intensity. The designer never switched off. It was as if he was afraid his fabulous new life would come to a halt if he let up for even a minute. Impervious to the people around him, he carried a notebook with him everywhere he went, furiously jotting down thoughts gleaned from a film he just saw, a stylish woman in the street, the color of flowers in the countryside. In the evenings, after dinner, Gianni sat on his sofa, sketching or paging through piles of newspapers and magazines, leaving a trail of paper on the floor. Whenever he was traveling, whether for vacation or for work, he sent dozens of faxes with sketches to his team, and called obsessively to see that they had followed his orders. He was so distracted that he stopped driving entirely, “for the safety of pedestrians,” as he often joked. Gianni’s relentlessness sometimes exhausted Antonio, who would escape to a separate room in their apartment f
or a break. But mostly, Gianni’s kinetic energy, childlike delight in his good fortune, and insatiable curiosity provided a daily thrill for Antonio.
While he was demanding and perfectionist in his work, Gianni was disorganized and distracted in his personal life, gladly entrusting the details to Antonio. He stopped carrying money, leaving it to Antonio to manage the bills. When he changed into his silk dressing gown in the evening to relax, he left a trail of clothes on the floor behind him. A regular gym goer, Antonio nagged Gianni to join him, but Gianni stubbornly refused. “I work with my head, not my body,” he told Antonio.12 Neither fat nor slim, Gianni had the solid build typical of many Italian southerners. He had little patience for exercise, nor perhaps the need for it, as his restless energy burned up the plates of pasta he put away. If Antonio pushed him to follow a diet, Gianni refused. Antonio preened and tended to his good looks, but Gianni, who enjoyed a natural self-confidence and cared far less about his appearance, stuck to a daily uniform of slouchy black or dark blue trousers and a matching lightweight cashmere-and-silk mock turtleneck.
Despite Gianni’s evident affection for Antonio, Donatella couldn’t stand her brother’s boyfriend. She sniped about Antonio to Gianni, criticizing his work in the atelier and pitting the staff against him.
“It was mostly about work,” Antonio remembered. “She would say something against me to Gianni, but I always put her in her place. I said, listen, I don’t bother you, so don’t bother me. I tried never to put Gianni in a situation of having to worry about me or Donatella or of having to choose.”13 Once, when Antonio made a negative comment about an ad campaign that Donatella and Paul had just presented to Gianni, she exploded, sparking a heated argument between the two. Gianni sat in silence.14