The designer, determined to have fun, spiked every detail with party spirit in collection presented at Milan castle

Donatella Versace wore a cherry-red trouser suit for a preview of her collection in her design studio, and a minidress in the same colour for her catwalk show. She is almost never seen in any colour but black, and clothes have been Donatella’s channel of communication with the world ever since she started working with her brother in 1976, so this was a strong statement. “I feel like I need to bring positivity,” she shrugged. “This is a terrible moment. War is tearing the world apart. What else can I do but try and bring joy?

To locate that elusive joy, she revisited the late 1990s. “It was a very Versace time. I was smoking, all the time! There was not so much thinking, you know? Fashion can get very intellectual, sometimes.”