Donatella Versace Has The Formula For A “Pandemic-Proof” Brand

Once a month, from her office at the Versace Headquarters in the north of Milan, Donatella Versace selects a piece of fan mail. She receives a lot of messages from young people, as many fashion designers do. Unlike most designers, Versace responds herself. She talks to them about her brand: what they thought of recent collections, what they liked, what they didn’t. And she takes notes. Versace began doing this around four years ago, just as the menswear at her brand entered a period of evolution. After several years of producing men’s collections that offered a high-glamour, high-camp, leather-chaps-on-the-catwalk aesthetic, the label was struggling to resonate with real consumers, and Versace herself felt estranged from what she was presenting. “I realized that I didn’t like it how it was,” she says now. “My taste had changed. And with a brand that’s been around for 45 years, at some point you have to change. You have to adapt yourself for the new world.” Read more at Hypebeast.