ATELIER VERSACE HAUTE COUTURE – Spring/Summer 2016

January 25, 2016

By Marcellous L. Jones

Images Courtesy of Versace

Paris, France – In kicking off the Spring/Summer 2016 haute couture season, Milanese fashion house Versace presented its Atelier Versace line on the catwalks of Paris. At the show came a plethora of the popular, rich and famous. Sitting front row from among them were the likes of pop singer Rita Ora; American designer (and former artistic director at Balmain) Alexander Wang; and Riccardo Tisci, current artistic director at the house of Givenchy.

Excess has never been a secret to Versace’s creations. And upon seeing the new collection, one imagines that artistic director Donatella Versace must have been humming the line “Too much is not enough” from 1980’s N°1 smash hit song Fame as sang by Irene Cara and from the movie of the same name. The daring cuts and skin-revealing silhouettes are all the proof that this writer needs no receipt to backup that notion.

The collection starts with sportswear pieces that bear the current trench of using bands to accentuate, embellish and to even hold a design together. The first three looks feature them in both the three-piece pants ensemble, the three-piece skirted ensemble and in the three-pieces pants ensemble with stirrups. As they are introduced into the gowns and dresses, we see the flesh start to fly.

Donatella Versace moves us away from the cutouts that she made all the rage one year ago. Rather than completely bearing the skin, she replaces the cutouts with a string-like materials that still allows light to penetrate in order to show the flesh. She shores up the looks with sparkling ropes. This latter element is omni present in the collection. And in fact Swarovski introduced them last season in their accessories collections as both bracelets and necklaces. Atelier Versace gives them a new and more interesting purpose by integrating them into the collection.

It would be utterly misleading of this writer to leave our readers believing that Donatella Versace has completed done away with the cutouts. That is not entirely the case. Later in the collection she does leave them in several silhouettes, but mostly with the string-like fabrics too placed somewhere in the garment. The last section of the collection takes on a tribal vibe with it colorful strings. And lastly, this writer must note that without using corsets, the Atelier Versace line for Spring/Summer 2016 somehow manages to create an extremely skinny waistline. And what woman of today does not dream of that?

@FashionInsider1