Male designers work for an ideal woman; Donatella Versace works for real women

In the big leagues of fashion, there is only one designer who has consistently challenged the paradox of power and sex — and she’s done it with a laugh, a cigarette and a billion-dollar business.

Ah, my kind of girl – blond!’’

These were Donatella Versace’s first words to me, and they were spoken with the campy, self-conscious irony that gilds most of her accelerated speech.