Vintage Versace Sunglasses

Versace is known for sexy and extravagant designs, characteristics evident in both the clothing and Versace sunglasses collections. Gianni Versace was a creative young man who learned to sew at his mother's workshop in the 1950s and designed his first gown when he was only 9 years old. But it was not until 1972 when he was 25 that he began to design full collections of ready-to-wear clothing. Gaining confidence from his success working for other designers, Versace launched a womens collection under his own name in 1978. Not confining his creative vision to clothing, he saw his work as art and loved to collaborate with the worlds of ballet, opera, theater, and photography. In fact, his relationships with world class photographers like Richard Avedon helped propel Versace's vision into the mainstream. Soon he expanded into accessories and homewares.

 

Throughout the 1980s Versace won prestigious awards and some of his collections were exhibited in museums. Versace worked closely with celebrities and designed the stage costumes and album covers for Elton John and clothing for the Princess of Wales and Princess Caroline of Monaco among many others. But right at the height of his fame, Gianni Versace was gunned down outside his famous Miami mansion by a serial killer in 1997. Gianni's sister Donatella took over as Artistic Director, and his brother Santo became CEO, and they've maintained the opulence, glamor, and rock 'n roll heritage of the House of Versace.

 

Gianni Versace’s incarnation of Medusa is based on a more alluring representation of the legendary mortal, where Medusa is suggestive of power, strength and beauty that constitutes a propitious sense of the mythology. The Versace Medusa head, as it appears in the brand’s logo, is an expression of Versace’s vision: she encompasses Versace’s taste for tradition and classical nuance along with his desire to astonish audiences with designs that are striking in their brilliance, originality and style. The Versace Medusa head logo features the head of Medusa at its center portrayed as a beautiful woman with a supernatural aura. Rather than snakes for hair, the Versace logo depicts Medusa at a time when her golden hair overflowed. Her beauty is apparent in her proportional features and fulsome lips, but her eyes remain hollow, her intentions ambiguous.

 

Medusa’s head is encircled by a ring of Greek keys –- decorative patterns based on single lines that twist like a maze – another quintessential Versace design motif. The name “Versace” is usually printed below the image, although the logo is among the most recognizable in the world, with or without the name. The Medusa head logo appears on all sorts of Versace items including Versace sunglasses, Versace pendants, Versace writing instruments and Versace timepieces. Hellenic heritage and mythology were among Gianni Versace’s muses. He was born, after all, in Reggio di Calabria in Southern Italy, part of the region once known as Magna Graeca or Great Greece. The Greeks colonized Magna Graeca many centuries ago, and in doing so left an indelible imprint of Greek culture and tradition, much of which endures to this day.

 

Those early years in Reggio di Calabria may be where Versace first became aware of the Medusa head: it is featured on the flag of neighboring Sicily in a silhouette that bears semblance to Versace’s own portrayal of the mythical character. But it was the deeper symbolism of Medusa that compelled Versace to adopt the figure as the central image of the Versace logo. In the early years Versace sunglasses and eyewear were made by the Italocremona company based in Italy. 'Italocremona' stopped making the frames back in 1999 the later frames are now made by Luxottica.

 

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