This story begins with two boys with high hopes, children of mid-twentieth century Southern Italy raised by an industrious Calabrian family. …
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On the one hand there is mother Franca Olandese, an emancipated seamstress with her own atelier who gets married and changes the label on her clothes: she becomes “Franca Versace, Reggio C”. She doesn’t know that she is planting a revolutionary seed that will germinate in the creative heart of her third child, little Gianni. On the other side there is father Nino Versace with the entrepreneurial attitude that he transmits intact to his eldest son, Santo. They say: “good blood doesn’t lie”. This wonderful adventure of the brothers who set up the Gianni Versace maison between the Seventies and Eighties, conquering the world of fashion, demonstrates how true this is sometimes.
However, the tragedy of an interrupted destiny can take away the light of even the most beautiful fairy tales. And after the darkness, the courage to start again sprouts in the roots of that same thirst for beauty in which everything began one day. After 27 years from the cursed July 15th 1997 in which Gianni Versace was killed in Miami, his brother Santo is full of the passionate memories of a lifetime and encloses them in the book “Fratelli. An Italian family” (Rizzoli; 160 pages; 18 euros) which he will present in Puglia these days. Today he is committed, heart and soul, to a new undertaking: giving back to the less fortunate some of the light of the gifts he has received from life. The Santo Versace Foundation, born with the stubbornness of Francesca De Stefano, his wife, is involved in projects to defend the most vulnerable, among which stand out ventures with the Salento-based Made in Carcere. «We want to create something that lives forever. We want to give back to others the gift of love that we received when we met” explains Francesca De Stefano Versace.
Santo Versace, the book retraces the history of the Versace brothers, of the fashion house and of the Italians from the roaring seventies: Santo, but did you and your brother Gianni have such a big dream as children?
«Gianni has always crawled among lace and lace and is, as they say, a son of art. Our parents were two extraordinary examples, I looked up to my father, Gianni looked up to my mother who was a genius. We divided our talents: Gianni my mother’s creativity, I my father’s entrepreneurial ability. When I returned home after the military, Gianni was already designing his first collections, he had an innate talent but above all he had mastered the secrets of tailoring. So, as an accountant, I studied how to turn this dream into a business: that’s how we started, always together. Gianni and I have always thought about working with passion, and everything came naturally to us.”
She had become the big brother…
«Yes, there were three of us Tinuccia: when Tinuccia died in 1953 I became the eldest. We were children, a spring was triggered inside us to fill that immense void; also for this reason Donatella was born in 1955. I have always worked to make the dreams of everyone in the family come true, and when Gianni started his new life on February 4, 1972, I followed and organized him. I counted on his enthusiasm and determination when we moved to Milan. When I told Gianni that the time had come to become Gianni Versace, I explained to his partner at the time that, with a minimum of luck, we would have done better than YSL which at that moment was number one in world fashion.”
Here came the glory and success of the Versace style, the love of Italians and stars from all over the world, top models and Lady Diana. Then suddenly in ’97 Gianni’s murder canceled the future.
«Gianni had new projects that would revolutionize Italian fashion in the world. That day he instead broke the lives of all of us; I still remember Donatella and I immersed in the embrace of thousands of people at the funeral in the Milan Cathedral, but I have never felt so alone, ever. It took many years for me to overcome those traumas, including being able to tell the story of my family and the Gianni Versace fashion house in this book. My wife Francesca helped me, I met her in 2005 because her mother, my friend, wanted to open a chocolate company and came to visit me: by chance her daughter Francesca, a lawyer, accompanied her. It was love at first sight, we got married twice, first civilly and then in church. Today you take care of the Foundation full time.”
Is the Santo Versace Foundation a way to return the gifts received from life? In Salento he collaborates with Made in Carcere.
«Yes, the Foundation was born because we didn’t have children together and we thought we’d do something that would help children, but also the elderly and other vulnerable people. We wanted to leave something for the most socially disadvantaged people, supporting interventions and projects dedicated to women, social inclusion, the fight against poverty and training. We have been collaborating with Made in Carcere for years. We were involved in the expansion of the project within the women’s department of the Taranto prison, because beauty educates and helps, and then training and self-entrepreneurship for the inmates.”
In addition to the Foundation, there is the Cinema. She always deals with beauty in the end…
«After fashion, I now deal with art and culture and therefore with cinema, we are partners of Minerva Pictures. If the Foundation is our child for us, I also continue to follow Altagamma which I founded in ’92 to contribute to the growth of businesses in the Italian cultural and creative industry.”
You and Francesca are linked to Puglia.
«We love Puglia and Salento very much and, beyond work, we always come back willingly».
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© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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Puglia Newspaper
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