There was a lot of fashion to soak up in episode two of The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, which aired Wednesday night on FX. In addition to seeing Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) in a custom-made, teeny-tiny hot-pink Speedo, the costume department re-created eight nearly identical looks from Gianni Versace’s final runway show before his death, since Versace wouldn’t lend any vintage pieces for the filming.
Below, costume designer Lou Eyrich breaks down all the standout scenes.
THAT Hot-Pink Speedo
The world first got a glimpse of Andrew Cunanan’s hot-pink Speedo bathing suit when actor Darren Criss shared a racy photo of it it on his personal Instagram account. But here it is in action. “We custom-made those,” said Eyrich. “Ryan [Murphy] wanted hot-pink Speedos. He’s very specific.”
Versace’s Last Runway Show
The costume department’s team of tailors re-created eight looks from Atelier Versace’s fall 1997 show, which was Gianni’s last. In the episode, Gianni and Donatella get in an argument about casting models. Donatella, who is worried about the brand keeping up with names like Alexander McQueen and John Galliano, wants stick-thin girls in all-black. Meanwhile, Gianni wants to continue using his favorite supermodels like Naomi Campbell, dressing them in his now-signature color and shine.
“I want my models to look like they enjoy life,” says Gianni. “Like they eat, at least! Like they laugh; like they dance; like they make love. What do those girls enjoy?”
“Front covers?” Donatella retorts.
“The script specified a distinction,” explained Eyrich, so they showed five looks of Donatella’s liking, and three of Gianni’s. Naomi Campbell closed the show as a shimmering bride in a scandalously short silver dress.
This woman is “not a virgin bride” but a “Versace bride,” says Gianni. “She will be a woman who’s loved many men before. A woman who’s finally found her equal — a match for her passions. She won’t be dainty or timid; she will be proud and strong.”
In the end, Times critic Amy M. Spindler gave the collection a positive review.
In Da Club
Gianni walks into Twist, a popular Miami club wearing an incredible, see-through lace shirt. “Less is more,” said Eyrich of the ’90s Miami nightlife look. “It was a lot of tank tops. A lot of shirtless men. Very sweaty, but also Ryan really wanted to show those Miami colors — that sizzle. It’s hot, hot heat. So there were a lot of short shorts and white jeans and flip-flops. Just very carefree, free-spirited lightness. A lot of skin and hot bodies.”
Cunanan was also at a Miami nightclub that night. When his dance partner asks what he does for a living, he replies, “I’m a serial killer,” with a smile.
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, on FX, opens with the act itself. We see the designer Gianni Versace leaving his Miami Beach mansion by the front gate to buy some magazines at a café down the street. We see the preppy-looking murderer, Andrew Cunanan, watching from a park across the street and then approaching the designer as he returns to the front steps. We see the gun, the look of bewilderment and horror on Versace’s face, and then the narrative of July 15, 1997 is set in motion.
The opening scene was taut enough, and visually accurate enough, to hold my interest. The fact that the producers were able to film inside the mansion (now a hotel) was a bonus. It lent the episode a documentary quality. In August of 1996, I spent a weekend visiting Donatella Versace and her family — husband, Paul Beck, and kids, Allegra and Daniel — at the mansion, for a profile of Donatella in Vanity Fair. So I recognized details of the Spanish-style house — the interior courtyard, the marble dining room where we had lunch and Donatella yakked on the phone with Elton John. Gianni was not there, but we spoke later about his sister and their relationship. And, of course, over the years I saw him during the shows in Milan, and on at least one occasion interviewed him at his palazzo in the Via Gesu.
On the morning of the murder — actually within an hour of it — Vanity Fair began receiving requests from media outlets to interview me about the family. The Donatella piece was in the June issue. At the same time, my colleague Maureen Orth, who had been reporting a story about a gay serial killer and whose book served as the basis for the show, had a hunch that Cunanan was the murderer. I met her in Miami to help with the reporting. Cunanan was still on the loose. It was a strange few days. The fashion industry had never known such a crime — and, as I wrote later, “The murder had thrown a weird light on a world people knew very little about.”
The curious thing about The Assassination of Gianni Versace is that, despite its assured opening, it feels like the people involved did not take the trouble to learn anything about him and his siblings, or their world. Twenty years has not brought more insight into his family dynamics, his sensibility, or into how an extremely creative individual might behave. It’s as though no one really cared to explore these qualities.
Instead, Gianni and his sister (you would hardly know there’s an older brother, Santo) are presented as cardboard figures who symbolize the most clichéd values: power, glamour, celebrity. For instance, the episode asks viewers to believe that Donatella (Penélope Cruz) could put aside her grief on the day of her brother’s murder and arrive via limo at the mansion’s bloodied front gate — before a crowd of news trucks and spectators — as if attending a red-carpet event. There was a back door to the house, but, hey, if she used that, you wouldn’t get to see her scowl and adjust her sunglasses.
Cruz is actually fascinating as Donatella. She totally sounds like her, without the staccato delivery. Ramírez physically resembles Gianni but lacks his authority — you felt Gianni’s presence in a room. And the few scenes that show Gianni at his craft are embarrassingly lame, as most fashion films are. They never properly convey a designer’s hand motions or obsessiveness. (I haven’t seen Phantom Thread, so I’m holding out hope.) Anyway, the guy who once scandalized Milan with his bondage dresses behaved far more decisively — and playfully — than what you see on the screen.
With Cruz, I often had the feeling that she was basing her portrayal on the later Donatella, the hard-boiled Donatella who emerged after Gianni’s death. The woman who I first met in 1996 was much less sure of herself. In a way, Gianni’s enormous talent and drive functioned as a protective shield for her, allowing her to be the little sister who flounced around with her big diamonds. Sure, Donatella was tough, they all screeched like cats at each other, but there was also a vulnerability about her then, and a sweetness. I remember her taking me around the house, showing me Gianni’s private quarters and the guest room where Jack Nicholson once slept. She took everything in stride, like someone who had nothing to lose.
It’s that innocence or naïveté that you don’t see in the show, which is too bad, since it would have contrasted with the horror of Gianni’s murder. Another thing missing is the family’s sense of humor and fun, captured in photographs from the ’80s and ’90s. They seemed to thoroughly enjoy their lives, over-the-top or not, and nothing was more emblematic of that spirit than the vivid fabric prints that decorated the mansion.
But you see almost nothing of that in the series. The mansion might have been the real thing, the scene of the crime, but it’s just a shell.
Episode one begins with Gianni Versace (Édgar Ramírez) opening his eyes to carpe diem. He slides his feet into his Versace slippers, struts down the hallway of his (actual) Miami mansion in Versace silk pajama bottoms, and dons a flowing, hot pink robe before stepping out onto a balcony to survey his kingdom. Everything is easy, breezy, beautiful.
Meanwhile, Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) sits perched on a public beach below, looking out over the ocean with a scowl. He opens up his backpack, casually pulling out his only two possessions: a worn copy of The Man Who Was Vogue: The Life and Times of Condé Nast, and then a gun.
These first few vignettes set up Versace and Cunanan in stark contrast. Versace eats fresh fruit handed to him on a Versace-branded platter; Cunanan chugs a soda for breakfast. Versace wears linen shorts and a Versace Medusa logo tee; Cunanan wears sandy jorts and a nondescript gray shirt. Versace buys a copy of Vanity Fair, (Cunanan’s favorite magazine) featuring Princess Diana, who would later attend Versace’s funeral; Cunanan studies Condé Nast from afar.
When the Lights Go Down, We’re All the Same
The show works backwards, starting with Versace’s murder and then flashing back to 1990, when Cunanan first meets Versace in San Francisco. (In real life, the Versace family denies they ever met.) At the time, Versace was in town designing costumes for Capriccio, an opera. Cunanan enters a crowded nightclub wearing a leather jacket and a printed shirt, which looks like a Versace knockoff that’s faded in the sun. “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life” plays (ironically) as a crowd in tank tops and ass-less chaps dances to the music. Cunanan spots Versace, who is wearing a leather top far more polished than his, sitting in the VIP section. He makes a point to start a conversation, and succeeds in winning Versace’s attention.
The next morning, Cunanan tells the story of his encounter with Versace to his friend-slash-roommate Lizzie and her husband, embellishing the details a bit. One line in particular comes straight from Maureen Orth’s reporting, on which the series is based: “I say to him, ‘Honey, if you’re Versace, I’m Coco Chanel!” Of course, Cunanan knows he is, in fact, Versace. And in his mind, he fancies himself a bit of a Chanel.
“I’m not really a fan of his clothes, per se,” Cunanan continues. “It’s so bright; it’s too much. They say Armani designs clothes for wives; I think Versace designs clothes for sluts.” Despite all this, Versace has invited Cunanan to the opera. Obviously, he’s going.
Master of Disguise
When the big night comes, Lizzie returns home from work to find Cunanan wearing her husband’s suit, tie, and loafers. “I have nothing,” Cunanan says, explaining he wants to look “impressive.” Lizzie ultimately pities him, and lets him borrow her husband’s gold watch, too.
“[Cunanan’s] whole thing was being a master of disguise,” says costume designer, Lou Eyrich. “He was a chameleon. If he wanted to be in the rich world of older men, he dressed that part. If he wanted to fit in with his college buddies, he’d throw on his polo shirt and khaki shorts. He was straight with straight people and gay with gay people. Everything was a lie, and he lived behind that whole façade.”
After the opera, Versace meets Cunanan wearing a humble black turtleneck and black pants. Cunanan spins fictitious tales about his family, while Versace recounts more innocent stories about his idyllic childhood, explaining the origins of the Versace Medusa logo — he came across it while playing around in ancient ruins — and that he made his first dress for his sister, Donatella. “Maybe every dress I make is for her,” he says.
“That makes me want to cry,” says Cunanan.
Boss Bella
Flash back to the scene of the crime. Donatella (Penélope Cruz) arrives in a black limousine wearing black leather pants, a black leather blazer, and black sunglasses, making her signature blonde hair (Gianni convinced her to dye it) appear even more platinum. Despite her obvious grieving, she immediately gets down to business. Protecting her brother’s legacy is her number-one priority, and Versace was about to take the company public. (This was true in reality.) Donatella decides against it.
“This company was his life,” Donatella says in a tearful monologue. “When he was sad, it made him happy. When he was sick, it kept him alive. And my brother is still alive as long as Versace is alive. I will not allow that man — that nobody — to kill my brother twice.”
Revenge Suit
The episode ends with Versace and Cunanan’s roles reversed. While the Versace mansion is shrouded in darkness, Cunanan walks down the streets of Miami in plain sight wearing a sunny yellow monochrome outfit and Versace sunglasses. He buys a stack of newspapers with his name inside their pages this time, exactly as Versace did minutes before he was shot.
“Ryan [Murphy] wanted him to have this Talented Mr. Ripley moment, where he’s gotten away with murder,” says Eyrich. “You don’t know it from the first episode — because you’re going back in time — but it’s not until you watch that you understand why that [outfit] was significant.”
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