Antonio D’Amico, designer, former model and Gianni’s partner, died in the night Versace until his disappearance. She was 63 years old and had been battling an illness for months that proved to be fatal.
In this period – says those close to him – he has always given everyone an example of strength and courage. Antonio D’Amico a year ago had inaugurated his new line of tailored suits, Principe di Ragada. His manager and friend Rody Mirri broke the news this morning.
D’Amico was Gianni Versace’s partner from 1982 until his tragic death in 1997, and his collaborator on the sports line of the maison. The designer had left him an annuity and the use of his houses. However D’Amico preferred to receive his liquidation in a lump sum and used it to launch his own career as a stylist. The Antonio D’Amico clothing house, with headquarters and showroom in Milan, despite the excellent start, ceased its activity after three years due to management-managerial difficulties, but D’Amico continued in his activity in other forms until the end.
Of a reserved nature, and on bad terms with the Versace brothers, D’Amico in the years following the tragic death of Versace released very few statements and only two interviews, the last of which was in December last year, a guest on Serena’s TV Bortone, when he allowed himself to the cameras, telling his story. On one point, despite the bad relations, he was in complete agreement with the Versace family: the total rejection of the TV series that recounted Gianni’s death.
The meeting with Gianni Versace took place in 1982 during a ballet and it was love at first sight. “When we were introduced to dinner we broke up like this – Antonio recalled with teary eyes during the television broadcast – then after a few months (because I was away for work) in which he always wrote to me, I made myself heard and he he asked me why I never answered him, but I hadn’t even had the opportunity to read the messages.” The two were one of the first homosexual couples to come out and to live their love publicly for 15 years.
The stars, the models, the fashion, the dream. Gianni Versace 25 years after his death
by Serena Tibaldi
July 14, 2022
It was Antonio, on that tragic July 15, 1997, who found Gianni Versace again: “It was the day that cut my life in two and the part that remained buried. That part took a long time to recover, they are wounds that never they heal completely. That scene in which I found him again in my head has never been erased. I still see her today, That morning he was forced to go buy the newspapers, I got up and went to play tennis and the ‘I learned after he was out. No one could imagine this.
A tragic experience, which further marked his existence, already drastically marked bythe death of his sister Maria, who died before his eyes, when Antonio was just 16 years old, due to a congenital heart disease.
At that moment the abyss of depression opened up for Antonio: «I no longer had reasons to exist. It made no sense at all. I swallowed medicine to die. I also wrote a farewell letter.
Only a few years later did Antonio find love again, as he himself said on that occasion: «I have had a partner for 16 years. I’m for long stories. Once you choose to be with someone, it’s forever for me. He would be happy to see me so serene.”
