The exhibition was held in two different venues: Villa Olmo and Fondazione Antonio Ratti. Villa Olmo housed one hundred and twenty dresses – exhibited on mannequins, without any trims of photographic backdrops – organized by themes as an overview of the fashion designer's work, so multi-faceted and cross-referential as to escape any attempt to arrange the pieces in chronological order.
Fondazione Antonio Ratti proposed a material-focused exhibition arrangement that developed on two levels, both complementary to the entire dresses: the materials and fabrics were exhibited and analysed in their two dimensional nature next to images taken from the advertising campaigns. The thematic processes defined the way Gianni Versace took inspiration from tradition and reinvented the different textile typologies.
The exhibition was also repeated at the Miami Museum of Modern Art in 1999.

Exhibition and catalogue curated by Chiara Buss and Richard Martin
Project set up by Luigi Caccia Dominioni