[lucy92]

It was in these circumstances that Donatella, in the midst of her grief, was asked to step into the role of her dead brother. "I felt for a long time that I had this job because of a tragedy, not because I deserved it. I wanted to succeed for Gianni, because he cared so much for the company and I knew he would have wanted it to carry on. But I was frightened, and I had no confidence. What I knew was Gianni's style, because I had worked with him for 20 years, and I thought that was what people wanted from me, so I tried to follow in his footsteps. But it was not exactly my style."
What's more, it didn't work. Donatella's collections began to be seen as pale imitations of her brother's work. Santo, elder brother of Donatella and Gianni and the business brain of the family, oversaw the sale of Casa Casuarina for $20m (£10m) in 2001, followed by Gianni's Manhattan townhouse for $30m (£15m) and much of his art collection, including more than 20 Picassos - but still the company was mired in debt, and Donatella's drug problem was the fashion industry's worst-kept secret.
Donatella's decision to go public about going into rehab in July 2004 was a turning point for the company. A culture of secretiveness was broken, and the following month Giancarlo di Risio, the highly rated boss of Fendi, was recruited to join the company as CEO. Donatella told the Wall Street Journal that having looked at where the company was headed, Di Risio told her, "This is not going to work. This is going to die." The label's secondary Versus line was ditched, the better to concentrate attention on the main line. More assets were sold, and a new strategy of focus on accessories, by far the most profitable aspect of the luxury fashion business, was implemented.
The new, sober Donatella "lost some friends and found some different friends". Beyond this, she is not keen to dwell on the bad days, swiftly closing down this avenue of inquiry with therapy-speak about being "in a good place". What she does want to talk about is how she found her own place in the Versace pantheon: what she calls "my revolution". From the start, Donatella's taste was slightly different from that of her brother. The New York Times, reporting on that first show noticed that the collection "felt as much like Ms Versace's aesthetic as Mr Versace's. Without that, there might be some doubt that the house could go on. But her colour sense is lighter, as is her touch." It was not until she had tackled her personal demons, however, that Donatella found the confidence to make the Versace name truly her own.
The theme of renewal while staying true to one's heritage recurs often. (Her favourite musician is Prince, she tells me, because "I love the way he renovates his sound while remaining consistent with his style".) Of the latest Versace ad campaign, which features Gisele Bündchen in a draped jersey dress against a white background, she says, "to use a celebrity supermodel is very Versace, but it's done in a much cleaner way: the lights are cleaner, the background is cleaner, the make-up is cleaner."
The difference between the Gianni Versace look and the Donatella Versace look comes down to three elements "that were part of the Versace identity 15 years ago, and aren't today: bright colours, very revealing clothes and a lot of decoration. It took a lot of courage to get rid of those things, because I was not sure I could do Versace without them, but I found the confidence and I am very pleased I did. My revolution was successful." Jonathan Saunders, another hot name on the British fashion scene who has referenced Versace in recent collections, says that "being a woman she understands exactly what women want to wear and hits that balance between feminine and sexy rather then fantasy and sexy".
Donatella's style revolution does not appear to have extended to herself, however. Looking at her, it is hard not to be reminded of trauma victims who use an unchanging personal appearance to cling to the world as it was before tragedy stuck. "You have to renew yourself," Donatella tells me, "because tomorrow is what matters in fashion. Today is already old." Yet when I ask whether she ever feels like branching out from her monochrome, tightly tailored image, she seems positively affronted. "Me? In, what, flowery dresses? No. No, no, no. It would not go well with my personality. I don't wear clothes that are girlie, because I'm not girlie."
Her vision for Versace now is to position it "at the top of luxury". The world has changed since Gianni's day - that was, as Donatella puts it, "a different economic moment" - and success in the luxury business increasingly means using a relatively small but high-profile clothing business as leverage to boost sales of non-clothing items, from perfume to private jets. Accessories accounted for 4% of sales in 2005, compared with around 40% in 2007. Donatella has established a lucrative sideline customising the interiors of yachts and sports cars for the super-rich - the first Versace-branded helicopters will be delivered to customers this May, while the end of the year will see the opening of a seven-star Versace hotel in Dubai. The shifting of the world map of luxury has favoured Versace. Five years ago, the fact that the label courted clientele in Russia and China was the cause of much sniggering in the fashion world. Now that the emerging markets are the holy grail of the industry, this looks with hindsight to have been rather a smart move.
Donatella owns 20% of the business, Santo 30% and Allegra, who at 21 is the elder of Donatella's children by her estranged husband, Paul Beck, 50%. Nonetheless, Donatella is insistent that the company is "no longer a family business. Not any more. That's the old Versace. We have a new manager, and it's owned as a family but it's not run as a family any more."
The recent emergence of Santo's daughter, Francesca (pictured left), a graduate of Central St Martins, as a promising designer with small collections of her own (coyly named Francesca V) has reinforced the assumption that the company will, at some point in the future, be passed to a younger generation of Versaces. (There are also two young men in the family, Donatella's son, Daniel, and Santo's son, Antonio.) But in the light of Donatella's insistence that Versace is no longer run as a family business, her newfound interest in mentoring young designers - she has taken a keen interest in Christopher Kane's career, and promoted that of Norwegian designer Kristian Aadnevik - takes on a possible new significance. Having herself buckled under the pressure of inheriting a family mantle, it seems unlikely that Donatella would be inclined to put pressure on Allegra, who has suffered from anorexia; and she becomes agitated when I mention Francesca as a possible future element of the company. "She is doing her own thing," she says brusquely, swatting the idea away impatiently and leaning forward in her chair the better to get her point across. "I am not about to retire," she says, managing to convey disdain with the rolling of her "r"s. "The new era of Versace has begun already. I have just started it." The king is dead; long live the queen.