Italian fashion icon Donatella Versace on Thursday gave a talk ahead of Monday’s Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art — touching on subjects from her late brother Gianni to her company’s impending IPO — at least from what guests could make out.
“Can you understand her?” one guest whispered to a pal at the beginning of the talk. And later, even glamazon Donatella herself asked the crowd in accented English: “Can you understand me? People don’t understand me usually.”
The audience laughed.
Alina Cho emceed the chat, in which Versace said she’ll be outfitting Jennifer Lopez for the Met Gala and promised, “[Lopez] will look great from the front — even better from the back!”
Versace also said her visionary brother opened the brand’s first store in China in 1982, well before an explosion of luxury retail there.
New York-based Blackstone Group snapped up a stake in Versace last year and a future IPO is expected. Versace reckoned that Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman “has just as much fashion sense as his wife, Christine.”