Issue link: https://www.balharbourdigital.com/i/1507768
ust after Christmas in 1991, Italian designer Gianni Versace, en route to Cuba on vacation, stopped in Miami to attend the opening of his new 3800-square-foot Bal Harbour Shops boutique. The new store, described as a "space-age palazzo" in the Miami Herald, would be his Milan fashion house's most over-the-top American outpost, with mirrored columns, plush velvet curtains, and imposing Greco-Roman style ebony chairs. The black marble floors were inlaid with iridescent glass tiles that formed tropical plant s, cora l reefs, and other decorat ive pat terns. Versace's newly introduced Medusa-head medallion logos were everywhere. Versace was the toast of the town at the opening party, surrounded by models and fashion editors, along with his sister, Donatella, and actress Sandra Bernhard, among other high-profile well-wishers. Afterwards, as legend has it, he asked a cab driver to take him somewhere "fancy and fun." They wound up on South Beach, which was just beginning to emerge from decades of neglect, parked in front of an imposing stone building on Ocean Drive with a bronze statue of Aphrodite in front. Versace was smitten. Thir t y-t wo years a f ter the desig ner f irst glimpsed what would become h i s Mia m i pied-à-ter re, Versace's fa sh ion legacy rema in s inex tricably intertwined with the city whose exuberant, pastel-hued, tropical lifest yle he helped propel. As he laid down roots in South Beach in the 1990s, Versace added jet fuel to the fashion transformation already under way, as modeling agencies began sprouting like mush- rooms. The Art Deco buildings along the beach became the backdrop for every hot new campaign—as well as inspired some of the imagery captured by lensman Doug Ordway and featured in the book "South Beach Stories," published in 1993 by Gianni and Donatella Versace. Here, the longtime Versace collaborator takes us behind the scenes of some of his most memorable images. J WE CELEBRATE VERSACE'S INEXTRICABLE TIES TO MIAMI—INCLUDING ITS FIRST GLITTERING BAL HARBOUR SHOPS BOUTIQUE. LONGTIME FRIEND OF THE HOUSE DOUG ORDWAY SHARES A PHOTO ESSAY CAPTURING THE EARLY '90s ZEITGEIST—FROM THE STREETS OF THE MAGIC CITY TO BACKSTAGE IN MILAN. BY JAY CHESHES FOR EVER VER SACE 204 BAL HARBOUR