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Article: HE WATCHED TARTS IN THE HEARTLAND OF; THE MOB. IT INSPIRED HIS pounds 840m EMPIRE.(News)
- Article from:
- The Mirror (London, England)
- Article date:
- July 16, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 MGN LTD. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Gianni Versace was the designer who put the hooker into haute couture. He liberated the tart at the heart of even the loftiest high- society beauty.
His emblem was Medusa, the snake-haired symbol of seduction. "I love women absolutely," he once said. "I am the Medusa."
And his earliest inspiration for his gaudy, sometimes downright vulgar, designs were the real hookers who lounged in the doorway of the local brothel in his home town of Reggio, Calabria.
As he grew up in postwar austerity in this hot, dusty, backward, Mafia- controlled Southern ...