Versace’s Book about Miami Beach
Among the many coffee-table books full of photographs and drawings that Gianni Versace produced “South Beach Stories,” published by Leonardo Editions in 1993, was a love letter to Miami’s South Beach, adopted by Verace as a second home. The book was published before Versace completed the restoration of the lavish villa that once belonged to the Vanderbilts, but he had already fallen in love with the place and wanted to pay tribute.
As Versace tells it, he was on his way to Cuba, possibly to scout locations for an advertising campaign he wanted to photograph there. Sister Donatella was vacationing in Miami with her American husband Paul Beck. Gianni asked a taxi driver to give him a tour of the city, and when they arrived at South Beach, with its shabby hotels for pensioners in Art Deco style painted in pastels he decided to skip Cuba and spend his time in South Beach.
Of all the coffee table books produced by Versace. I own only one, very kindly sent to me as a Christmas present by his brother-in-law Paul Beck, in 1993. I just learned that I’m very lucky to own a copy of this book, as Time Magazine photo researcher Simonetta Toraldo told me she had a terrible time tracking down a copy to send to New York. The book, by Gianni and Donatella Versace, contains short stories by Marco Parma, illustrated with drawings, paintings, and photographs. The first page has a fantasy drawing of palm trees, a cruise ship, dark glasses, and hibiscus flowers, and a quote from Marguerite Youracenar: “Every happiness is a masterpiece.”
The photos alternate between photojournalistic “slices-of-life” of South Beach by Doug Ordway along with fashion photos taken on location, a few family snapshots by Bruce Weber, two fashion photos by David Vance, colored drawings by Manuela Brambatti, Bruno Gianesi, and Thierry Perez, and painting by Alghiero Boetti, Roberto Juarez, and Mimmo Paladino. It’s the kind of self-indulgent book that we would all love to put together, beautifully printed by publisher Leonardo Arte. Many photos show hunky male models wearing the signature colorful Versace printed silk shirts, others show a luscious Christy Turlington on the beach.
It’s all very Versace, and to be honest it gives me a funny feeling to leaf through it, admire the beautiful colors, think about how he enjoyed the outdoor life there where he said he felt he could really relax and let his hair down, know that he was almost single-handedly responsible for the recuperation of many decaying Art Deco hotels and buildings and the boom in using the location for fashion shoots, and that he met his untimely death at the hands of a lone gunman on the steps of his beloved villa.
It’s a case of – if sombody wrote the script and submitted it to Hollywood they would have thrown it back on the slush pile. When I grew up in the Air Force the saying was: “Live fast, die young, and make a beautiful corpse.” In his fifty years on this planet no one can say that Gianni Versace did not leave his mark or enjoy life to the hilt. South Beach will surely miss him.
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