Gianni Versace Medusa Gold Chain Belt

The signature extravagance of legendary fashion designer Gianni Versace — forever aligned with glamour, sex, celebrity and spectacle — can overshadow the Italian couturier’s broad and deep engagement with history and culture. Today, his vintage dresses and gowns, handbags, sunglasses and other accessories look astonishingly fresh and freshly relevant.

More than any designer before him, Versace mined celebrity, music and Pop art for inspiration, and his subversive, maximalist and unabashedly seductive designs infused high fashion with an entirely new ethos. “I don’t believe in good taste,” he once explained. Instead, he had a sexy good time with fashion — as he did with life. 

Gianni Versace was born in Calabria, Italy. His mother was a successful dressmaker who employed more than 40 seamstresses. As a child, little Gianni marveled at her workshop, which would become a university of sorts, where he learned the exceptional construction techniques that were at the foundation of his creative expression.

In 1972, at age 25, he moved to Milan to work in fashion. He launched his first collection — and his label — in 1978, with his older brother Santo managing the business concerns. Soon, sister Donatella, whom Gianni dressed and took to discos when she was still a child, joined the family venture, where she had a creative role and managed enormously popular ready-to-wear lines such as Versus.

Vintage Versace — and Gianni Versace Couture, which debuted in 1989 — has become catnip for modern fashion enthusiasts who seek out the now-iconic house codes that originated in the designs of the 1980s and 1990s. His glamorous and seductive apparel — the clingy skirts and slender, strappy party dresses, as well as the erotic magazine ads that publicized them — looms large, but Versace’s art and historical influences were also vast.

Versace was an art collector, and he took on commissions to create costumes for theatrical performances during the 1980s and spoke of looking to numerous cultures for inspiration. The New York Times noted in 1997 that the fashion industry “is now driven by contemporary culture because Mr. Versace made it that way.”

Insiders consider his 1991/1992 Autumn/Winter runway show — which featured supermodels Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista lip-synching George Michael’s “Freedom” — as the moment when the two worlds of fashion and pop culture became one, changing both forever.

Versace's adventurous spirit of design resulted in his creating jewel-toned prints rooted in Grecian motifs, Etruscan symbols, the Italian Baroque and Andy Warholʼs Marilyn Monroe. There were slinky dresses in Oroton, his patented chain-mail textile that draped like satin, and leather bondage ensembles. Sex sold, for both women and men. Wrote the late curator Richard Martin, “[Versace] became the standard-bearer of gay men’s fashion because he eschewed decorum and designed for desire.”

Following Versace’s tragic murder in 1997, Donatella took over the role of artistic director and continued to evolve the house codes with a twist of her feminine and feminist perspective. Today, Santo Versace is chief executive officer of Versace and Donatella is its chief creative officer.

Browse an extraordinary collection of vintage Gianni Versace evening dresses, handbags, day dresses and more on 1stDibs.

Belts are far more than practical. Vintage and designer belts can prove pivotal to your ensemble, elevating even the most basic outfit with a modest dose of flair or, alternatively, outright flamboyance.

On 1stDibs, an extensive collection of modern and vintage belts can be found in a variety of styles and materials, including everything from iconic Gucci logo belts, which, emblazoned with the legendary Italian brand’s “GG” insignia, are ubiquitous among fashion lovers today, to stylish Hermès belts, which are part of a wide range of covetable leather fashion accessories from the family-owned luxury goods company. The interchangeable gold-plated belt buckle, now available in innumerable variations, is revered by Hermès enthusiasts. The world’s legion of collectors hunting down rare Kelly bags likely know this belt buckle and its history, which extends all the way back to 1967. It was crafted by Hungarian-born French fashion designer Catherine de Károlyi, who worked for Robert Piguet and Christian Dior before landing at Hermès, where she also designed the house’s first women’s ready-to-wear collection.

More akin to fine jewelry than to a practical fashion accessory, a vintage chain belt by Chanel can add understated charm to a blazer, cocktail dress or most any other garment, while a wide Louis Vuitton belt, on the other hand, made in the celebrated brand’s signature bold Damier Azur canvas, will bring pizzazz and panache to your formal wear.

Whether you’re looking to accessorize with simplicity or potentially stop traffic, find a variety of vintage and designer belts on 1stDibs.