Gianni Versace founded his own label in Milan in 1978 after cutting his teeth designing for Genny and Callaghan. What set him apart was the combination people still under-read: the prints and the hardware got the attention, but the tailoring underneath was serious. Versace trained around his mother's dressmaking workshop in Reggio Calabria, and the construction shows it.
The eighties and nineties output is the heart of the archive market. Baroque prints, Medusa hardware, bonded leather and metal mesh, and the trouser and jacket shapes that made the house recognisable at a distance. Pieces from Gianni's own tenure — anything up to 1997 — are treated as a separate category from the later house.
Our Versace intake leans toward the pieces that still feel wearable rather than costume: balloon-cut trousers, suede and corduroy separates, printed silk. These are the items that read as archival to someone who knows, and simply as good clothes to everyone else.