The Donatella Style
From the Archives: A look back at when Donatella took over the Versace brand.
In 1998, my Newsweek Paris bureau chief Christopher Dickey asked me to do a major profile on Donatella Versace one year after her brother Gianni’s murder, and gave me six months to report it. (Yes, we used to spend six months working on stories…) With the announcement of Donatella’s retirement this week—news, by the way, I broke in The Style Files last week—I thought I’ll pull out that Newsweek International story and post it here.
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By Dana Thomas for Newsweek
March 7, 1999
Donatella Versace is sitting on the overstuffed sofa in her late brother's living room in Milan, talking about how much she loves doing his job. In a rapid staccato, she insists that she's in control and running the billion-dollar business “as Gianni would have wanted it.”
That is far from clear. In the year and a half since her brother was murdered on the steps of his Miami Beach mansion, Donatella has virtually erased th…
