Inside Donatella's World

Versace’s queen talks to The Daily Beast’s Rebecca Dana about why Americans are obsessed with sex, Michelle Obama’s style, and how fashion can help save children in China.

It’s a frigid October morning, and Donatella Versace has just slinked into the vast back room of a palatial suite at the Waldorf Astoria. She drops gracefully onto a gold settee and lights the latest of today’s cigarettes. Dressed all in black, the petite designer seems impossibly tiny in this enormous room—a grownup Eloise chain-smoking Marlboro Reds.

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She orders an orange juice with a straw and starts reminiscing about old friends, past trips to New York, the time she went horseback-riding and whitewater-rafting out West with Anna Wintour. She laughs a lot, youthfully. If you didn’t know she was a fashion legend and lifelong party girl just from looking at her, you would know from that laugh.

“It’s all right if I smoke,” she asks, lounging against embroidered pillows on the couch. It’s not a question, more a concession to American fussiness. She takes a sip of juice. “I love New York,” she says. “I think it’s a fantastic city, full of energy—especially in this economic crisis. There is always a chance that new things will happen.”

There’s a baby grand piano in one corner of the room and a strong smell of gardenias in the toasty air. Every available surface is covered with vases of fresh flowers. Earlier this morning, one of Versace’s many assistants laid out a lighter, cigarettes, and a crystal ash tray for the designer, who’s in town for a week to attend the Whitney Museum Gala and Studio Party, of which she’s a sponsor, and to promote the charity work she does, alongside actor Jet Li, helping needy children in the United States and China

Donatella is the head of the Versace empire, a mantle she’s carried ably for her slain brother Gianni for the last 12 years. A few weeks ago, she debuted her spring collection of breathtakingly short, tight dresses and skirts, to critical raves. Last February, she reintroduced the Versace Versus line under the direction of British designer Christopher Kane, another move that delighted the fashion world. She’s done three recent campaigns with muse and good friend Madonna, and now finds herself transfixed by Colombian singer-songwriter Shakira. Next week, she’s heading off to Brazil for a fashion event. It’s been a busy fall.

“I think she has one of the best hearts in the world,” says Lindsay Lohan in a shimmering gold Versace fringe dress. “Ungaro always said: ‘Shorter and tighter. Women should be wanted and sexy—but with class.’ That’s exactly what she does.”

And yet, at 54, with two grown children and a lifetime’s worth of tragedy and glamour already lived, the famously excessive designer is now unexpectedly serene. The old Maya Rudolph Saturday Night Live caricature, in which a husky-voiced Donatella, in full-length sequined gown, guzzles Champagne and barks orders at the nearly naked men who ferry her around on a sedan chair, feels like another life. Today, the woman whose motto is “Don’t let the rappers wear more bling than you do!” sports black pants, black pumps, and a tight black top. She has one ring on each hand and a half-foot of bracelets on her left arm. Her hair is platinum, pony-straight.

Versace says she loves her trips to the U.S. and seems to delight in the differences between this country and her native Italy. Americans, for one thing, are obsessed with sex—in fashion and in public life—whereas Italian women are a little more subtle, in her view. “There is a lot of talk about being sexy here. Maybe too much,” she says. “We talk less. Maybe we do more.”