Versace: the Medusa, Barocco and Japan's Long Love of Gold

This is our story of Versace in Japan, from the Kobe exhibition and the bubble years to the Ginza flagship. To identify a piece in the hand, the Medusa, the silks and the labels line by line, read the companion Versace collector's guide.

By The Japonista Curation and Concierge Team, Tokyo. A Journal feature on the fashion house; the watches have their own guide.

On 28 March 1978, at the Palazzo della Permanente in Milan, a 31-year-old from Reggio Calabria showed the first women's collection under his own name. Gianni Versace had spent six years designing for other labels. Now he had his brother Santo on the books, his younger sister Donatella at his side, and a taste for leather, silk and metal in the same outfit. Forty-eight years later the house belongs to the Prada Group, a Belgian designer holds the pen, and the Medusa still stares out of every gold button. Our argument is simple: Versace is the Italian house that Japan read first as theatre, and its clothes still teach classical myth at full volume. It belongs to the longer story of why the world's treasures came to rest in Japan.

At a glance

	Versace
Founder	Gianni Versace, born in Reggio Calabria on 2 December 1946, killed in Miami Beach on 15 July 1997
First show	28 March 1978, Palazzo della Permanente, Milan
Emblems	The Medusa head in a round frame, the Greca (Greek key) border, the Barocco scroll print
Lines	Gianni Versace main line, Istante, Versus (1989), Atelier Versace (1989), Signature (1991), Versace Jeans Couture, Versace Home
In Japan	Kioicho main store until May 2009; return in 2011; Ginza flagship from 23 November 2015
Owner today	Prada Group, since 2 December 2025
Creative head	Pieter Mulier, Chief Creative Officer from 1 July 2026
On our shelves	169 pieces: silk shirts, rider jackets, Medusa jewellery, bags, Fendace and a sofa

Versace sits among the Italian houses in the Fashionista Bible, our map of the labels that shaped how the world dresses. This feature is the fashion half of the house. For the clocks, cases and licences, read the separate watch guide linked below.

A dressmaker's son from Magna Graecia

Versace's clothes began in a provincial workshop, not a Paris salon. Gianni Versace was born in Reggio Calabria on 2 December 1946, at the toe of the Italian boot. His mother ran a dressmaking atelier, and his first training was there, among patterns, beads and gold thread. Reggio sits on the old coast of Magna Graecia, the Greek colonies of southern Italy. Its archaeological museum holds the Riace Bronzes. That classical ground would supply his emblems for the rest of his life.

In 1972, aged 25, he left Calabria for Milan. Two Florentine businessmen, Ezio Nicosia and Salvatore Chiodini, had asked him to design a collection for their label Florentine Flowers. Work followed for Genny, Complice, Callaghan, Alma and De Parisini. In 1975 he showed his first leather collection for Complice, one of the first all-leather lines from an Italian designer. In 1976 he set up Gianni Versace SpA with his brother Santo, who ran the money.

The archive of those apprentice years survives. A university fund in Parma keeps 3,495 technical drawings, sketches and mixed-media studies by Versace, dated 1976 to 1981. They show a designer who drew garments as construction first and ornament second. The ornament arrived anyway. After the 1978 show, the first Versace boutique opened in Milan; in 1981 the first one abroad opened in Coconut Grove, Florida.

Two habits set early and never left. From 1979 he worked with the photographer Richard Avedon, who shot many of his campaigns. And in 1982 his dresses in metal mesh, a fabric knitted from metal, won the Occhio d'Oro, the Italian press prize for the most innovative collection. The same year he dressed Richard Strauss's ballet Josephslegende at La Scala. Theatre and fashion would share one workroom from then on.

The head in the coin

The Medusa logo is a museum object turned into a trademark. The house did not invent the face. It chose the Medusa Rondanini, a marble head of the Augustan period copied from a Greek original, and set it inside a round, ridged frame like an ancient coin or a shield. The original marble is in Munich. The copy sits on buttons, buckles, watch dials and bag clasps across our shelves.

The lettering moved before the head arrived. In 1990 the wordmark switched to a sharper typeface. In 1993, by the most detailed brand history we read, the Medusa head was adopted as the emblem. After 1997 the founder's first name gradually left the label, and later restylings simplified the frame. Each of those changes helps date a piece, which is why the logo deserves a close look before anything else.

"When I asked Gianni why he chose Medusa's head, he told me he thought that whoever falls in love with Medusa can't flee from her."

Around the head runs the Greca, the Greek key or meander border. It is the oldest ornament in the vocabulary, a single line folding back on itself at right angles. Versace uses it as a frame on prints, a ring on rings and a bezel on watches. Read the two together: Medusa for the house, Greca for the classical world it claims.

See also: Versace watches, from the Medusa to the DV One.

Barocco: gold scrolls on silk twill

Barocco is the print that made Versace a uniform. It arrived in the autumn-winter 1991 collection, in maxi scale, across silk twill shirts, pleated skirts, balloon-sleeved jackets and leggings. The motif is gold scrollwork and ornament in the spirit of Italian baroque decoration; the word itself is usually traced to a Portuguese term for a misshapen pearl. In a decade that was turning towards minimalism, it was deliberately loud.

The silk shirt became its carrier. Printed shirts first walked the Versace runway in 1991, and in 1993 a second print, Cornice, framed the body in gilded picture-frame borders. From then on a printed shirt appeared in almost every season, under suits, with denim or with leather. The Baroque sunburst shirt on our shelf, black and gold with a sun-face medallion, belongs to that line of descent.

Barocco also has a second life. Donatella brought it back to the runway for spring-summer 2018, the collection that paid tribute to her brother. New versions followed in white and gold and in purple and gold. A softer Neoclassical Barocco turned the gold to grey with black or with pink.

See also: Japanese maximalism, for the long Japanese habit of more.

Supermodels, bondage and thirteen safety pins

Between 1991 and 1994 Versace staged three moments that fashion still quotes. The first was 1991, when his shows starred the top models of the day and a group of them famously walked to George Michael's song "Freedom '90". The trade press credited Versace as the main author of the supermodel as a public figure, because he hired the most famous faces of the moment.

The second was autumn-winter 1992, shown on 5 March 1992 and titled Miss S&M. Leather harnesses and buckles met couture tailoring and silk. The room split. The photographer Helmut Newton loved it; a leading fashion critic did not. A dress from that collection, in silk and wool knit with leather and metal buttons, entered the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2024 as accession M.2024.128.

The third was a black dress from spring-summer 1994. It is cut from black stretch crêpe, slashed at the side and held by 13 oversized gold and gilt-silver safety pins, each set with diamantés and stamped with the Medusa. Elizabeth Hurley wore it to the London premiere of Four Weddings and a Funeral that year. The National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne bought an example in 2015 (2015.376). Punk's DIY pin had become a red-carpet fastening.

The pin idea keeps returning. Hurley recreated the look for a magazine shoot in 2019, and a black ribbed knit dress on our shelf carries safety-pin details at the neck. That line from London punk to Milan gold also runs through Vivienne Westwood's Japan story.

One surname, many labels

The Versace name covers more than one wardrobe, and the label tells you which. Gianni Versace was the main line from 1978. Istante was a second line; the Kyoto Costume Institute holds an Istante vest from the 1980s. Versus began in 1989 as Gianni's gift to Donatella. Atelier Versace, the couture laboratory, opened the same year and first showed at the Ritz in Paris in 1990.

Signature, a classic-cut line, followed in 1991. Versus paused from 2005 to 2009, then became a platform for young collaborators. In October 2018, a month after the sale to Michael Kors Holdings was agreed, the house folded Versus into Versace Jeans. The jeans line had traded as Versace Jeans Couture since a licence that began with spring-summer 2010. Versace Home took the prints into the living room.

The labels, and what each one tells you

Label	Dates	What it was	On our shelves
Gianni Versace	From 1978; first name phased out after 1997	Main line, ready-to-wear and accessories	1990s Medusa jewellery, the sunburst shirt, the intarsia dress
Istante	1980s to 1990s	A second line	Ask us; the Kyoto museum holds a vest
Versus	1989 to 2005; 2009 to 2018, then folded into the jeans line	Younger line, begun as a gift to Donatella	A lambskin rider with Barocco quilting
Atelier Versace	From 1989; Paris shows from 1990	Couture	Atelier-signed watches
Signature	From 1991	Classic tailoring	Tailored jackets
Versace Jeans Couture	Licensed from spring-summer 2010; absorbed Versus in 2018	Denim and leather, the entry line	A black leather double rider
Versace Home	Tokyo store from July 2015	Furniture, textiles, tableware	A leopard-print two-seat sofa

Leather is where the lines meet. Our Versus Versace lambskin rider jacket hides Barocco quilting inside a plain black shell. The Versace Jeans Couture double rider does the same with a blue patterned lining. Both sit on the designer leather jacket shelf, and the whole house waits on the Versace shelf.

See also: our guide to designer rider jackets.

Kobe, Kioicho and the bubble

Japan met Versace as a museum show before it met him as a shop. In 1991 his exhibition L'Abito per Pensare (Fashion for Thought), first staged at the Sforza Castle in Milan in April 1989, travelled to the Kobe City Museum. A Japanese audience saw the clothes on mannequins, with drawings and theatre costumes, in the same year Barocco reached the runway.

The shops followed the money. In the late 1980s and early 1990s Versace's loud colour suited Tokyo so well that one Japanese business report later called the brand a symbol of the bubble economy. The main store stood in Kioicho in central Tokyo, and it kept the look of those years until it closed. Our reading: much of the 1990s Versace we find in Tokyo today was bought in that period and kept.

Japan also kept it in institutions. Takashi and Keiko Sakaki gave the Kyoto Costume Institute an Istante vest from the 1980s, among its acquisitions of 2011 and 2012. The museum showed it in early 2013, beside Yves Saint Laurent, Prada and Jean Patou. A bubble-era label had become study material.

See also: how Japan dressed in the bubble years.

Exit and return: 2009 to the Ginza flagship

The fall came in two steps. After the founder's death the brand's sales in Japan slipped, and after the 2008 financial crisis loud clothes stopped selling. Versace Japan's sales for the year to December 2008 fell to about half of the year before. In May 2009 the Kioicho main store closed; by July two department-store shops and an outlet had gone too. A Tokyo press team of three stayed behind.

The return was planned from Milan. In January 2011 the house named Hiroshi Saito, a former president of Jil Sander Japan, chief executive of Versace Japan. From the autumn 2011 season the main line, Versace Collection and Versace Jeans went into chosen department stores in Tokyo and Osaka.

"Japan is a key market for our industry, and it wouldn't make sense for a global brand such as Versace not to be part of it."

The full return came in 2015. Versus Versace opened in Aoyama in April, Versace Home in July, and the main-line flagship at 6-7-12 Ginza on 23 November. The British architect Jamie Fobert designed it on Donatella's idea of "a place where the past meets the future". Floating acrylic shelves stood over a Byzantine mosaic floor, with Fior di Bosco marble for menswear and Fior di Pesco marble for womenswear upstairs. A one-off python bag carried the tag "KONNICHIWA VERSACE GINZA".

One more change was linguistic. In September 2018 Versace Japan announced that it would change how the name is written in the Japanese syllabary, to an ending closer to the Italian "che". The company name changed with it: it's Versace, not Versachee. The Ginza flagship put Versace back on the street described in our Ginza essay.

After July 1997

Gianni Versace was shot outside his house in Miami on 15 July 1997, aged 50. Donatella took over the creative direction, with Santo still on the business side. Later that year the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York gave him a career retrospective, curated by Richard Martin, with fifty dresses from the collections and the theatre. A label built on one man's eye had to learn to speak without him.

Donatella answered with her own sharper line, and twenty years later with a tribute. The spring-summer 2018 show, on 22 September 2017, sent out his butterfly prints, Medusa heads, studded leather and safety pins again. It closed with Carla Bruni, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford and Helena Christensen in gold chain mail, to "Freedom '90" once more.

Collaboration came next. Kith x Versace was released on 15 February 2019, with more than 100 styles. It was the first time the house had redrawn its Medusa, with the Kith logo across her eyes, and it revived the 1990s Amico trainer. Our Versace x Kith reversible down jacket pairs a gold Barocco big-cat print with black Medusa embroidery.

Ownership changed twice. Michael Kors Holdings completed its purchase on 31 December 2018 and renamed itself Capri Holdings. The Prada Group completed its own purchase on 2 December 2025. Dario Vitale, named creative head in March 2025, left after the sale. Pieter Mulier, formerly of Alaïa, became Chief Creative Officer from 1 July 2026.

"When we considered the Versace acquisition, we identified Pieter Mulier as the right person for the brand."

See also: Prada's nylon and the Japanese archive.

Fendace: the swap of 26 September 2021

Fendace was a design-off between friends, not a merger. On the night of 26 September 2021, in the courtyard of the Versace palazzo on Via Gesù in Milan, Kim Jones and Silvia Venturini Fendi designed 25 looks as Versace. Donatella designed 25 as Fendi. The two houses were in different groups. They called it a swap.

The staging did the arguing. Halfway through, Medusa panels set into the foliage walls rotated to show Fendi's double-F, drawn by Karl Lagerfeld. Kate Moss and Amber Valletta walked together, and Naomi Campbell closed the Fendi by Versace half. Both collections were for pre-fall 2022.

"It was a design-off: we designed Versace and she designed Fendi. Remember these two houses are not in the same group: we've just done it as friends, and out of respect for each other."

The pieces read as a dialogue. Our Fendace La Medusa medium handbag, unused, lays Versace Barocco over Fendi's FF print in black leather. The Fendi side of the story sits on the Fendi shelf.

See also: the Fendi Baguette, Fendi's own most collected bag.

Know the piece at a glance

Start with the name on the label, then the head on the hardware. A label reading Gianni Versace points to the founder's lifetime or the years just after it; Versace alone points later. A round Medusa with a Greca ring points to 1993 or after. Look for Made in Italy on the main line. Later pieces in our records also name Romania or Tunisia, so read the country rather than assume it.

Reading a Versace label and its hardware

What you see	What it suggests	Check next
Gianni Versace on the label	Founder's era or soon after 1997	Wordmark typeface; 1990 change
Versace only	Later production	Line name and country of make
Round Medusa in a Greca ring	1993 or later	Weight and finish of the casting
Medusa redrawn with a second logo	A collaboration, for example Kith in 2019	Both houses' labels inside
Versus or Versace Jeans Couture	The younger lines	Dates in the table above
Barocco on silk twill	Printed from 1991 onwards	Pattern matching at seams

Then look closely at a single piece. Our Gianni Versace 1990s Baroque sunburst silk shirt carries the founder's label. The 1990s Medusa coin link necklace still has its original box. The Medusa '95 shoulder bag is in crocodile-embossed leather with a gold-tone clasp. More of the house's neighbours wait in the luxury archive.

Knitwear and furniture need different eyes. The late-1980s Gianni Versace intarsia jumper dress is a harlequin of black, yellow and purple wool with a scarf collar. The Versace leopard-print two-seat sofa runs to 192 cm. Japanese condition grades are explained in our guide to condition ranks, and our checks in the authenticity guarantee.

Opinion: why Tokyo kept the volume up

This section is opinion, labelled as such. Paris taught the world restraint in the 1990s, and Tokyo learned it too. Yet Tokyo kept a second drawer open for gold. The same city that bought the black of the Japanese avant-garde bought Barocco in quantity. Our view is that Japan never treated maximal Italian dress as vulgar. It treated it as costume with a history, closer to kabuki than to a logo.

The fair objection is commercial. Versace sold in Japan when money was loose and left when it was tight, so taste may be the wrong word. We accept half of that. The withdrawal of 2009 shows how fragile the shops were. But the Kobe exhibition of 1991, the Kyoto museum's vest and the bubble-era pieces still in Japanese wardrobes show something steadier than a boom. The same pattern appears in sixty years of Gucci in Japan.

That is also why the city's vintage rooms hold so much of it. Japanese owners kept the boxes, the dust bags and the receipts, and the clothes came back into circulation in good order. Read how Japan became the world's vintage capital for the wider pattern.

The house in dates

Versace, 1946 to 2026

Date	Event
2 Dec 1946	Gianni Versace born in Reggio Calabria
1972	Moves to Milan to design for Florentine Flowers, then Genny, Complice and Callaghan
1976	Gianni Versace SpA founded with Santo
28 Mar 1978	First women's collection, Palazzo della Permanente
1981	First boutique abroad, Coconut Grove, Florida
1982	Occhio d'Oro for metal mesh; costumes for La Scala
1989	Atelier Versace and Versus; Milan exhibition at the Sforza Castle
1991	Barocco; supermodel finale; Kobe City Museum exhibition
5 Mar 1992	Miss S&M collection shown
1993	Medusa adopted as emblem, by the account we follow; CFDA award
Oct 2018	Versus folded into Versace Jeans
1994	The safety-pin dress
15 Jul 1997	Gianni Versace killed in Miami Beach
May–Jul 2009	All four Japanese stores close
Autumn 2011	Return to Tokyo and Osaka department stores
23 Nov 2015	Ginza flagship opens
Sep 2018	New Japanese spelling of the name announced
31 Dec 2018	Purchase by Michael Kors Holdings, renamed Capri
15 Feb 2019	Kith x Versace
26 Sep 2021	Fendace
2 Dec 2025	Prada Group completes its purchase
1 Jul 2026	Pieter Mulier takes office

Where the record differs

Four points split the accounts we read. Accounts differ, so we print both and say which we follow.

Points where accounts disagree

Question	One account	Another account	What we print
When was the company founded?	1976, when Gianni Versace SpA was set up with Santo	1978, the year of the first show	Both: the company in 1976, the first collection in 1978
Where did the Medusa come from?	The Medusa Rondanini, a Roman marble now in Munich	A floor in the ruins near Reggio where the siblings played as children	The Rondanini as the model; the ruins as family memory
When did Versace Jeans Couture begin?	With a licence for spring-summer 2010	Only after Versus was folded in, in 2018	The name from 2010; the merger in 2018
Who designed the Ginza flagship?	Jamie Fobert, in one Japanese report	"Jamie Forbert", in an English report	Jamie Fobert, the British architect

A correction to the common story: the round, coin-framed Medusa belongs to the 1990s, adopted in 1993, fifteen years after the first show.

Our reading

Versace is a classical education disguised as a party. The Medusa is a Roman marble from Munich; the Greca is a border older than Rome; Barocco is seventeenth-century ornament, printed on silk for a 1991 runway. Gianni Versace took the ground he grew up on and turned it up loud enough for a nightclub.

Japan understood that early. It saw the clothes in a Kobe museum in 1991, bought them in Kioicho in the bubble, gave them to a Kyoto institute, and kept the rest in boxes. When the house came back in 2015, it laid a Byzantine floor in Ginza, as if to say the theatre had never closed. That is the place Versace holds in the larger argument of the new Japonisme: Japan as the keeper of other people's myths, as well as its own.

A Versace piece found in Tokyo therefore carries two histories at once, Magna Graecia and the Japanese wardrobe that kept it. That is our reading.

Answered plainly

When was Versace founded?

Gianni Versace SpA was set up in 1976, and the first women's collection under his name was shown in Milan on 28 March 1978.

What does the Versace Medusa represent?

The head of the Gorgon Medusa, modelled on the Medusa Rondanini, a Roman marble. The house adopted the round emblem in 1993, by the account we follow.

When did the Barocco print first appear?

On the autumn-winter 1991 runway, on silk twill shirts, skirts and jackets.

What was Fendace?

A one-night swap on 26 September 2021: Kim Jones designed 25 looks as Versace and Donatella Versace designed 25 as Fendi, for pre-fall 2022.

Who owns Versace now?

The Prada Group, since 2 December 2025. Pieter Mulier has been Chief Creative Officer since 1 July 2026.

Further reading

• Versace watches, for the Medusa on the dial and the Japanese ceramic of the DV One.
• Why the world's treasures came to rest in Japan, for the argument behind every maison piece here.
• Whatever happened to Cool Japan?, for the policy story that runs beside the shops.
• House codes and tailoring as culture, for how emblems like the Greca work across houses.
• Complete coordinates from the 1990s, for how to wear the decade now.
• The Versace shelf, for every piece of the house we hold today.

References

1. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Giovanni Maria Versace
2. University of Parma, 1972: fashion, design, history, Gianni Versace fund
3. Museo del Traje, Madrid, 15 years without Gianni Versace (timeline)
4. Istituto Marangoni, It's Versace, not Versachee (2022)
5. Museo del Marchio Italiano, Versace logo history
6. Grazia USA, Remembering Gianni Versace (2020)
7. Finestre sull'Arte, Versace comes home: the Reggio Calabria exhibition (January 2026)
8. Galleria Cavour, Versace and the passion for printed shirts
9. Dazed, Gianni Versace's five key collections (2017)
10. Vogue Runway, Versace Fall 1992 ready-to-wear
11. LACMA, Woman's dress from the Miss S&M collection, M.2024.128
12. National Gallery of Victoria, Evening gown, 1994, 2015.376
13. ABC News, Elizabeth Hurley recreates the 1994 dress (2019)
14. Kyoto Costume Institute, Pick up from KCI's collection XI (2013)
15. British Vogue, Versace integrates Versus into Versace Jeans (31 October 2018)
16. WWD, Versace integrates Versus into the Versace Jeans line (2018)
17. J-CAST News, Versace closes all four stores in Japan (5 October 2009)
18. WWD, Versace takes a break from Japanese retailing (6 October 2009)
19. WWD, 12 January 2011 issue: Versace re-enters Japan, Hiroshi Saito named
20. WWD, Versace ups presence in Japan (25 November 2015)
21. Fashion Headline, Versace opens its first flagship in Japan in Ginza (2015)
22. Fashion Press, Versace opens a Ginza flagship (2015)
23. Fashionsnap, Versace Japan changes its brand and company name (6 September 2018)
24. Vogue, Versace Spring 2018 tribute to Gianni (2017)
25. WWD, Original nineties supermodels close Versace show (22 September 2017)
26. Kith, Kith x Versace campaign (12 February 2019)
27. Capri Holdings, Completes acquisition of Versace (31 December 2018)
28. Prada Group, Completes the acquisition of Versace (2 December 2025)
29. Prada Group, Pieter Mulier new Chief Creative Officer of Versace (5 February 2026)
30. British Vogue, Pieter Mulier is Versace's new Chief Creative Officer (2026)
31. Vogue Runway, Fendi by Versace, Pre-Fall 2022 (26 September 2021)
32. Versace, Fendi and Versace: the Fendace runway show (official)
33. Versace official, The Swap: Kim Jones and Donatella Versace switch roles (video, 2021)
34. Wikipedia, Versace
35. Harper's Bazaar Korea, Versace's Barocco print
36. Coveti, Versace Barocco and Greca prints explained
37. Logo.com, The history behind the Versace logo
38. Wikipedia, Medusa Rondanini