>> After many years of reluctance, Allegra Versace Beck — the majority shareholder with a 50 percent stake in Versace — has started collaborating on the brand's collections, taking her first steps into the design studio, she tells La Repubblica (translated from Italian): "I have asked my mother — I was reluctant at first, because I know little of finance — but then I realized that it was necessary for me to understand, participate, learn of this world."
She continued: "The idea made me very uncomfortable, then I calmed down. I have already started working in the office — they are all boys of my age, and I managed to convince them that I am not a mistress, but like them in that I have the ability to do this creative work ... I am the only unpaid one, that's the one difference. We became friends, often we go out together. "
Further highlights, below.
On going to the United States to study and recover from anorexia: "I call this my period of absence, I was lost in other thoughts and couldn't confront reality, with my eyes shielded from everything. Above all, I wanted one thing — to be no one, to not be recognized, not be hunted down. I studied theater, and it pleased me greatly to play parts in little independent films that perhaps no one went to see. For example, I really loved Little Miss Sunshine. Still, anywhere I went, I was a Versace. I couldn't escape, and it did me harm. I hated Los Angeles. However I did have beautiful moments. For example, when I was in New York, Rupert Everett played in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit, and I, behind the scenes, acted invisibly as a dresser."
On whether she's reconciled with being a Versace: "Definitely, I still prefer the anonymity. I've spent some time working with a non-Italian designer, I've been helping him organize fashion shows, the advertising, also helping with the creative part. But the great part about this work is that I am no one! They pay me, also, of course — for now not enough to live without worries — but I think you can get used to everything, if you feel free, if you are yourself and not what others want you to be, if you don't see a photographer around every corner, if you do not bury yourself in cruel gossip that does so much harm."
On the differences between herself and her mother, Donatella Versace: "We are so close even if she is different from me — she is impetuous and determined, I am reflective and quiet. She uses celebrity in the service of work; I hate that celebrity."
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>> In 2004, Wall Street Journal's Deborah Ball reports in her just-published book 
>> After Dana Thomas's best-selling book 
