[an error occurred while processing this directive]
BBC News
watch One-Minute World News
Last Updated: Monday, 16 July 2007, 08:26 GMT 09:26 UK
Ballet tribute for Gianni Versace
Gianni Versace and Maurice Bejart
Versace (left) collaborated on several ballets with Maurice Bejart
A specially written ballet has been performed in Milan to mark the 10th anniversary of fashion designer Gianni Versace's death.

Thanks Gianni, With Love was put together by French choreographer Maurice Bejart, for whom Versace designed many stage costumes.

About 1,500 guests, including Versace's favourite models, attended the show at the La Scala opera house.

The designer was murdered outside his Miami mansion on 15 July, 1997.

His sister and muse Donatella, who took over the Versace fashion empire, created several costumes for the ballet.

"It is the most beautiful gift I could do for him," she said.

"He was a genius and a simple exhibition of his designs would have been banal.

Maurice Bejart and Donatella Versace
Maurice Bejart and Donatella Versace were in Milan for the show
"Fashion wasn't enough for him, he also loved art, music, history and dance."

'True artisan'

Bejart, 80, worked with Versace on a dozen ballets from 1984 until the designer's tragic death.

Shortly after his death, he described his friend as a "true artisan" and compared him to the "great creators of the Renaissance - always on a quest for novelty and beauty".

Bejart's two-part tribute, known as Grazie Gianni con Amore in Italian, paid homage to the shows he designed with Versace, including Barocco Bel Canto and La Mort Subite (Sudden Death).

Guests at the gala performance included supermodel Claudia Schiffer, designer Karl Lagerfeld and actress Liz Hurley, who became famous for wearing a Versace-designed black dress held together with safety pins.

Fashion empire

Gianni Versace
Versace was shot dead outside his Miami mansion (pictured)
Gianni Versace was born on 2 December 1946 in the industrial town of Reggio di Calabria in southern Italy.

He started designing clothes at the age of 22, and built his fashion empire from a studio in the centre of Milan.

His 1982 collection introduced metallic garments that would become his trademark, and his elaborate stage costumes for Elton John in the late 1980s helped cement his reputation.

The designer was gunned down outside his Miami Beach home by Andrew Cunanan in 1997. Cunanan was later found dead.

Other events scheduled to mark the anniversary of Versace's death include an exhibition of his sketches of theatre costumes on the streets of Milan and the establishment of a scholarship at the European Institute of Design.


SEE ALSO
Versace art portfolio up for sale
04 Feb 05 |  Entertainment
Versace auction fetches $10m
08 Apr 01 |  Entertainment
In pictures: Versace art auction
21 Jun 05 |  In Pictures
Hurley turns heads in Versace
17 Nov 99 |  Entertainment
Madonna eyes Versace spring look
13 Sep 99 |  Entertainment
Versace debut stuns Paris
19 Jul 98 |  Entertainment
Fashion's tribute to Versace
09 Dec 97 |  In Depth

RELATED INTERNET LINKS
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites



FEATURES, VIEWS, ANALYSIS
Has China's housing bubble burst?
How the world's oldest clove tree defied an empire
Why Royal Ballet principal Sergei Polunin quit

PRODUCTS & SERVICES

Americas Africa Europe Middle East South Asia Asia Pacific