A lot of women seem to dislike the way they look in photographs and maybe Donatella Versace is one of them, for she is far more beautiful in the tightly toned, well-manicured flesh than in any of the ubiquitous snapshots of her, she being one of the paparazzi's favourite targets.
In person, 'Don-a-tella' - as the designer's smiling, black-clad staff call her - is radiant. Her hair looks more real, her skin more silken. And when she talks, all the elements that can seem disconcerting in a photograph - the nose, those lips, her eyes - come together in an elegant formation that is constantly rearranging itself around a luminous smile.
But before seeing all this, one must wait, as those who seek an audience with royalty - and Versace is fashion royalty - have always had to do. And what a stimulating wait it is, given the location - the 18th-century palazzo, on Milan's Via Gesu, that Donatella's murdered brother, Gianni, turned into the Gianni Versace atelier. It still bears that name despite the fact it is Donatella who has led the company since Gianni's death, in 1997, saving it from financial disaster, herself from cocaine abuse and her daughter from anorexia, and carrying the Versace flame bright and shining through the worst recession since the 1930s.
Even so, in the vestibule of what is now her palace (well, 20 per cent of it is - the rest, as with the company, belongs to her daughter, Allegra, who owns half, and her brother, Santo, who has 30 per cent), the name Donatella and the woman who bears it are nowhere to be seen.
There is, however, espresso, delivered by one of the black-clad. It sits steaming on a table in front of a sofa - all are Versace pieces, including the cup and saucer - that looks out upon a large courtyard. This is where Donatella holds court during fashion week as A-list celebrities come to pay homage.
The espresso is but a millimetre away from being sipped when a little wave of electricity surges through the palazzo's lobby and the black-clad become animated. 'She' has arrived in the building, slipping her taut thighs within tight black pants from the butter-soft black leather back seat of a gleaming black Mercedes. A procession begins, moves into a lift and rises up into the hushed confines of Gianni's old apartment, which, by all accounts, has been left as it was on the day he was shot in Miami, in the United States. The room is sombre, masculine, strewn with artefacts from ancient civilisations, including dark-hued paintings, verdigris urns and alabaster statues. There is absolutely nothing blond about it; how, one wonders, can Donatella not be crushed by all this Gianni-icity, ground down to an invisible dust and scattered in the shadow of a man-myth who lived his life like a Roman emperor?
Then she makes her entrance and it becomes clear she is neither dust nor remotely crushed, for she has a force field all of her own. She spills into the room like a compact tornado and takes her place on one of her brother's sofas like a wave hitting a sand castle, leaving nothing in place but the tumult of its own energy. One of her black-clad has been chatting about Hong Kong and she plunges straight into the conversation.
