Style is not a pain in the neck

Interview, June, 1995 by Ingrid Sischy

QUESTION: Ties required?

ANSWER: No.

On the occasion of his new book, Men Without Ties - the American edition of which is being published this month by Abbeville Press - we had breakfast with Gianni Versace and Antonio D'Amico in Miami Beach to discuss the people who've had the greatest impact on Versace's men's fashion, and the designer's hatred of conformity.

INGRID SISCHY: Your latest book is called Men Without Ties. There's scarcely a tie to be found In it. In sculpture, when there was a big revolution happening, the pedestal became the symbol of all the past assumptions that had to be rethought. Is the tie, in the context of men's fashion, your equivalent of the pedestal that needs to be smashed?

GIANNI VERSACE: Yes. Actually, I have nothing against individual ties, but I hate what ties mean as a symbol. I hate the restrictions they have come to embody. I hate the fact that they represent a uniform way of understanding men's style, and I hate the rules they stand for. It is so stupid that you can't go in certain restaurants if you're a man and you don't have a tie on. That's insane to me. You see some really horribly dressed people with ties on in such a restaurant, and yet someone who had a beautiful flowered shirt on couldn't get in. Fashion has to be free to express personality and individuality. I don't understand why a man can't go to work wearing a beautiful turtleneck or a beautiful T-shirt. Thank God, all that has started to change, and in many places a man can, and does.

IS: Have you always been bothered by the restrictions that are imposed on men in terms of how they are dressed?

GV: When I was young, I wondered, why do men have to dress all the same? Why do they have this boring uniformity? I always liked people who were out of the crowd, who were individuals, who were free, who had a real sense of style, which means their own sense of style. I believe in style. I believe in people who have something to express, who make statements. That's why in the book there are photos of Picasso and Hemingway and Nijinsky and Cocteau and Robert Mitchum and Nureyev, and for men of today, Elvis, Prince, and Elton. . . . These are people who make statements about their lives via their individual styles of dressing. You can tell the lifestyle of their art, of their living, of their loving.

IS: We're talking about men here. And I'm sitting here having the same problem with the lack of options that women have had In terms of fashion. How about a book called Women WIthout Skirts? On the surface this is a conversation about style and fashion and men. But underneath we're really talking about the world - in fact, about men and women. There's been much discussion about the changes and backlashes and forward steps that have affected women, and some discussion about the linked and independent changes that have gone on with men. Thanks to all sorts of Influences and insistences, both sexes are freer today to dress in ways that feel comfortable to them. The best designers are hip to the changes that have gone on with both sexes and have helped them happen. But the fact is that a lot of fashion is still stuck on old Ideas of men and women, and on old ideas of appropriateness.

ANTONIO D'AMICO: Well, sometimes changes are not yet visible, but they're there anyway. Look how many men are wearing sexy underwear these days, with string or lace or stuff like that. Even people who work in ties are wearing lace underwear. It shows how much they need to be free and to express themselves in a different way.

GV: Fashion can help, but it's the person first who brings about changes. For example, the men's fashion I create has to do with personal desires. It is an expression and branch of myself. But I don't put myself on the stage. I put my "character" up there - the man who is free and who likes to dress in an individual way.

IS: That's the place to start, Isn't it? Because if you feel one way, chances are that others do too. I'm sure that is one of the exciting parts - to see that you're right and that people share your dream. And I'm sure another challenging part involves the naysayers, who go, "No man's gonna wear this!" At the beginning, was It a struggle to sell the mere daring clothes?

GV: When I did a man in polka dots, it was a big scandal. Some people said Versace dresses men like women. Now, the polka dot was invented for the country people in the seventeenth century. The problem is that these critics have no references. They're stuck on the superficial. It's the audience that interests me and that, by and large, gets what I'm doing. People want fantasy. Sometimes when I do a classic collection, there are those who complain that they want more fantasy. Clearly there is a huge space for a "man without a tie." That's what the success of the Versace line is all about. There's a reason we appeal to a lot of stars who have a very strong need to express their individuality. But I love it too when our regular customers - for example, someone seventy-five years old - come and say, "Finally, I can wear something like this, and I don't need to have a tie!"