Donatella Versace was never going to get left behind in the season of the supermodel. After all, as the person who convinced her brother Gianni to have the model stars of George Michael’s Freedom video walk the Versace runway lip-syncing the song in 1991, she pretty much invented the concept.
This catwalk season has seen a four-strong supermodel cameo at Vogue World in London and Christy Turlington in gold lamé at Ralph Lauren in New York, but Donatella had an ace up her sleeve in the shape of Claudia Schiffer. With Barbie dolls created in homage to her long career in modelling, Schiffer has been all but retired after walking Yves Saint Laurent’s farewell show in 2002. She has made only one appearance since, in a 2017 Versace show marking the 20th anniversary of Gianni’s death, but she returned to the catwalk in Milan at Versace’s show on Friday night.
Versace invited Schiffer to star in a show which paid homage to two classic Gianni Versace collections from 1995, a year when Schiffer was the face of every Versace catwalk and of a billboard campaign shot by Richard Avedon.
