Al Weisel

 

The Widower Versace

By Al Weisel

Out, August 1999, pp. 50-53, 89-90

 

Two years after the murder of his longtime lover, Antonio D'Amico talks to Al Weisel about his designs for living without Gianni

 

Gianni Versace was not the first person to die in Antonio D'Amico's arms. The day after Christmas 24 years ago, D'Amico's family was gathered around the lunch table. Beside D'Amico, 16 at the time, sat his 14-year-old sister, Maria. They had just finished eating when Maria keeled over into her brother's lap. She had suffered a heart attack caused by a congenital defect and died instantly. "Just one moment she died, right in my hands. It was a big shock to me," says D'Amico with considerable understatement. "My mother, she went crazy and for five years was in shock." As for D'Amico, he dealt with the tragedy by turning his back on his old life. "It was the first time for me to be in front of death," he says. "I decided from that moment I had to live my life the way I want, to live by myself, do the job I wanted to do, have my own friends." D'Amico returned to boarding school near Lake Como after the incident. "I never went back home," he says. "I went to see my mother once a month, but just for one day. I never went back to live there."

 

So when his lover was shot outside their Miami home on July 15, 1997, by Andrew Cunanan, D'Amico did what he'd done before: He changed his life. "I needed a radical change if I wanted to survive," he says. After spending six months in the grip of depression, he moved out of the homes he had shared with Versace, moved into his own apartment, and left Versace's company, where he was head designer for Istante and Versus Sport. "I couldn't stay there anymore. Every time I looked around I saw Gianni," he says. But his boldest move was to start his own fashion line.

 

"This is the price I have to pay for my happiness, and now I have to start again," D'Amico says, sitting in the brand-new headquarters he commissioned for his company. Housed in a former music school, the sleek gray offices are set back in a quiet courtyard off Milan's Piazzale Baiamonti. In the center of the courtyard paved with cool slate is a bright-yellow puddle of urine left by his seven-month-old cocker spaniel, Silvana (named after '60s Italian starlet Silvana Pampanini), a Christmas gift from Elton John.

 

Dressed in a torn U.S. Air Force jacket and French designer blue jeans studded with lime-green zippers, D'Amico periodically leaps up from his chair to take care of some piece of business that suddenly occurs to him, then returns, throwing his lithe, athletic body back down like a restless adolescent who can't bear to be still too long. A few barely noticeable wisps of white in his jet-black hair offer the only hint that he's 40. "In America you're a failure if you haven't made it by 30," he says. "In Europe life begins at 40." After years of being known in the gossipy Italian press as Versace's ragazzo (Italian for "boyfriend" but also "boy"), D'Amico is still adjusting to his new role as the patron of his own house of style. Yet as much as he tries to act the responsible adult—being politic, for example, when talking about Versace's brother and sister, Santo and Donatella—the glint in his dark-green eyes hints that he longs to misbehave.

 

Nor is D'Amico quite ready to give up the notion that he, with his good looks and mischievous charm, can get away with just about anything. At lunch at a nearby cafe, he suddenly turns to his publicist and says something that does not make her the least bit happy. I catch only one word: prostituta. Undaunted by her pique, he translates: "Don't you think all publicists are prostitutes?" he asks, trying to recruit me to his side. "What do you mean?" I ask, refusing to take the bait. "I don't mean sexually," he explains. "I mean in the mentality. You know, everything is for sale." His publicist smiles wanly. D'Amico then attempts to set her up with our handsome but scruffy waiter, an unshaven icon of machismo. She protests that she prefers her men a little more intellectual, but he calls the waiter over anyway, embarrassing both of them. "Intellectuals are boring," he sneers. "They are always talking about the past." For D'Amico, who takes pride in his efforts to bury the past, there can be no greater insult. "I think it's very healthy," he maintains confidently. Healthy or not, whether he has successfully started a new life or just dressed up his ghosts in new clothes is another question.

 

D'Amico, like Versace, was born in impoverished southern Italy to a seamstress mother. When he was two his mother separated from his father and moved with her children to Milan. "She didn't want us to grow up with a southern-Italian mentality," D'Amico says of their move. "The south is very conservative. I never had much connection with the south." D'Amico may think of himself as a northerner, but his olive skin immediately betrays his origins. Though the Milanese are notorious for their snobbishness, D'Amico says he never felt discriminated against. "People would say, 'You look like you're from the south, but your accent is from the north. Where are you from?'" he says, proud of the confusion.

 

A year after moving to Milan his mother remarried—his stepfather worked as a security guard—and his sister Teresa, now 35, was born. His real father never tried to contact them again. "Probably because he was an idiot," D'Amico says, momentarily allowing anger to show through his dismissive nonchalance about long-ago traumas. The year his younger sister died, D'Amico decided to try to find his father. "I wanted to tell him what I thought [of his cutting off contact]," he says, but before D'Amico could locate him, his father, who was just 39 years old, died of cancer.

 

In 1982, while D'Amico was working as a fashion promoter, he was introduced to Versace by a friend at the La Scala premiere of the Richard Strauss ballet Josephslegende. Versace had designed costumes for the theater for the first time. "I thought he was a very interesting man, but I didn't really have an interest in him as a person—more in his work," says D'Amico, who was 12 years younger than Versace. "It wasn't like a fire," says D'Amico. "We'd been friends and got closer and closer and closer." Then one day Versace invited him over for dinner. "He told me he was attracted to me and he wanted to get to know me better," says D'Amico. "I didn't want to have a relationship, but at the end I said yes."

 

"We were totally the opposite," says D'Amico, laughing. "I was much more quiet. He was always working 24 hours a day. He had an incredible amount of energy. You learn how to be with a person like that. When I was tired I would go in the other room." Even in 1996, when Versace was fighting off bone cancer in his cheek, he didn't slow down. "He was more tired because of the chemo, but he kept working," says D'Amico. "He really had such strength."

 

Whenever Versace went out in public, D'Amico was at his side. Although fashion designer is practically a synonym for gay man, many designers still try to cloak their sexuality. In this world of naked emperors, however, Versace was unusually open about his relationship. When Interview magazine profiled him, for example, he insisted that he and D'Amico appear together in the accompanying photograph. "He always lived his homosexuality, as I did, in a normal way," says D'Amico. "Gianni was just very open about himself," recalls close friend Elton John. "His great quote was, 'If I die I want to come back supergay.' And I said, 'Gianni, you couldn't be any gayer than you already are.'"

 

Despite his obvious charm as a host ("You must try the apple pie," he insists at the cafe, warmly clutching my arm as if he's letting me in on a secret he shares only with his closest friends), D'Amico says he's "not a party person." Accompanying Versace to galas and premieres and afterparties was an obligatory part of being his companion. "His private life was a part of the job," he says. "If I didn't want to go to some party, I had to go because it was work."

 

Attending one swanky event after another, traveling around the world to places like Egypt, Kenya, and Bali, and hosting celebrities such as Bruce Springsteen and Elizabeth Taylor at various palazzos, D'Amico had a public life with Versace that would make anyone envious. But he claims that the moments he cherished most were the quiet, domestic times they spent together—having a few friends over for pizza and watching Sanremo Festival, the Italian version of Top of the Pops, or spending an afternoon alone at Casa Casuarina, Versace's Miami mansion. "We were taking a rest in the garden," D'Amico remembers, "and we said to each other how much we loved each other. That was one of the most wonderful times." The next day, however, remains a blur.

 

"I was going to play tennis with a friend," recalls D'Amico, whose voice drops to a whisper. "Gianni was out to buy a magazine, and he was already home and had opened the gate. I heard this shot, and after that it was black. Disaster. I turned my head, and I saw the gate open. I had a kind of flash in my heart because the gate was always closed. So I ran out and I saw him there. I saw 20 meters away, [Cunanan] was walking. He turned around and looked at me, and then he started to run."

 

The police wouldn't let D'Amico accompany Versace's body to the hospital—he wasn't a relative or the wife. "They said 'You have to stay here,'" he recalls bitterly. "I was in a state of desperation. They asked me questions for hours and hours and hours."

 

The media frenzy that erupted after Versace's death made coping with the tragedy much harder. "Every time I heard something, it was like killing Gianni again," he says. Now, two years later, D'Amico faces those days afresh. Undressed, a biography of Versace by Christopher Mason, was dropped by Little, Brown at the last minute, at the same time that the publisher was threatened by Versace—family lawyers. Gary Indiana's book on Cunanan, Three Month Fever (excerpted in the April issue of Out), does not deal extensively with Versace and offers some sharp critiques of how the media's homophobia slanted their coverage. But it is for the most part a morally bankrupt romanticization of the killer ("I have, in my lifetime, known five murderers," Indiana boasts in the preface).

 

But the book that has gotten the most attention is Maureen Orth's Vulgar Favors. Orth, who writes like a schoolmarm trying desperately to be hip, asserts that Versace and D'Amico met Cunanan after the San Francisco premiere of the opera Capriccio. "I never saw him before," says D'Amico, who hasn't read the book. "But let's say you're at the opening of a show. How many people are there? 2,000? 3,000? So it is possible he was there. Who knows?" D'Amico also denies the book's most widely reported, if irrelevant, claim—based on the rather flimsy hearsay of one retired Miami cop—that Versace was HIV positive. "He never said anything to me, and I should know," says D'Amico. "I think it's just ridiculous." He pulls no punches in expressing his opinion of Orth. "This lady makes a lot of money on Gianni's death—good for her," he snarls sarcastically. "She's a shit."

 

While Orth blames Versace's death on a culture of sex and drugs, D'Amico has his own theories. "That's the American system," he says. "To have a gun so easily. To be so crazy that way. It happened to the Beatles. Mr. Kennedy." While many would agree that ours is a violent, gun-obsessed culture, some of D'Amico's other criticisms of American society contain more than a touch of European elitism. "It's about the freedom that doesn't exist," he continues. "You can't be free unless you know how to be free. The American people are not free because they're not educated. It's the American thing to think that anyone can be a star. But not everyone can be a star." Yet Versace, whose life was an Italian version of the American dream, exploited our obsession with celebrity to sell his clothing. By wearing clothes made by the clothier to the stars, his advertising implied, anybody could indeed be a star. But D'Amico doesn't buy the idea that Versace inadvertently stoked the fires that consumed him. "I don't think so," he says flatly. "I think he was very much loved. By normal people."

 

D'Amico remembers very little about the memorial service, where the guest list included such glitterati as Princess Diana, Sting, and Elton John. How did Milan's most famous gay citizen come to be honored at the Duomo, the cathedral in which Saint Augustine, one of the principal architects of the Roman Catholic Church's repressive sexual doctrine, was baptized? Reportedly, after the Versace family made a hefty donation to the church. "The priests didn't want it there," recalls John. "There was no mention of Antonio through the whole service, and 1 thought that was dreadful."

 

After the service, D'Amico disappeared to Versace's house at Lake Como in Italy. "My life after that was terrible, just terrible. You cry every day. You feel you have no reason to live," he says, reverting momentarily to the second person to describe those days as if they happened to someone else. "You think you want to die. But I was not going to kill myself. I wanted God to do it because I'm Catholic."

 

Like many gay people whose companions have died, D'Amico got little support from his lover's family. "We were all in the same boat," says D'Amico. "Things changed for me and for them. But they had the family. It was much harder for me because I was left alone." Instead he relied on friends like Elton John to pull him through.

 

"I don't think he was shown great respect by people in some quarters," says John. "He was treated well financially by the Versaces, but I know he misses the family. He was Gianni's chosen partner for 14 years; he should be treated as such. But because he was so close to Gianni, there may have been some resentment from the rest of the family. Who knows? It was not my business. My business was looking after Antonio and making sure he got the necessary affection and support he needed."

 

"Elton for me was like a brother," says D'Amico. "He's so busy, but he took the time to stay with me. He helped me to get out of this tunnel. The only thing that anyone could do was just listen and let me cry on their shoulder."

 

After working at Versace's side for so long, D'Amico had difficulty adjusting to Donatella and Santo's vision for the company. "It was a totally different mentality," he says. "Gianni's inspiration was much more cultural. After Gianni's death, it didn't make any sense." In January of 1998, six months after Versace's murder, D'Amico left the company; he was bequeathed a stipend of 50 million lire (about $30,000) a month for life in Versace's will. Using money he had saved, he started his own fashion house, with the encouragement of John. "It was my idea, but he was pushing me to do it," D'Amico says. "He knew that working would be good for me."

 

In January of this year, D'Amico made his debut with an extravagant show at Milan's Nuovo Piccolo Teatro. John's boyfriend, David Furnish, walked the catwalk, and John flew in from California, where he was recording, just to be there. Although Versace's siblings were invited, they did not attend, nor did they invite D'Amico to the last Versace show. "I didn't get the invitation," he says with mock surprise. "They did two shows the same week, so they were probably really busy." Although D'Amico is circumspect about his relations with Versace's siblings, Donatella is brutally unrestrained. "My relationship with Antonio is exactly the same as it was when Gianni was alive. I respected him as the boyfriend of my brother, but I never liked him as a person," she told The New York Times. D'Amico, however, tries to play down rumors of a rift. "She sent me flowers," he says, though he can't resist making a small crack about the gesture. "They were beautiful white roses," he pauses. "Now they're dead," he says, smiling impishly.

 

"There is friction between the two of them," admits John, "and it's a shame. I don't know the details, but I think if they would just sit down in a room and try to work it out, it would be great for both of them."

 

Although D'Amico admits that Versace was an influence on him as a designer, he says, "I tried not to do the same." Just as Versace borrowed from artists like Andy Warhol, D'Amico took inspiration for his own designs from artists he admires. The squared lines in his pin­stripe suit, for example, allude to Frank Stella. The winter collection also featured several pieces in Versace's favorite material—leather. D'Amico deliberately used the same materials for both his men's and women's collections, but he recoils at the word unisex. "The women's [line] is very feminine and the men's is very masculine, but that doesn't mean you can't use the same materials," he says.

 

If designing his own collection has been good for D'Amico, critics are not yet convinced it's been good for fashion. "Mr. D'Amico, whose Versace roots showed well enough, knows how to cut a precise suit. But if his goal is to create an important collection, a more pronounced emphasis on the easy trousers and outerwear he showed will be needed," Constance White wrote in The New York Times. "Italian TV said I was with Gianni for so many years, and he didn't teach me anything," says D'Amico with a weak laugh. But even he acknowledges that his first line was not a smash success. "It was the first season, and it's always difficult to begin," he says. "Some stuff didn't come out the way I wanted. I think the new collection will be much better."

 

Working has helped D'Amico move beyond his despair, but he still has a long way to go. His friends have told him that he should try to date again. "Everybody said to me they think Gianni would be happy if I started to have another relationship, but I can't. He's close to me all the time. I talk to him," D'Amico says. He shakes his head when asked if he's seeing anyone. "No, I'm not ready for that," he says. "I need more time. I'm not saying I'm never going to have another relationship. It's difficult, I think, when you have such a beautiful relationship for so many years. Even if some people are interested in me, I don't give it a chance. I still have my heart with Gianni. I'd rather masturbate than have a relationship with someone I don't feel anything for."

 

It's just a short ride in D'Amico's low-key Fiat Punto to the apartment that he spent three months renovating after he left the Versace company. Stepping onto the ornate marble floor in the foyer, you find yourself surrounded by a lavish, 17th-century dark-wood library. In the living room, accessed through an archway in the library, the walls are covered with abstract paintings by contemporary Italian artists. Off the living room are a small bedroom dominated by a six­poster bed and a large kitchen where D'Amico, who once worked as a pastry chef, does his own cooking. He's especially fond of the 70-square-meter terrace that is burgeoning with flowers; it's Silvana's favorite spot, too, judging by the way she bounds over to it as soon as she gets home. It's a beautiful apartment, but it seems strangely unlived-in.

 

"I miss him," D'Amico says, sighing. "What I miss is when I go home, the house is empty. When I wake up in the morning, there is no Gianni there."■

 

Al Weisel is the co-author, with Larry Frascella, of Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause, being published in October 2005.

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