By revisiting the story of the family saga of the ready-to-wear and couture house Gianni Versace, as narrated by Olivier Nicklaus in his documentary Versace – Blood Ties, we realize that Ryan Murphy, in the second season of his anthology series American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace (2018), had invented nothing.

Or almost: based on the investigation of the journalist Maureen Orth, Vulgar Favors. Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History (Delacorte Press, 1999), Murphy had chosen to evoke the couturier’s presumed HIV status, a fact that Donatella Versace, his sister, had classified as inventory of “gossip and speculation” which she accused the book of being the peddler.

The “muse”

Nicklaus does not address this controversial subject and it is only about ear cancer which forced Versace, in 1996, to retire for a while, giving Donatella the opportunity to take the light and assert herself, she who had until then only been responsible for the accessories, but in truth “muse” whose opinion meant a lot to her brother.

After the assassination of Gianni Versace on July 15, 1997, by serial killer Andrew Cunanan, in front of his glitzy luxury dripping villa on Ocean Drive, Miami Beach (Florida, USA), things were immediately taken over by the family, somewhat Calabrian-style (the Versaces’ alleged Mafia ties have often been mentioned; Nicklaus does not dwell on the subject).

With a major surprise, on which the documentary ends: rather than having his sister or brother Santo inherit, the financial director of the house, Gianni Versace had ordered by will that his niece Allegra, daughter of Donatella, receive all of the shares he held and be his universal legatee.

The bewilderment was great for Donatella and Santo, but also for Antonio D’Amico, Gianni’s companion, who, after seventeen years of living together, inherited nothing and was even rejected by Donatella – she had never really supported the disruptive element that Antonio represented in the sometimes stormy but always close relationship that she had with her brother.

Since her daughter was then a minor, Donatella took control of the house: by adding her shares to those of the young girl, she became the majority shareholder. The family, like the great Italian lines of the Renaissance, was for a long time nothing but entrenched camps, low blows and settling scores.

Many of those who surrounded Donatella with their commiseration at the couturier’s quasi-papal funeral in Milan, did not hide their doubts as to the future of the house, left in the experienced but ingenious hands of a somewhat vulgar, party-girl blonde. and addicted to cocaine, who was very wrong to take for an idiot.

Because, as historians, journalists and collaborators of the house recall during the documentary, Donatella, who detoxified and progressed notably, ended up, after a few unconvincing seasons, by making Versace find the path of critical and financial success, and even by asserting his personal touch.