The Versace Pre-Fall 2022 collection is made for the woman who has never feared reinventing herself. Whether wearing a sleek latex skirt, a black leather suit or a head-to-toe printed dress, she is never afraid to dare and fully express herself.

The pre-fall reads as a visual antidote to the bold impact of the show’s print overload. A magnified black and white incarnation of the Barocco motif was introduced, as proof of the vitality of the house’s archive. Explaining her take on the collection, Donatella hinted at the unapologetic embracing of challenges and reinventions that drives her work ethos. “Whoever said that it cannot be black and white? I see creativity as an opportunity and a way of looking at things you’ve known all your life from another perspective, transforming them into something new that, like a scent, reminds you of past emotions, but they’re now completely connected and rooted in the present moment.”

A sexy, slinky silhouette was the collection’s standout, with stretchy jersey dresses pierced by keyholes at the neckline, and flashes of lingerie strings peeking out at the hips from low-slung stretchy pencil skirts, or jutting out at the décolletage of plunging v-necks. Strict-tailored skirt suits and coats were nip-waisted, small-shouldered, and almost severe yet very sexy, a territory that Versace navigates rather deftly. Evening at Versace is always a glamorous affair played out to maximum wattage; cases in point here were the black numbers made in illusion net sparkling with bejeweled fan-shaped inserts and brooches, and further studded with a cascade of rhinestones and crystals in all possible shapes and sizes. The wallflower notion is lost chez Versace.

The black and white Barocco print served as a visual binder between the women’s and men’s collections. It was treated imaginatively on classic tailored suits, where formal fabrics like flannel, Prince of Wales, houndstooth, and windowpane checkered wools were overprinted with curlicue motifs, highlighted with metallic outlines.