My Existential Dread of Versace

The world is on fire, but Versace sells the same dream, untouched by time. Maybe that’s why I feel this sinking dread, not just because fashion won’t change, but because I’m trapped in the same loop.

It’s the last day of Milan Fashion Week. I haven’t really been keeping up. The shows have been happening, but I’ve felt no urgency to follow along in real time. My attention has been elsewhere, on the news, on politics, on the familiar horror of watching Trump dominate the headlines again. His return isn’t surprising, but it is exhausting, like a nightmare you thought you’d woken up from only to realize you never did. The endless cycle of crudeness, bravado, outrage, and yet, he’s still there, unchanged, almost impervious to time.

I should care about fashion week, I used to obsessively, even manically care, but at this particular moment, I just feel detached. Still, out of obligation (professional or personal, I’m not even sure anymore), I finally open Vogue Runway, scrolling through what I’ve missed. And then, there it is: Versace.

The images load, and I feel it immediately, a sinking, heavy feeling in my chest. Existential dread. Not because the collection is bad, not because it’s shocking, but because it is exactly as I expected. Gold chains, Medusa heads, baroque prints, chain mail dresses that cling to thin bodies. The same codes, the same shapes, the same fantasy. It looks exactly as it did when I first started in fashion, fresh and optimistic, eager to believe in the industry’s promise of reinvention and cultural relevance.

But today? I feel nothing but exhaustion.

This is not a review of the collection. I could talk about the clothes, the styling, the references every other fashion commentator is excitedly pointing out, But that feels irrelevant. What matters is the feeling Versace gives me, the creeping realization that nothing has changed. Not the brand, not the fantasy it sells, not even the way it makes me feel. If anything, the feeling has only deepened: the eerie stillness of a world frozen in time, where glamour persists against all odds, indifferent to the chaos outside its walls.

And yet, it remains hypnotic. I stare at the collection and wonder: Is this what fashion has become? A simulation of itself? A fantasy that no longer believes in its own power? Or have I simply changed, no longer the wide-eyed admirer, but a skeptic staring into the abyss of an industry trapped in its own illusion?

Versace has always been about maximalism, gold, chains, baroque prints, aggressive sex appeal. It’s not very demure or very mindful, it never whispers; it only screams. In the 90s, the excess felt rebellious, a rejection of minimalism, a celebration of indulgence. Now, in an era defined by crisis and uncertainty, it feels almost grotesque.

There is something eerie about the way Versace remains untouched by time. The world outside has changed, wars, economic collapse, climate disasters, an overwhelming sense that we are on the brink of something catastrophic. And yet, Versace remains eternally extra, as if refusing to acknowledge the crumbling reality outside the gilded fortress of Via Gesu.

Is this the power of fashion? To persist in its own fantasy? Or is it a sign of its irrelevance, its detachment from the world it once claimed to shape?

I don’t know. All I know is that I feel tired. Versace is unchanged, but I’ve changed. What once felt powerful now feels like a parody of itself.

I lived in Milan for a few years, a city that felt stagnant, unchanging, caught in a loop of its own mythology. The same gorgeous palazzos, the same perfectly dressed people with the same sprezzatura, the same sense of old-world glamour that, instead of feeling timeless, felt frozen. At first, I found comfort in the city’s stability, its devotion to its own aesthetic codes. But over time, that stillness became suffocating, people’s unwillingness to progress societally became suffocating. Milan is beautiful, but it exists in a state of life support.

Versace, like Milan, exists in a state of suspended animation, a dream that refuses to evolve.

Baudrillard’s hyperreality describes a world so exaggerated, so mediated, that it replaces reality itself. Versace is hyperreality. Donatella Versace is hyperreality.

She is perennially blonde, eternally youthful, an icon of glamour so unwavering she almost ceases to be real. The Versace aesthetic is no longer fashion; it is a self-sustaining illusion, a brand trapped in its own mythology.

The Medusa effect: beauty so intense it turns you to stone, rendering real life dull in comparison.

And yet, what does it mean when that beauty remains exactly the same? When Medusa’s gaze no longer shocks, but simply bores?

The brand has always flirted with the tension between sex and death, desire and destruction. The Medusa logo isn’t just about power, it’s about doom. Beauty so potent it annihilates.

Gianni Versace’s murder left the house haunted, yet Donatella carried on, keeping the fantasy alive at all costs.

Versace has always been entangled with figures touched by tragedy: Princess Diana in her last years, Lil’ Kim’s self-destruction, Britney Spears in her Versace wedding dress, women at the height of glamour, yet teetering on the edge of collapse.

And now, looking at Versace today, I wonder if the brand itself is caught in its own cycle of destruction. Fashion has changed. The world has changed. But Versace remains.

As Trump’s relentless narrative blares in the background, Versace’s eternal excess mirrors that same unyielding inertia, a grotesque duet of recycled myths and static dreams. In that reflection, I face a brutal possibility: our world is trapped in an endless loop, clinging to illusions until the moment we either shatter them or surrender entirely.