LONDON — Donatella Versace has suggested that women are better than men at designing clothes because gay fashion designers are releasing collections “for the woman they want to be.”
The Italian fashion designer, vice-president and chief designer of the Versace Group, said she believes women understand their bodies better.
Her comments are likely to raise a few eyebrows among her peers, but she believes female designers have an advantage because they “understand a woman’s body, a woman’s security and a woman’s attitude.”
Thibault Camus/APFrom left, Goldie Hawn, Italian fashion designer Donatella Versace and Kate Hudson pose as they arrive for the Atelier Versace Spring-Summer 2015 Haute Couture fashion collection in Paris on Jan. 25, 2015.
The 61-year-old told The Times Magazine: “I love gay people. My friends are all gay. But some of the designers, when they design for a woman, they design for the woman they want to be, you know. They are thinking of themselves.
“But themselves and the woman are not the same.… I want to design clothes that say, ‘This is a woman’s clothes.’ ”
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“Riccardo Tisci is amazing, so many (male) designers are amazing, too — but sometimes there is this little thing where they need to take themselves a little bit behind who they are, and to look at the real woman.”
Pascal Le Segretain/Getty ImagesDesigner Donatella Versace, actor Nolan Gerard Funk and Lady Gaga attend the 2014 Vanity Fair Oscar party on March 2, 2014, in West Hollywood, Calif.
Versace, rumoured to have pop star Lady Gaga play her in a new series of American Crime Story depicting the real-life murder of her brother Gianni in Miami in 1997, recently told how she wanted to empower women with her latest designs.
Some of her latest womenswear collections incorporated a military style, with the inclusion of flat shoes, which was seen as radical for the brand.Versace added: “We are strong. Women are strong… and sexiness does not have to go against power.”