First founded in 1992 with a collection of textiles, then expanded to include tableware through porcelain manufacturer Rosenthal, the Versace Home of 2019 is creating furniture, textiles, porcelain tableware, wallpapers, wall coverings, ceramic tiles, bath accessories, and more.
Staged at Versace’s storied palazzo in Via Gesù, Versace leveraged its’ recognizable symbols and prints from its fashion line and translated them into its latest Home collection by collaborating with American interior designer Sasha Bikoff and artist Andy Dixon.
The exhibit allowed visitors to enter Versace’s palazzo, which is not something that happens every day.
A limited number of tickets were issued to the public for each day of Design Week.
Besides their shared love of maximalism, Versace and Sasha Bikoff have another key thing in common: both fashion house and interior designer are known for their deft ability to combine art-historical styles across a wide expanse of time.
Bikoff created individual sets that showcase special reinterpretations of pieces from past Versace Home Collections, playfully referencing Versace imagery and materials.
The brightly colored space adorned with neon lighting, bright metallics and palm leaves was been inspired by the Versace runway prints and colors.
According to a statement released by Versace, Donatella Versace saw a parallel between Bikoff’s approach to interior design and her own methodology when it comes to fashion.
What is more, while visual culture is at the heart of both women’s work, geographical references run deep, too.
Versace’s appreciation for the United States is echoed in Bikoff’s regular references to New York, the Hamptons, Miami, Palm Beach, and Palm Springs.
But in the case of this installation, with its Medusa heads, Memphis Group–worthy color palette, and neoclassical Milanese location—it’s clear that none compete with Italy.
Sasha Bickoff did not create the new Versace Home collection of products, individual and customized pieces of Versace furniture created by the interior designer could be seen interspersed throughout the installation.
Those pieces were not be for sale
For Versace, classical, neoclassical, and pop-contemporary references have been a hallmark since Gianni Versace first founded his namesake brand in the late 1970s.
Bikoff’s eclectic touch — influenced by cities such as New York and Miami where she grew up, and everything from 18th-century French Rococo mixed with Sixties Space Age Modern, to Seventies French Modernism and Eighties Italian Memphis Milano — forged the installation to create an unforgettable installation at the Versace Palazzo in Milan.
Bikoff grew up surrounded by Versace.
Her mom and grandparents always wore the label, and her family’s Miami apartment was decked out in the brand’s home collection.
For this collaboration, she drew her inspiration from the Versace colors and patterns that she grew up with.
She conceived sets drawing inspiration from Versace’s fall 1994 campaign photographed by Richard Avedon, connecting the brand’s fashion with its home line.
She created individual sets that showcase special reinterpretations of pieces from past Versace Home collections, with a playful reference to the brand’s imagery and materials.
Bikoff re-imagined several pieces from past collections in new finishes inspired by Gianni Versace’s 1980s and ’90s prints—think metallic leather, colored mirror glass, pastel mohair, and lacquer.
“ I wanted to create one-of-a-kind art pieces that can be mixed in with antiques or other styles. These are very special statement pieces, like a Versace dress.
You know you’re wearing a statement dress when you’re wearing Versace.
The whole room is looking at you, you’re the life of the party, you’re having the best time—that’s what I wanted my furniture to accomplish.
I hope people come into the space and see something that they never could have imagined in their own dreams.” ………….. Sasha Bickoff
Medusa Chair
Continuing to draw upon its legacy, the Medusa assortment will play up the hair and features of the mythical goddess by way of unique shapes and curves on the likes of couches, tables and beds, as well as the use of high-end materials including marble, metal and smoked glass.
The revisiting of the Versace world and its aesthetics in a pop style continues in the Pop Medusa furniture collection, whose main piece is a polyethylene seat, suitable for both indoor and outdoor spaces, from the Medusa-shaped backrest.
Crafted from a durable polyethylene, it is weather resistant.
Three rotating neon yellow star-shaped platforms held the new Pop Medusa chairs, rendered in polyethylene in vibrant colors featuring a sculptural Medusa relief on the back.
The pieces, which make up a full bedroom (complete with a metallic leather bed that “looks like a Versace mini skirt”), living room, and dining room, and were all displayed in a Technicolor fantasy world of neon islands and a floating pink cloud in the palazzo’s courtyard.
Dining Room
Bedroom
” I have always felt a deep connection to Versace as it embodies everything I believe in, a sense of fun and freedom to be daring. Versace lives through color and pattern breaking rules and promoting a sense of confidence and glamour which is how I decorate. Versace has always been a source of inspiration”
“I wanted to create this fantasy, I wanted to create this vibe, but I also wanted to stay very true to Versace” ……….Sasha Bikoff
Lounge Room
sasha bickoff at verscae milan salone 2019
Andy Dixon
andy dixon at versace salone milan 2019
Dixon, a musician and graphic designer based in L.A., will include his oversized works of Versace-printed T-shirts in the exhibit.
A key piece created by Andy Dixon as part of his recent exhibition held in New York called “Look at This Stuff Isn’t It Neat” was revisited for Design Week and displayed at Versace’s palazzo.
This is a hand-painted, 9 by 7 foot Versace shirt.
For the collection, Dixon translated the Versace brand’s aesthetic into a variety of new works, in a method not dissimilar to that of his own artistic practice, which has previously focused on Versace shirts, Flemish still lives, and vintage Playboy magazines.
Working with Versace’s mens wear design studio, the Canadian artist, who is based in Los Angeles, developed two new prints that mix elements of his own art in a Versace context, including a motif of the original shirt he created, making things come full circle in an ironic way.
Two of these shirt artworks were displayed at Versace’s palazzo along with the original, and two others were shown in the label’s store windows in Milan.in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II
“Toilette of Venus” were paired with Versace’s Technicolor Baroque print
“Nine Christie’s Items” surrounded by a Barocco border
“ I have always been drawn to Gianni and Donatella’s work, especially the imagery used in patterns.
There are a lot of commonalities between Versace and my own work — how we both plunder culture and art history, collaging tropes into new ideas, playing within the space where high and low-brow kiss.” ………. Andy Dixon
Project Concept Development
The team at the iconic Italian fashion house had seen photos of her Memphis Milano–meets–French rococo staircase at the 2018 Kips Bay Decorator Show House.
Bikoff, a lifelong Versace fan, also happened to be wearing a dress from the brand’s Tribute line for the occasion.
” The call came out of the blue. I was just sitting on my couch minding my own business when I got a call from Versace,”
“They said, ‘We want to collaborate with you on a home collection to be featured at Salone del Mobile. “Three days later, I was on a plane to Milan.”
That was in January, and for the next month, Bikoff lived and breathed Versace.
“It was a dream come true” ………..Sasha Bikoff.
Carpet
The show-stealer was Bikoff’s carpet, a swirling mix of poppy pinks and yellows and bright blues and greens, with patterns inspired by the Versace archives and the 1994 ad campaign shot by photographer Bruce Avedon, where supermodels (Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, Christy Turlington and co.) donned metallic mini skirts and pastel mohair sweaters.
The carpet covered the courtyard and the steps leading upstairs, where Bickoff designed eight room sets, mixing and matching the five collections to make the showrooms feel like home apartments.
” The most special thing to me here is the carpet. It’s a totally new pattern that I made for Versace drawn from 1980s textiles”
I hope it becomes a textile and we get to see it on clothing “ …………… Sasha Bikoff
gian and donatella versace
The Palzzo Versace Apartment Presentation
The Palazzo, located at Via Gesù 12, is a group of neoclassical buildings first constructed in 1782.
Beginning in 1982, Gianni Versace began to purchase structures on the site—ultimately creating a complex that houses the Versace home as well as its workshops.
It was a rare opportunity for the public to peek inside the palazzo, and the first time the brand has opened its Via Gesù headquarters during Salone.
The Versace Home collection, launched in 1992, spans from bedroom and dining to the living room and for the first time also displayed an outdoor line called Jungle from the name of a print that was part of the spring 2000 collection, which that same year made news with the green gown with a tropical print worn by Jennifer Lopez at the Grammy Awards — sparking the launch of Google Images.
The project showcased the new Versace Home line, which consists of five capsule home collections:
All which have been influenced by an amalgamation of mythology and pop culture.
The home line is crafted from grey teak wood and features outdoor high-tech suede accents.
The line comprises outdoor sofas, armchairs, a hanging bed, a sun bed, lanterns and a fire pit table.
The Pop Medusa chair is accompanied by a laminated glass cube that features a three-dimensional Medusa inside, which can be used as a stool, side or coffee table.
Other staple Versace symbols are seen in the Rhapsody line, which includes a sofa in a multicolored Baroque print tapestry-jacquard upholstery and pieces with leather bondage and metal Virtus (from the name of the Roman deity of bravery and strength) or safety-pin embellishments.
Logomania is an ode to the brand’s DNA
The Logomania line uses geometric pieces featuring Versace’s Nineties logo or three-dimensional metal Medusa embellishments, velvet details and ash wood with dark gloss legs.
The Jungle collection — which derives its name from a Spring/Summer 2000 Versace print — reveals an explosion of tropical patterns and marks the first outdoor capsule for the company.
New styles include a hanging bed, sun bed, lanterns and a fire pit table.
The collection will be available in all Versace fashion boutiques, as well as at select retailers.
About Sasha Bikoff
Sasha Bikoff is a New York based interior designer and antiques dealer.
For Bikoff, Interiors represent more than just living spaces: they evoke a distinguished lifestyle, offering individuals the unique opportunity to turn their homes into an exclectic, creative oasis and a place they can truly call their own.
Sasha Bikoff is known for her balanced understanding of design, flawless execution, and technical know how sculpted from her vast worldly exploits and experiences.
Bikoff’s style is heavily influenced by the multicultural flavors of her hometown,
New York City, and from her experiences traveling abroad. Sasha studied at George Washington University and the American University in Paris with a background in Fine Arts and Art History.
She began her career at Chelsea’s Gagosian Gallery before establishing her own interior design firm, Sasha Bikoff Interior Design.
Following her design debut with an apartment in the famed Dakota, Sasha was dubbed the “interior designer for the young & wealthy” by the New York Times and the “go-to decorator for Manhattan’s well-heeled millennial set” by the New York Post.
Her aesthetic is 18th century French Rococo mixed with 1960s Space Age Modern, 1970s French Modernism and 1980s Italian Memphis Milano, which she executes with bright and colorful fabrics and rare antiques.
It is a combination that highlights the best of the best from the coveted aesthetics of New York, the Hamptons, Miami, Palm Beach, and Palm Springs.
As an antiques dealer on 1stdibs, Sasha sources antique and vintage items from around the world which she reimagines in couture fashion fabrics.
Using a keen understanding of design and culture, Bikoff creates spaces based on her clients’ passions and inspirations.
For Bikoff, interiors represent more than just living spaces: they evoke a distinguished lifestyle, offering individuals the unique opportunity to turn their homes into an eclectic, creative oasis and a place they can truly call their own.
Sasha has exhibited her work in leading industry events, including DIFFA, Lenox Hill Neighborhood House Gala, Holiday House Hamptons, Holiday House NYC, and the 2018 Kips Bay Decorator Show House.
About Andy Dixon
Andy Dixon is an LA based, Canadian Artist.
By layering historical references with contemporary social commentary, Dixon plays with the tropes of art history and questions the inherent value in luxuries past and present.
His pieces are shown in many international collections of note.
