Signatures functions not simply as a Gianni Versace fashion catalogue, but as a visual statement about the universe the Italian designer had built during the eighties. Originally published in 1992, the book brings together fashion, photography, graphic design, art and popular culture in a deliberately exuberant object, far removed from the usual restraint of monographs devoted to designers.
Versace understood fashion as a language capable of absorbing seemingly incompatible references. Classical antiquity could coexist with black leather, baroque with punk, gold with electric colours and haute couture with a deliberately explicit sexuality. Signatures condenses this way of working and shows how the designer developed a recognisable vocabulary until his own surname became a visual identity.
The pages are dominated by some of the key figures in the fashion culture of the time. Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista and other leading models appear as part of an era in which Versace played a decisive role in transforming models into international celebrities. The body takes on central importance: dresses, fabrics and accessories are presented not merely as products, but as elements of a representation based on desire, sensuality and spectacle.
Photography therefore plays an essential role. Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Bruce Weber and other photographers associated with Versace helped construct an iconography that went beyond conventional advertising campaigns. The images could be sophisticated, provocative or openly theatrical, but shared a desire for immediate impact. In Signatures, photography and fashion are difficult to separate: each exists to amplify the other.
The book also reveals the extent to which Versace worked through the appropriation and transformation of images from art history. Greco-Roman motifs, baroque ornamentation, pop-inspired prints and references to contemporary artists are mixed without establishing hierarchies. His well-known fascination with Andy Warhol is particularly significant. Versace understood early on that fashion, art, advertising and celebrity could belong to the same visual culture.
Even the title, Signatures, is revealing. It refers not only to the designer's signature, but to all the elements that had become his own visual signatures: Medusa, classical motifs, golden chains, extravagant prints, black, leather, saturated colour and a conception of sexuality that rejected any attempt to go unnoticed.
Viewed today, the book also documents a very specific moment. In the early nineties, Gianni Versace was in one of the most influential periods of his career and was helping redefine the relationship between designers, photographers, models, musicians and celebrities. Fashion was decisively becoming a global entertainment industry, and Versace understood this transformation better than almost anyone.
Signatures captures that moment from within. Its lavish design, photographs and constant blending of references convey the same sense of controlled excess that characterised Versace's collections. Rather than explaining his work through a retrospective discourse, the book allows us to enter it directly.
For this reason, Signatures remains a particularly appealing publication for collectors of both fashion books and photography books. It is simultaneously a monograph on Gianni Versace, an archive of some of his most recognisable images and a portrait of an era in which fashion and photography were jointly constructing a new celebrity culture.
