Testimonial by Logan Bentley Lessona
For many years I’ve lived in Rome and have reported on fashion for various publications. I write about a lot of other subjects so I don’t cover every single fashion show in Italy but I’ve met and interviewed most of the major players. Milan, Florence, and Rome are where most of the events take place, with high fashion reserved for Rome. Unfortunately times have changed, and although there are still some respectable designers such as Lancetti, Rocco Barocco, Sarli, Raffaella Curiel who still show in Rome Capucci just exhibits in museums, and Valentino takes both his high fashion and ready-to-wear collections to Paris. This July the city government (up for reelection) and the official Italian fashion organization decided to make an extra effort, and invented “Divina Roma” combining the fashion shows with shows of films.
For over ten years the highlight of the summer fashion shows in Rome has been a television extravaganza called “Donna Sotto le Stelle” (Woman Under the Stars) held on the Spanish Steps and sold to TV networks around the world. The setting is spectacular and unique, but the neighboring shops and residents are not happy with the huge scaffolding put up to house the TV lights and the piazza and steps being blocked off for the better part of a week. It’s become a huge event, combining appearances by most of the biggest Italian fashion stars and international celebrity guests. Among those scheduled for this year’s event were Liza Minelli, Cindy Crawford, soprano Sarah Brightman, Courtney Love, and Naomi Campbell.
At noon on July 15 I attended the press conference for “Donna Sotto le Stelle” held under the large tent constructed at the Pincio on the edge of the Villa Borghese Park overlooking the Spanish Steps and the luxurious shopping district surrounding them. It was explained that over 25 minutes of the two-hour show would be dedicated to Versace’s models,that in the past other top designers had been featured, and this time it was Versace’s turn. A journalist mentioned the $300,000 newspapers had reported would be paid to model Naomi Campbells for strutting down the steps dressed in Versace, but Versace’s Press Director, Emanuela Schmeidler, protested that the fee was a fraction of that amount. After the press conference I spoke briefly with Emanuela and made a date for 7pm to watch the Versace models rehearse for the show. She also invited me to their press conference scheduled for noon the next day.
After attending some fashion shows I went home to work on my webs. I planned to attend the rehearsals to take some photos and pick up some color, often it’s a good opportunity for chatting up the designers as they have time on their hands during the waits for the TV program director’s instructions to the models and other delays. I watched CNN’s exclusive interview with O.J. Simpson that was repeated from 3 to 4pm, then I switched to another channel. A few minutes later my daughter, who was working for the organization of the fashion shows, called to tell me of Versace’s death. I decided to go to the Hotel de La Ville at the top of the Spanish Stepswhere everybody from Versace was staying to see if by any chance I could lend a hand. Police cars were arriving at the hotel and one positioned itself just outside the door of the hotel’s garage next to the entrance. Photographers were waiting on the sidewalk. About an hour later the Santo and Donatella Versace would leave from there for Ciampino Airport and a chartered Falcon jet that would fly them direct to Miami with a refueling stop at the Azores.
Once inside the hotel the concierge tried to call the Versace suite for me but they were not accepting calls from the Switchboard. In Italy most everybody has a cell phone which they use incessantly. I saw a group sitting that looked like they might be a rock band scheduled to appear on the Spanish Steps. A young man sitting with them, Francesco Sconamiglio, told me he was from Naples and that he was a backstage worker for the Versace fashion show. “I’m a designer, I can’t tell you how many fashion houses I approached, even offering my services for free, and not all of them were very polite. Instead, they took me on at Versace, and they have been wonderful to me. I am just devastated, the family is all closed inside the suite, I don’t have the courage or the heart to disturb them. Naomi (Campbell) was here in the lobby a little while ago, she was destroyed with grief, she could not stop crying.” A few minutes later we saw two of the top executives from Mediaset, the company that was putting on the mega-TV show huddling with Ricardo Gay, head of one of Milan’s top model agencies, and Beppe Modenese, the press officer for the Fashion Designers Association. We surmised they were deciding whether or not the show scheduled for the following evening should go on.
We decided to go down to Piazza di Spagna and see what was going on there. Just outside the hotel we saw Francesco Carducci, the city councilman in charge of tourism and special events who told us it had been decided to cancel the television show. The organization later re-scheduled it to take place in September, three days before the already-planned TV spectacular in Piazza Navona. (I later learned that most of the models who had been booked renounced their fees and simply accepted reimbursment for their travel expenses.)But when we got to the Piazza di Spagna where light scaffolding and TV cameras were set up nobody believed us. They were all convinced that Valentino would arrive at 8pm with his models to rehearse. Journalists came and went looking for people to interview. A little while later we learned that Mediaset had decided to put on a two-hour special right after the 8pm news dedicated to Versace, with a host in their studio and live feeds from the two TV stars who would have conducted the show from Piazza di Spagna. I decided to go home and watch the show on TV, alternating with CNN. The next morning the story of Versace’s death was on the front page of all the Italian newspapers, with some of them dedicating up to four pages to the designer. I have a feeling that in the Italian fashion world things will never be the same.
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