In 1991, Stephanie Seymour was not yet the household name she would become. She was just starting out as a runway model, having appeared in editorials since the ’80s, arriving in Milan as the “new girl” backstage. Her first show may have been for Jil Sander’s Fall 1991 collection, but it was on the Versace runway days later that Seymour cemented herself as the catwalk’s newest star. With Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, Linda Evangelista, and Karen Mulder, Seymour strutted—trust, this is a capital S strut—the runway in a black off-the-shoulder dress and thigh-high boots, posing with the rest of the model clique at the back of the runway to signal the start of the show.
Almost 30 years later, Seymour was back on the Versace runway, closing Donatella’s Fall 2019 show in a glittering, bondage-inspired black dress. “Who wouldn’t want to do the Versace show again after 20 years?” Seymour mused backstage pre-show, where she had just finished rehearsal and was getting her hair touched up by Guido Palau. “It feels different, but the same,” she continued, saying that after all these years, her single tip for the runway is still “relax, relax, relax.”
Remembering her early days, Seymour said, “I never did shows until I started doing the Versace shows, and they were all, always, really fun. Backstage was really fun, and the girls would all give me lessons because they knew that I had no idea how to walk on a runway. We were all really close and we had a great time.”
Casting director Piergiorgio Del Moro called Seymour one of Versace’s iconic muses; he and Donatella had been hoping to confirm her for a show for several seasons. This time, in Milan, everything came together perfectly—take the audible gasps heard in the front row when Seymour appeared as proof.
