The most valuable accessories are professional gown-fluffers. That became obvious when Amal Clooney last night made a rare red-carpet appearance at the premiere of Wolfs—a light-hearted action film starring husband George about two rival crime fixers who are forced to work together (and presumably fail to master the rules of plural nouns)—at the 81st International Venice Film Festival. She wore a corseted Atelier Versace gown with a train so ruffled that it required human assistance.
Amal often turns to Donatella Versace for this sort of thing. The human rights lawyer was photographed at the 2023 Fashion Awards in a glitterball Versace column with cascading, sunset-hued sequins; the Albie Awards saw her sporting an almost-bridal, diamanté-encrusted Versace gown; and she wore a custom Versace dress in a retina-burning lime at the Los Angeles premiere of George’s latest directorial effort back in September. And was it not the 2017 Venice Film Festival that marked her first public outing since having twins in a lilac gown of Donatella’s making?
“It’s fun,” she once told this magazine of organizing these red-carpet moments, which she is known to mount without the help of a stylist. “You can make your look an expression of your mood. But it definitely helps to have talented people like the team at Versace.” I, too, would be in the correct mood to call on Donatella had I also spent the past few weeks dining at the Grand Tremezzo in Lake Como, or otherwise swanning around La Serenissima like the Lady of the Lake in ombré Bach Mai paillettes.