To interview Donatella Versace any way other than in the tanned flesh is to be woefully deprived of 3-quarters of her effect, which is resolutely modern in that it is totally experiential: the whiplash of peroxide-blonde hair, the broad Cheshire Cat smile, the larger-than-higher heels, the gobstopper-measurement diamond screwed on to a completely manicured finger. That’s the image equally Donatella and the Versace label maintain in the common imagination: hyper-female, pretty, prosperous – to be pronounced, Donatella-fashion, as ‘reach’, as in ‘reaching for the stars’. Right after all, that is what Donatella has done with Versace’s autumn/wintertime 2023 selection, jettisoning Milan to show, for the first time, in Los Angeles…